A Pictorial Salute to 50 Years of UMass Sport Management

“Mark McCormack was once hailed by Sports Illustrated as the most powerful man in sport,” said Kirstin Kay, the sport innovation archivist for the UMass Amherst Libraries, at a talk delivered as part of the McCormack Department’s 50th anniversary celebration weekend of June 10. “He directly engineered the growth of money and media in modern professional sport.”

During her lecture, Kay highlighted the extraordinary collection of documents, photos, and memorabilia donated by the family of the founder of the legendary agency IMG in 2010, which at the time had been preparing students for careers in the field of sport for almost three decades. The gift of the McCormack collection prompted the department to change its name to the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management, and the continued recognition it has gained since that time would have made the original mover and shaker in the industry proud.

More than a hundred people attended various 50th Anniversary Celebration events, which on top of the McCormack Collection presentation included a golf outing, lectures from McCormack faculty describing their industry-changing academic research, a panel discussion on the 50th anniversary of Title IX, and a celebratory banquet dinner. Alumni and industry luminaries attending included Bernie Mullin, who spearheaded the program’s evolution from “sport studies” to a sport business curriculum; Glenn Wong, long-time department chair; Bill Hubbard, chairman of Tokio-Marine HCC, the world’s largest insurer of major sporting events; Jeff Price, chief commercial officer for the PGA; Burke Magnus, president of ESPN; Nancy Gonsalves, associate director of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee; Adina Erwin, executive vice president of BSE Global; and Jeffrey Pollack, most recently president and CEO of XFL.