A Qualitative Analysis of How Collegiate Athletic Participation Turns Athletes into Business Professionals

Abstract

The athlete-to-businessperson pipeline is extremely popular with collegiate student-athletes. Inspired by this observation, this thesis asks how former collegiate athletes now working in business describe how their athletic experiences prepared, or failed to prepare, them for a career in business. Existing literature explores the statistical correlation between athletics and business, but focuses much less on qualitative narratives from the athletes themselves. Thus, this thesis employs semi-structured 15-30-minute-long interviews with twelve former collegiate student-athletes to uncover how they view their journey from athlete to businessperson. The findings, which cover a range of sports and business professions, conclude that athletes are often drawn to, and able to succeed in, business professions due to the development of executive functioning skills and emotional intelligence characteristics along with environmental factors. Ultimately, the research contributes to the sociological conversation by discussing the effects of the social institutions of education and athletics on the individual.