Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

As city’s sports reputation grows, so do opportunities for students in new UNLV master’s program

Lough

Wade Vandervort

Nancy Lough is the driving force behind UNLV’s new sport management master’s degree program. The program, which began in the fall semester, boasts over a dozen students, and Lough thinks it can grow to be one of the most coveted degrees of its kind in the country.

Fifteen years ago, Nancy Lough came to UNLV from the University of New Mexico with a goal of creating the school’s first sport management degree program.

Lough ran into several roadblocks — including the Great Recession and, later, a pandemic — but UNLV’s sport management master’s degree program finally got off the ground during the fall 2021 semester. As spring semester starts this week, the program boasts over a dozen students, and Lough thinks it can grow to be one of the most coveted degrees of its kind in the country.

That hunch is based partly on how quickly Las Vegas has developed its reputation as a sporting event hotbed. From the arrival of the Vegas Golden Knights five years ago to the relocation of the NFL’s Raiders from Oakland to Las Vegas two years ago, the area is a budding international sports hub.

“I’m being inundated with phone calls from people who are looking for people from our sport management program to fill jobs in Las Vegas,” Lough said. “We have way more of that coming at us right now than we have students who can fill the need. I can guarantee that there’s not another city in the country that has that happening.”

The two-year program, Lough said, will prepare graduates to work in an array of different jobs, including front-office roles, sales, data analytics, and jobs that center on business intelligence. Jobs for graduates could also be at the collegiate level.

The program gained final approval from state officials last March, and Lough accepted applicants until Aug. 1, meaning she only had about five months to recruit her first cohort of students.

Leif Caesar, a California native who received his undergraduate degree at UCLA, is a member of the sport management program’s first cohort. He was offered a two-year graduate assistantship placement in the UNLV athletic department’s compliance department and later stumbled upon Lough’s program.

Caesar, who hopes to land a full-time college athletics department administration job eventually, said he was happy he did.

“Dr. Lough’s program really caught my attention,” Caesar said. “It’s been pretty amazing so far. In Las Vegas, there’s unrivaled access and opportunity with all these sports teams and events. It’s a pretty holistic program when you factor in professional development and networking opportunities.”

There’s been serious talk in recent months of a Major League Baseball team — the Oakland A’s — moving here and of an expansion Major League Soccer franchise.

Las Vegas has also long been thought of as a prime landing spot for an expansion or relocated National Basketball Association franchise, partly because of MGM Resorts International’s backing of the NBA Summer League, which takes place annually in the city.

Add a flurry of minor league franchise additions — including the Henderson Silver Knights hockey team and future pro lacrosse and arena football teams — and Lough agrees there might not be a better city in American to be in a sport management program.

With time, Lough thinks UNLV’s program could eventually rival a similar sport and entertainment management program at the University of South Carolina, which is viewed by some as the premier program of its kind in the country.

Danica Hays, dean of UNLV’s College of Education, said she was proud of the work Lough has put into the program, calling it “something special for our community.”

Part of the thinking behind the UNLV program was also to create a pipeline for more diversity in the sport management field and its many tributaries. In the initial cohort at UNLV, nearly half of the students are women.

Women have been breaking barriers into jobs traditionally held my men, including the Miami Marlins in 2020 hiring Kim Ng as baseball’s first female general manager and the Philadelphia Eagles vice president of operations Catherine Raiche recently interviewing for the general manager job with the Vikings.

“Our program is informed by the things that are moving the industry forward,” Lough said. “There is a major need to improve the diversity of the sport industry and UNLV is one of the most diverse universities in the country, so we’re going to help with that problem. Diversity and inclusion will be woven into everything our students do.”

Tourism officials in Las Vegas have embarked on the “Greatest Arena on Earth” advertising campaign to help brand the city as a global leader in sporting events.

Last year, Las Vegas was awarded the 2024 Super Bowl, easily the biggest single sporting event America has to offer, and it’s likely Las Vegas will be awarded a college football national championship game and a college basketball Final Four at some point.

And when the events come, they will be greeted by a workforce that mastered their craft in the UNLV program.

“There is no program like this program I’m building here at UNLV,” Lough said. “We’re going to grow. This city, collectively, has the intention of becoming the global intellectual capital for sport and entertainment. We’ve long been the entertainment capital of the world, but now we’re adding sport to the equation, and we have a world-class university behind it.”