April 14-20, 2005

city beat

End Zone

career-ending inquiries: NFL players Brian Dawkins (here) and Danny Kanell (below) were talking life rather than football at Penn last week. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

In drawing NFL players to campus, Wharton could launch an academic trend.

by Brian Hickey

Eagles enforcer Brian Dawkins knows he won't always roam the defensive backfield, punishing the opposition and rallying the Linc faithful. For as strong as he remains on the field 11 years out of Clemson University, his career could end at a moment's notice.

"I don't want to retire, but there will be a time, and hopefully it's not for another seven or eight years, that I'll have to," says Dawkins. "Yes, I'll have finances at that point, but I'll still want to do something. You have to be able to make the transition."

That explains why Dawkins and three dozen National Football League players descended upon the University of Pennsylvania's Steinberg Conference Center last week. There, they slid their behemoth frames into ill-fitting lecture-hall seats to attend a three-day crash course on how to thrive financially in their post-playing days and, according to NFL Career Transition Director Christopher Henry, ways to navigate the countless business offers many field. An extension of the Wharton School's fledgling Sports Business Initiative (WSBI), the program featured sessions including "Planning for Your Future: Agenda and Goal Setting," "Investments and Scams" and "Starting a Business: Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship." (A sister program was held at Harvard Business School.) Though most sessions were closed — the players paid to attend, but will be reimbursed through the league's continuing-education program — WSBI Director Kenneth Shropshire opened the doors to Friday morning's "Negotiating Business and Employee Relationships" lecture. There, players broke off into groups of two, role-playing a negotiation between a sports-apparel company owner and a retiring pro looking for a job. It was the type of exercise one would expect at a corporate retreat.

Keeping competition alive, however, a hummed version of the Monday Night Football theme echoed throughout the room before Shropshire used an overhead projector to show the class who were the best negotiators. Surreal as the scene was, it was much appreciated by players like Danny Kanell, a backup quarterback for the Denver Broncos who's riding the NFL roller-coaster experience. Kanell's been through the highs (leading the N.Y. Giants to the playoffs in his second season) and lows (a two-year hiatus spent playing minor-league baseball and waiting for a team to take a chance on him and his surgically repaired knee). While he doesn't command a nine-digit contract, playing quarterback – even backup – in Denver means filling John Elway's big cleats. Luckily, says Kanell, the Hall of Famer also showed him how to parlay a playing career into a successful business portfolio. Not only is Elway part owner of Colorado's Arena Football League franchise, but name-recognition helped him build a lucrative car-dealership dynasty in the Rockies.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

"I remember watching him on TV in high school, wanting to be just like him, but he's also a great example of a guy current players can look up to from a business standpoint," recalls Kanell, who already has a real estate license. "The driving factor [for most of us being here today] is the fear of what to do next. To be able to learn from the people who've spoken to us like Jon Huntsman, I mean the guy's name is on [Wharton's newest] building [Huntsman Hall]. You can't beat it."

Endorsements like that have to please Shropshire, who has taught legal studies at Penn since 1986. He's seen graduates go out into traditional areas of business, but with sports representing the nation's 11th largest industry, Shropshire says offering one course on the subject, as Wharton had done in the past, wasn't enough. So, last October, he launched WSBI. "No major business school," reads the WSBI mission statement, "has seriously examined the sports industry in the manner that, for example, financial institutions, manufacturing or the real estate industries are continuously explored." The aim is to position Wharton as a "premier player" in the business by offering courses that draw high-profile guest speakers to campus and aligning Wharton with corporate players. Ultimately, it could lead to a fully funded research center, he says of the nondegreed program.

The public interest won't end with the group of NFL players who've already left town. On April 28, just days after the league's annual draft, WSBI will host a "Turning Pro Young? The Business of Early Entry into Professional Sports" conference expected to draw notables from pro football and tennis, the NCAA and local college basketball coaches John Chaney and Fran Dunphy.

"This isn't something that belongs in the phys-ed department," said Shropshire, when asked whether business-school purists consider it a lesser pursuit. "We're not trying to set up a new curriculum that will churn out agents or athletic directors. This gives students an opportunity to be exposed to an area they may have an interest in. And for a business school, it makes sense: There's big money involved."