#15: Work for a Sports Team (part I)

From a very young age, I always told people that it my dream to be a professional sports star. I became very infatuated with the whole notion of getting paid millions of dollars to play games and have millions of fans adore my incredible athletic skills. I watched ESPN religiously as a child and felt that I could easily be like my sports heros I watched. However, the idea of being a professional athlete quickly died, while the influence of ESPN and the "me-first" message that a lot of superstars portrayed greatly affected my youth athletic career.

my hero.

For example, I used to play youth basketball with a bunch of friends from elementary school. We were notoriously bad, bad enough where one of my teammates got a standing ovation when he scored his first point in the tenth game of the year. In fifth grade, we played a team that was nearly as bad as we were. However, they were winning and I was getting manhandled by this big goon inside. Late in the game, he knocked my glasses off for the umpteenth million time and I had enough of his shit. I picked my glasses up on the floor and proceed to kick the kid right in the shin. The kid fell to the ground and started crying, and obviously the referee gave me a technical foul and ejected me from the game. Way to go me. And if that wasn't bad enough, I started bawling and ran right out of the school that the game was held at. Let's just say that my father gave me a stern lecture when we got home that day.

My belligerence in basketball was not any different from swimming, except for the fact that I was good at swimming. I was a fucking brat when I swam. On the blocks, I would have a routine where I would splash myself with water so I could get used to the temperature before diving in. I switched the routine up in high school where I would either flex my muscles or do a little dance before swimming. I figured that I would provide some entertainment to the 50 people who would show at the meets. If I won a race, I would completely shove it in my opponents face, raising my arms in victory while the other guy still swam to the finish, or take a bow as I did in my last race. That must have pissed off a lot people. But when I lost, I would slam shit down and completely blow up. Needless to say, I was ridiculous when I played and I am glad I no longer have to experience that.

So why does that matter? It matters for a lot of reasons, with the most important one being that suck the big one when it comes to play sports. I am not very gifted athletically and my lackluster performances throughout my career in both basketball and swimming left a lot to be desired. As a result of my ineptitude in athletics, I figured that I would follow sports and love them with a passion instead, which led me to South Carolina and my future career plans.

When I wrote the list, I felt that #15: Work for a Sports Team" was not only an achievable goal but a dream of mine. I personally think that working for a sports team is quite possibly the coolest job ever. Just think, you work all day with sports! You can work for something that is your passion in life, so work seems more like play than the boring and mundane process that it really is. For real, what could be better than working for your favorite athletes, getting free perks, tickets to games, and then some? Nothing!

And working for a sports team is not some farfetched concept. I am a sports management major and I'm pretty good at what I do in regards to that, so it's entirely feasible to work in that capacity. In addition, I worked for a sport organization this past summer, and while their line of work was not my cup of tea, I gained a lot of valuable experience from it.

So over winter break, I applied with a few organizations in the various professional sports leagues, in an effort to try and gain more experience in the industry. I really thought nothing of the application process, because these internships were very presitgious and I would be incredibly lucky if they want to move further with me. Then out of nowhere, I got a call from the NBA asking me for the perfect time to do a phone interview. The NBA. That's the National Basketball Association. That's the big leagues right there. I never expected the NBA, of all things, to call and say that they liked me. It's as if I sent Keira Knightley a love letter and she came all the way to South Carolina to let me fuck her brains out. (not really, but you see the point in a more extreme way) Returning to the topic at hand, I scheduled an interview with them for later this week, so when that happens, I'll let you know how it goes.