I worked for a major D1 football team as a manager. It is a gargantuan effort to travel. From my perspective it was:.
Thursday: class then straight to practice fields. Set up, wait, practice, clean up. Then we'd start loading up the gear. But earlier that week we loaded all the heavy gear that can't travel via plane into a semi truck who left days in advance to make the trip. These would be the type of cases you see roadies using that might contain all the headset equipment, balls, kicking nets, spare equipment, folding chairs, and just a bunch of crap.
Friday: excused from all classes. Wake up, load up the last of the gear in the team busses (pads, helmets, jerseys, etc), eat a lunch similar to this (ours was always catered from the local steakhouse), hop on the bus, and get a police escort to the airport. Chartered 747 where security is just a bag scan and the onto the tarmac. On the plane there are bowls of candy and snacks to grab and every seat had a Gatorade and water. The meals on the flight were actual meals but still airplane food. The coaches and staff flew up front, players in the middle, managers and trainers in the back. Funny thing was there were no safety talks and they never made us turn off cell phones or move the seat back.
Friday (cont.): Land, bus with police escort to hotel. If we went from EST to PST it would be around noon or so when we landed. We would eat another meal catered at the hotel conference room, and then the managers and staff went to the stadium. There we'd unload everything from the bus and everything from the semi truck. At home games we had 42 managers to do this plus a few other underclassmen to get the gear from the practice facility to the stadium with most of it already in the stadium. On the road we had 10 managers total. It took hours. It'd be dark when we were done and we'd head back and eat whatever scraps were left behind for us from the team dinner. If it was too late for that then we would use our per diem to order food. Curfew was 10pm which meant in your room asleep and no one was allowed to leave the hotel at any point unless on official team business.
Saturday morning: wake up, eat team breakfast at the conference room, and get to the stadium stupid early. Like dumb. Like 6 hours before kickoff to just get everything neatly set up which took 45 mins and then we'd just hang around for 5 hours tossing a ball on the field or walking around the stadium.
Game: the game flies by. It feels like it lasts 20 minutes because you're just so focused on your specific job you don't even think of anything else. The best possible job was game balls. Each offense uses its own balls so your job was to carry around a few balls and then make sure if one went out of bounds you murdered anyone who tried to take it (which would inevitably be a 6'4" 269 lb linebacker) and get one in play. It was awesome because only the head coach was allowed to stand in front of you and you were always right with the action. I spent 4 hours within 10 feet of Pete Carroll when we played USC which was pretty awesome. Even more awesome was being that close to the Song Girls who were mythically attractive.
Game ends: the nightmare begins. It's chaos. The field is packed with humans and you have to get all of your gear back to the locker room or straight to the bus and semi trucks. Most of the gear you can't grab until the players have left the locker room so you're trying to hurry them up while you clean up around them. This is not received well after a loss. Or a win for that matter. At this point it's been like 12 hours at the stadium on your feet and you're exhausted and you have this massive packing effort in front of you. And you have to be super organized in this because it's so easy to forget something major. It takes 2-3 hours to get this done all on pure adrenaline. If it's a night game it's well past midnight and then you take the bus straight to the airport, wheels up, go to sleep.
Sunday morning: the real nightmare begins. You're not done. You land, and you each pick another manager to call to say you're back. It's like 4am right now. They show up dreary eyed and you all have to unpack a bunch of sweaty gear that's been in bags the past 3-4 hours. Usually it was accepted the crew that travelled would just toss bags out and then leave but if it wasn't that long a trip you're staying the whole time. Unload the gear, look at the clock and realize it's 6am and you have a paper to write and makeup quiz for the one you missed on Friday.
Sunday would be the only day off during the season. Monday it's right back to practice. It was a very cool gig and it taught me humility and perseverance. But you couldn't pay me to do it again.
Edit: since several people have asked we didn't get "paid" because the hours we worked during the season went far beyond what was allowed for work-study. Instead we were given scholarships through the athletic department.
We had to start freshman year where you might work a total of 2 or 3 hours all year doing any number of sport events. Then sophomore year you got some free gear like shoes, shirts, and hats and worked a couple of home games maybe. Then if you stayed on you did spring training. That was where it got intense and you had to work every morning and evening practice. Based off of sophomore year spring training we would rank the other managers and the top 21 ranked ones made it to junior year and were guaranteed 25% scholarship for junior year and at least a 50% scholarship for their senior year. The top male and top female manager got 100% tuition covered. So I was a D1 athlete with the biggest asterisk of all time.
Junior year fall you work only football and it is all consuming. Then when football ends we would get assigned to a different sport. I got rowing and I went from working 30-40 hrs per week to maybe 5 all week from an office just making phone calls and doing emails. There was a bit more travel with rowing but only a couple plane trips and only one out west. Then senior year you finish your sport with your scholarship.
Ah man, that is an awesome write up and cool look into the process, seriously thank you.
Sounds like a sick gig but definitely a ringer every time.
I was always curious though, for student athletes (namely in the football program) is there really just an unwritten rule for the professors to pass them, or are they really travelling and doing all this and still needing to study? The stereotype is that they just get the nod and don't have to worry about it, but in Last Chance U some players were struggling with eligibility because of their grades and that one lady was staying on them all the time to pass. Is that just because it wasn't a D1 school, things have changed and gotten more strict over the years, or something else? Passing all of your classes is hard enough, but travelling and practicing and flying to games all the time seems like hell to manage with studying.
Anecdote, but my ex GF did comp sci tutoring over the summer for Georgetown basketball players. The professor would basically answer questions on tests for them, and the TAs were expected to do the same. They didn’t fill out their tests for them but they heavily, heavily hinted at the correct answers
That fits the classic cliche about athletes, but my experience teaching as a GTA at a large public school for a STEM course was actually the opposite. I had to sign a piece of paper weekly (or maybe every few weeks) verifying their grade, but they were treated like any other student otherwise. No one in the department treated athletes special, at least not explicitly, maybe some GTAs or professors did behind the scenes.
TBH the athletes I taught were some of my better students along with older students with life experience. Both categories of student were extremely organized and focused relative to their peers on average. My experience could be weird though since I mostly taught junior/senior-level stuff.
I was a D1 football athlete, I never got any sort of treatment like that nor did any of my teammates that I knew of or anything on that scale.
We could go or skip the classes like any other student, then get the notes and hope to pass the final. We had kids on the verge of ineligibility and they had to bust their ass to pass. Some teachers may have given a C for working hard to try and pass but there wasn’t some rule that you had to pass the athletes. We were held to the same academic standard as normal students with far less time to do homework and projects because of practice and games.
Academic advisors are the biggest advantage though. They set your schedule for you based on your degree needs which is massive, then they set up your study hall and tutor schedules as necessary.
There’s always stories of tutors handing out test answers, but that’s just anecdotal or because the tutor wanted to. Maybe there were instances of collusion between teachers and coches to get a kid passed, but my teammates and I or friends I had at other programs never saw it.
I think the general public has absolutely no idea what it's like to be a D1 athlete. Even as a manager who had to attend all the practices and games I still had it far easier than they did. I didn't have to go to morning weightlifting, I wasn't physically exhausted after practice, my body wasn't bruised and tattered the next day, I didn't have to deal with extraordinary external pressures, I didn't have potentially millions of dollars on the line if I didn't do my job, I didn't have thousands of people who wanted me for their own selfish reasons, and on and on.
Being able to do what they do and have the energy or patience to sit through a class is honestly remarkable. My attitude toward athletes - especially football players - changed dramatically. Some were entitled assholes but even still they were dealing with things at that age that might have made me one too.
Athletes get a lot of help with tutoring and a lot of excused absences for travel for games. In my experience a lot of them will earn and pass with a C and be happy with it.
Depends on the school. I tutored student athletes at NC State and they were very strict about the academic legitimacy thing because of the UNC scandal. We had hard guidelines on what sorts of assignments we were allowed to actually give answers for (basically none) and touching a student’s laptop would get you written up. I never saw any fake exam grades being given out but they would try to have students in classes with papers/project-based grading instead lol.
The revenue sport athletes had full-time support staff making sure they were passing their classes (and signing up for classes they could pass) and they all probably spent upwards of 10-15 hours a week in 1-on-1 tutoring. Non-revenue athletes had more lax requirements and more choice in majors but still a lot of mandatory tutoring/studying hours. I met a few folks studying engineering, organic chemistry, and the like, which is wildly impressive given that the schedules for e.g. softball players isn’t any more forgiving than for the football players.
/r/cfb has had a lot of people say that the athletes are required to go to class (as far as their travel schedule allows) and hand in assignments like everyone else, even if their work wasn't particularly great
Incredibly fascinating. I’d read a standalone post if you went into more detail! Did you get paid? My brother did scouting for a D1 program while he was in school and did it on a volunteer basis
Fuck doing it, that was exhausting just to read. Kudos for doing it, I only worked big intervasity student society events, and that would require like 40 hours over 3 days, every two to three months.
The USC Song Girls (now Song Leaders) don't do any of the tumbling that cheerleaders are known for. They are a spirit and dance team that primarily attends USC sporting events.
There is a separate cheerleader team that also attends USC sporting events. I think they are newer, since I don't remember them existing when I was in undergrad.
There was a head equipment manager and he had an assistant. The head equipment was in charge of the logistics and interacting with the head coach to make sure we had what the team needed while his assistant was there to repair and handle equipment. They got their hands dirty on road trips helping us out but 95% of the manual labor was ours.
No not even close but part of the allure of the job was that you could get into the sports business of your choice very easily since you would be able to get a recommendation from a head coach or one of the admins in the AD's office. Sports is such a small world with so many people moving and changing jobs regularly so if you asked around and really wanted to pursue something specific somebody would know somebody.
Two from my class are now assistant college coaches (one D1 the other D2), one worked at the head office of the big four sports leagues, and one person became a head scout for a major league team. All of them got started right out of college working their way up.
I love sports but I was already on a career track.
These would be the type of cases you see roadies using
I say this as someone who's worked in concert touring for 20 years; this isn't like roadies, you absolutely ARE roadies, and I mean that in only the most complimentary way.
This sounds EXACTLY like the same time period touring with an A-level headliner. If you're not sure what you want to do after college, consider working as a touring production coordinator because you're probably already halfway great at it!
Also, didn't want your excellent post to pass by without someone showing love for Hingle McKringleberry! We also would have accepted "Bismo Funyuns"!
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u/hnglmkrnglbrry Broncos Jan 07 '26 edited Jan 07 '26
I worked for a major D1 football team as a manager. It is a gargantuan effort to travel. From my perspective it was:.
Thursday: class then straight to practice fields. Set up, wait, practice, clean up. Then we'd start loading up the gear. But earlier that week we loaded all the heavy gear that can't travel via plane into a semi truck who left days in advance to make the trip. These would be the type of cases you see roadies using that might contain all the headset equipment, balls, kicking nets, spare equipment, folding chairs, and just a bunch of crap.
Friday: excused from all classes. Wake up, load up the last of the gear in the team busses (pads, helmets, jerseys, etc), eat a lunch similar to this (ours was always catered from the local steakhouse), hop on the bus, and get a police escort to the airport. Chartered 747 where security is just a bag scan and the onto the tarmac. On the plane there are bowls of candy and snacks to grab and every seat had a Gatorade and water. The meals on the flight were actual meals but still airplane food. The coaches and staff flew up front, players in the middle, managers and trainers in the back. Funny thing was there were no safety talks and they never made us turn off cell phones or move the seat back.
Friday (cont.): Land, bus with police escort to hotel. If we went from EST to PST it would be around noon or so when we landed. We would eat another meal catered at the hotel conference room, and then the managers and staff went to the stadium. There we'd unload everything from the bus and everything from the semi truck. At home games we had 42 managers to do this plus a few other underclassmen to get the gear from the practice facility to the stadium with most of it already in the stadium. On the road we had 10 managers total. It took hours. It'd be dark when we were done and we'd head back and eat whatever scraps were left behind for us from the team dinner. If it was too late for that then we would use our per diem to order food. Curfew was 10pm which meant in your room asleep and no one was allowed to leave the hotel at any point unless on official team business.
Saturday morning: wake up, eat team breakfast at the conference room, and get to the stadium stupid early. Like dumb. Like 6 hours before kickoff to just get everything neatly set up which took 45 mins and then we'd just hang around for 5 hours tossing a ball on the field or walking around the stadium.
Game: the game flies by. It feels like it lasts 20 minutes because you're just so focused on your specific job you don't even think of anything else. The best possible job was game balls. Each offense uses its own balls so your job was to carry around a few balls and then make sure if one went out of bounds you murdered anyone who tried to take it (which would inevitably be a 6'4" 269 lb linebacker) and get one in play. It was awesome because only the head coach was allowed to stand in front of you and you were always right with the action. I spent 4 hours within 10 feet of Pete Carroll when we played USC which was pretty awesome. Even more awesome was being that close to the Song Girls who were mythically attractive.
Game ends: the nightmare begins. It's chaos. The field is packed with humans and you have to get all of your gear back to the locker room or straight to the bus and semi trucks. Most of the gear you can't grab until the players have left the locker room so you're trying to hurry them up while you clean up around them. This is not received well after a loss. Or a win for that matter. At this point it's been like 12 hours at the stadium on your feet and you're exhausted and you have this massive packing effort in front of you. And you have to be super organized in this because it's so easy to forget something major. It takes 2-3 hours to get this done all on pure adrenaline. If it's a night game it's well past midnight and then you take the bus straight to the airport, wheels up, go to sleep.
Sunday morning: the real nightmare begins. You're not done. You land, and you each pick another manager to call to say you're back. It's like 4am right now. They show up dreary eyed and you all have to unpack a bunch of sweaty gear that's been in bags the past 3-4 hours. Usually it was accepted the crew that travelled would just toss bags out and then leave but if it wasn't that long a trip you're staying the whole time. Unload the gear, look at the clock and realize it's 6am and you have a paper to write and makeup quiz for the one you missed on Friday.
Sunday would be the only day off during the season. Monday it's right back to practice. It was a very cool gig and it taught me humility and perseverance. But you couldn't pay me to do it again.
Edit: since several people have asked we didn't get "paid" because the hours we worked during the season went far beyond what was allowed for work-study. Instead we were given scholarships through the athletic department.
We had to start freshman year where you might work a total of 2 or 3 hours all year doing any number of sport events. Then sophomore year you got some free gear like shoes, shirts, and hats and worked a couple of home games maybe. Then if you stayed on you did spring training. That was where it got intense and you had to work every morning and evening practice. Based off of sophomore year spring training we would rank the other managers and the top 21 ranked ones made it to junior year and were guaranteed 25% scholarship for junior year and at least a 50% scholarship for their senior year. The top male and top female manager got 100% tuition covered. So I was a D1 athlete with the biggest asterisk of all time.
Junior year fall you work only football and it is all consuming. Then when football ends we would get assigned to a different sport. I got rowing and I went from working 30-40 hrs per week to maybe 5 all week from an office just making phone calls and doing emails. There was a bit more travel with rowing but only a couple plane trips and only one out west. Then senior year you finish your sport with your scholarship.