Dr. Dexter Davis, a professor of sport management at the University of Tennessee at Martin, has brought several of his students to work at different national sports venues, including the last 11 Super Bowls and the Little League World Series.
This year, he and six sport management students will go “across the pond” to work at two National Football League games in London.
Those students include:
• Connor Butts, a junior mass media and strategic communication major from Vanleer.
• Lindsey Cross, a senior management major from Smyrna.
• Jaden Knott, a senior management major from South Fulton.
• Haley Olsen, a sophomore management major from Mount Pleasant.
• Cheyenne Stewart, a senior management major from Centerville.
• Bridget Vieau, a graduate student from Syracuse, New York, seeking her Master of Business Administration.
Knott was a member of the group that worked at Super Bowl LVIII last February, while Vieau worked at Super Bowl LVII in February 2023. For the others, it is their first excursion into professional sports experience.
The games the UT Martin students will staff will both be played at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in northern London. The New York Jets will play the Minnesota Vikings at 8:30 a.m. CT on Sunday, Oct. 6, and the Jacksonville Jaguars will take on the Chicago Bears at 8:30 a.m. CT on Sunday, Oct. 13.
While on a previous travel program, students volunteered at 10K races in London before. However, this is the first official international experience for Davis’ group where students will be actively engaged in working the event.
As with the previous sports experiences, this will not be just a fun trip. The students will work at the games, gaining valuable career experience before they graduate.
The group leaves Oct. 2 and will fly overnight to London.
“We’ve made arrangements to just drop our luggage at the hotel and then, we head directly to the stadium for a training session with the NFL,” Davis said. “We’re working with an organization called MoonShot, the NFL’s customer-service training program.
“Our students are going to be doing ‘secret shopper’ stuff; they’re going to be part of the customer-service recognition crew. They will have different awards that they can hand out when they observe outstanding service.”
The hotel where the group is staying was part of the Olympic Village when London hosted the Summer Olympics in 2012 and is near the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
The group will hit the ground running with training on Oct. 4, but on Oct. 5, the students will take in some sights, including the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace and the London Eye.
“We’re going to do a variety of cultural experiences and sport experiences,” Davis said. “That Saturday afternoon (Oct. 5), we’re going to go to a Premier League soccer match at London Stadium, which was the Olympic stadium, where West Ham United plays.”
In the days following the first NFL game on Oct. 6, the UTM group will go to the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club – commonly referred to as Wimbledon – and Stamford Bridge (the stadium where Chelsea plays soccer). Davis said he is working on arranging a visit to Stonehenge.
Following the NFL game on Oct. 13, the group is coming home that Monday.
“It’s a fairly full schedule with a lot of moving parts,” Davis said.
Davis has brought students to work at the Super Bowl 19 times, dating back to his teaching stints at Niagara University and York College, and plans are to make that an even 20 times this winter in New Orleans.
“I did Major League Baseball spring training for a couple of years before that, so I’ve spent 22, 23 years of getting kids out of the classroom and into sports venues,” he said. “We’re going to do tours of Wimbledon and Chelsea and some other places, and that’s fun, but it’s also educational.
“It’s fun, but we’re there to learn about the sports industry and how the sports industry in England, on this trip, is different from the sports industry here.”
The students will keep a journal about what they learn, and during dinner each night, they each say something they learned.
“I had a friend post something on LinkedIn the other day,” Davis said. “He said, ‘A classroom is anywhere that education occurs.’ I’m a firm believer in that, because that is so true, especially in our industry, where it is so hands-on.
”So, for the next 12 days, our classroom will be all of the venues and experiences these students will have.”
PHOTO: Working at the two NFL games being played in London Oct. 6 and Oct. 13 are (front row, L-R) Haley Olsen, Lindsey Cross, Cheyenne Stewart, Bridget Vieau, (back row, L-R) Connor Butts, Dr. Dexter Davis and Jaden Knott.
