The Game Changers

“When you think about the body and the stress you incur physiologically, if you go to the gym and only work one side of your body, there’s going to be an asymmetrical issue that would cause one part of your body to try to overcompensate, or another which increases the likelihood of injury,” Cooper explained.  

His doctoral degree in kinesiology—the study of the body’s movement—makes him keenly aware of balance and how interconnected things must work together to achieve a desired outcome. And as the inaugural Dr. J. Keith Motley Endowed Chair of Sport Leadership and Administration at UMass Boston, his attention is focused on bringing equilibrium to the future of sport. 

“When we think about the sport industry,” he continued, “if there’s an overemphasis on male sports or overemphasis on white consumers and spectators, that’s going to lead to issues for your Black consumers and spectators and your women participants.” For the industry to progress, he said, there must be intentional commitment to advancing performance.  

Advancing equitable practices and social responsibility inside the sports industry is the vision that drove UMass Boston and New Balance to create the Sport Leadership & Administration program (SLA) at the university in 2019. Since its founding with a $5 million endowment from the eponymous athletic footwear and apparel giant, the program has offered students the opportunity to engage in the phenomenon sport—a $1-trillion-plus global market, by some estimates—through a variety of lenses that prepare them for a wide array of sport industry jobs and career paths, from front-office management to sports law to coaching. The program innovates beyond the traditional business management model of sports education by applying an interdisciplinary approach to create sport industry leaders who are elite in their business acumen and positioned to be change agents through the ethical management of people and organizations. 

This fall, New Balance announced that it will be investing an additional $10 million in the visionary partnership, endowing the SLA-affiliated New Balance Institute for Innovative Leadership in Sport, also under Prof. Cooper’s leadership. By increasing program faculty, bolstering student scholarship access (beyond the $56,000 already awarded from the original gift), expanding program offerings to include graduate-level degree programs and professional certificates, and supporting scholarly research initiatives and publications focused on the sport industry, the new gift will amplify the partnership’s efforts to deepen the industry’s bench of equity-minded power players. 

“We are excited to expand our investment in UMass Boston through this institute, which reflects New Balance’s focus on advancing opportunities for transformational leadership, innovation, and diversity in our industry,” said Jim Davis, New Balance chairman. “Chancellor Suárez-Orozco and Dr. Joe Cooper have done a tremendous job to establish the Sport Leadership & Administration program. We look forward to seeing how this institute will enable the power of sport to positively impact our communities and create change-making sports leaders for the future.” 

“We’re equipping students to be transformational leaders in sport, not just transactional leaders,” said Cooper. “A traditional sports management program is going to focus on generating revenue and profit. That model largely ignores that in the process you could be reinforcing several inequalities and inequities. Our program is designed to provide students with the skills to be effective in business as well as being mindful of how to do it in ways that don’t exacerbate existing inequalities.” 

Since the beginning, the SLA program’s focus has been to give students a competitive edge by integrating the university’s deep-seated liberal arts scholarship with a pioneering understanding of business and athletics. Courses like “Sport in Society,” “Sports and Human Rights,” and “Sport and Globalization” are grounded in historical, anthropological, sociological, developmental, and economic insights resulting in learning that—in keeping with UMass Boston’s mission—is both holistic and actionable. 

“UMass Boston is the natural academic home for the New Balance Sport Leadership & Administration program and this new institute,” said UMass Boston Provost Joseph Berger. “Innovative and interdisciplinary, these initiatives prepare students for exemplary careers in sports management while offering a robust social justice platform to advance excellence, equity, diversity, and human rights in sports. This aligns with our foundational idea that a UMass Boston education is designed to have impact and serve the greater good.” 

In true “if you build it they will come’” fashion, the SLA program and its blend of academic rigor and career preparation has been met with enthusiasm, piquing the interest of students and sports industry leaders alike. Enrollment has increased at an exponential rate. At the end of its first academic year, the program had 54 undergraduate students declare SLA as their major. By the 2022–2023 academic year, the program had 122 undergraduates majoring in SLA and 414 students enrolled in SLA courses. Students in the program have completed more than 10,000 internship hours with prominent organizations such as New Balance, the Boston Red Sox, TD Garden, NESN, and Kraft Sports + Entertainment Group, further honing their skills while contributing to organizational operations. 

“I think we’re lucky that UMass Boston is situated in one of the greatest sports cities in the country,” said Assistant Professor Allison B. Smith, who serves alongside Cooper as part of the program’s core faculty. “We have so much opportunity for our students to grow and develop and to go in and immediately get jobs or internships at these places they’ve revered their whole lives.”  

Smith sees the hands-on experience afforded by SLA’s two marquee student clubs—the Sport Leadership & Administration Student Association and Women in Sport Leadership & Administration—as the perfect complements to program coursework for expanding the confidence and capacity of participants. From hosting panels and professional development opportunities to coordinating travel and access to off-campus sporting events, the groups’ activities help connect the students with each other and with programmatic goals. 

“They’re planning the events, doing the hard work, and making it happen. I know other sports student clubs do this, but I don’t know how many of them do it on such a big scale. [Our students] are learning the skills in our student associations that they’re going to need as leaders in this profession,” said Smith. 

In addition to its popularity on campus, the promise and early outcomes of the SLA program have also been well received by companies and organizations across the region. SLA has amassed an active advisory board of 40 members from across the New England sports industry landscape and built strong partnerships with for-profit and nonprofit entities excited to engage with the next generation of impactful sports professionals. 

“This is a brilliant partnership,” said UMass Boston Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco. “Unique in higher education, the New Balance Sport Leadership & Administration program at UMass Boston opens pathways for students pursuing sports management careers. At the same time, the program equips our students with the skills and knowledge necessary to be excellence-in-equity-minded change makers in sport, preparing them for service to the community, the nation, and the world.”  

Harnessing the transformative power of sport in service of broader systemic and social progress is precisely what Cooper envisions for the institute, the SLA program, and SLA students. “There’s a shift happening in sports right now as it relates to technology, as it relates to equity, as it relates to psychology, even environmental justice,” he said. “We’re hoping that our program and this new institute will serve as an integrated specialized model, where we can continue to bring in different dimensions of sport under one umbrella to engage in innovative practices, research, and programming that will ultimately advance equity and positive change in our society.”