How Business School Can Help Athletes Excel

• Athletics and business share a similar range of skills, including critical thinking, collaboration, and communication.
• By pursuing business education, athletes can learn to channel their competitive natures into personal growth and success across a range of business fields.
• Perhaps most importantly, a business degree gives athletes opportunities to learn how to connect with people, a skill they will use throughout their careers.

Three years ago, I was fortunate enough to be one of 30 students selected for the TCU Neeley Fellows program at the Texas Christian University’s Neeley School of Business in Fort Worth. When I came from Bristol, England, to the Neeley School, I had two goals in mind: to make the university’s varsity tennis team and to get a great business education. Since then, I have learned that a similar mindset and skill set are required to achieve both objectives.

I did make the tennis team. But the irony is that I rarely played a match! In high school, I was a highly decorated athlete. But I had the self-awareness to know college sports were probably out of my reach. As part of TCU’s team, I was able to recognize how I could contribute to the team’s success both on and off the court.

In many ways, I have found that my success and effort in tennis has amplified my success and effort in business school. Similarly, the discipline, scholarship, focus, and teamwork needed to succeed in the classroom has spilled over into my career, athletic ambitions, and life. This crossover is what led me to pursue my business degree.

A business degree can provide most people with skills that will serve them well in their careers.  But over the past three years, I have found many reasons why business education can be advantageous to athletes in particular.

A Shared Set of Skills

First, the love of competition is something common to both athletes and business professionals. It was my own competitive nature that made me a natural fit for business school.

Every field of business, from marketing to accounting to finance to entrepreneurship, has some level of competitiveness. I can compete to help a business succeed at the highest level, as I simultaneously watch and respond to how the business world spins on a day-to-day basis.

Author Luke Swan at a tennis match.

I am not the only one to find this to be the case. According to “No Revenge for Nerds? Evaluating the Careers of Ivy League Athletes,” a recent working paper by professors at the Harvard Business School, many athletes choose to go to business school because of the long-term benefits they believe a business degree will provide.

“Persistence. Teamwork. Grit and grace in victory and defeat” are athletic skills—in close proximity to a love of competition—that are particularly well-suited to business, as noted in a summary of the study on Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge website. As a result, athletes can be especially successful in business fields.

“Intercollegiate varsity sports may build such skills that employers prize—and that later propel former players into management roles faster than their classmates,” the summary continues. “Members of these colleges’ sports teams secure higher-level jobs and better pay after graduation than their non-athlete peers, finds the analysis of more than 400,000 Ivy Leaguers over the past half-century. Ivy jocks tend to earn some 3.4 percent more during their careers and are more apt to land in C-suite roles than their classmates.”

The students in the study’s sample attended eight Ivy League schools, and many graduated with business degrees. After their analysis, the paper’s authors found that “athletes are far more likely to enter careers in finance and other business-related fields. In terms of advanced degrees, athletes have a higher propensity to receive any MBA as well as an MBA from an elite institution than nonathletes.”

Paul Gompers, one of the paper’s co-authors, makes this point in Working Knowledge. “Going into business, you’re generally working with others as opposed to, say, a field like medicine or a field like academics; those tend to be a little more solitary,” he says. “Some of the skills, potentially, that you learn in athletics are highly valuable in places where you have a lot of interactions with others.”

An Ability to Overcome Adversity

Second, business is much like sports in the unexpected challenges it presents. As many sports teams find, the path to success is rarely a smooth one. It’s easy to be relaxed and happy when you’re winning, but far more difficult to maintain composure when you’re losing. But in our academic training, we learn to work out strategies to deliver the best outcome in our projects—the same as an athletic team must do to win a challenging match.

This became especially clear to me when our tennis team played a pivotal match during the playoffs for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship. Earlier in the season, we had lost the Big 12 title to the team at the University of Texas at Austin. When we had to face them again in the playoffs, we would have to climb a tall mountain to beat them.

In our academic training, we learn to work out strategies to deliver the best outcome in our projects—the same as an athletic team must do to win a challenging match.

Right away, our momentum stalled as we fell behind 3-2 in the first five singles and doubles matches. With two singles matches left, we were out of chances: One more defeat, and we would lose.

Meg Lehman, the program director for the Neeley Fellows program, often called me a “coach and a cheerleader in our community.” To be successful, any team needs both leading and supporting players—and a supporting role is the one I took during our team’s playoff bid.

I led the cheers for our final two competitors, Jack Pinnington and Sebastian Gorzny. Whether by luck, talent, hard work, or just sheer force of will, Pinnington came back from losing the first set 2–6 to beat the top-rated Texas player in the next two sets, 6-4 and 6-2, respectively.        

With the teams tied at 3 all, Gorzy won the first set, lost the second, and battled for a winner-take-all championship. As Billie Jean King once said, “Pressure is a privilege.” Gorzy played that way, winning the final set 6-3, helping our team win its first men’s NCAA tennis championship since the tournament began in 1946.

Members of the Texas Christian University tennis team after winning the NCAA championship (Swan stands third from right).

An Appreciation of Connection

Perhaps most importantly, a business degree gives athletes the opportunity to learn how to connect with people, a skill they will use throughout their careers. Without that skill, I would not be where I am today, or feel so confident about my future.

This summer, for example, I am interning at Nike’s location in Los Angeles as part of the company’s brand marketing team. I have been helping with marketing for various Olympic sports and promoting the annual Juneteenth Nike L.A. run. Through this internship, I have opportunities to meet a tremendous group of world-class athletes and entertainers, as well as learn up close about the business of sports and show business.

I found this opportunity because of the strong network I had built with TCU alums. My upper-level manager at Nike, for example, is Brittany Knight, a Neeley Fellow graduate. If I was not given the chance, through those I have met at TCU, to jump on a Zoom call through Neeley back in 2022, this opportunity would not have happened.

Through my time in business school, I also have learned the value and importance of great mentors. One of these mentors has been our head tennis coach, David Roditi, a former TCU player and graduate of the Neeley School. Roditi has been a master motivator who recognizes the contributions of each player to the team.

By studying business, athletes can apply and refine the skills they learned in their sports, including rigor, teamwork, critical thinking, and networking, as well as a range of hard and soft skills.

After the season was over, he offered feedback on my performance, praising my communication skills and noting that I often used humor to help my teammates relax and perform well. “Luke…brought everyone together during times when things were difficult and was the loudest to cheer when times were good. He is the heart of our team,” he wrote.

I may not have been on the court playing those final winning sets, but Roditi’s words made me appreciate my skills and the ways I can contribute to the successful outcome of a team in any context.

A Great Foundation

The reasons that athletes should strongly consider pursuing business education and business careers are many. These include their appreciation of teamwork, their ability to collaborate, their understanding of using research and analysis to make decisions—the list goes on and on.

Just like sports, business education offers individuals a range of experiences that constitute a great foundation for life. By studying business, athletes can apply and refine the skills they learned in their sports, including rigor, teamwork, critical thinking, and networking, as well as a range of hard and soft skills. These all are crucial talents that will resonate across any career path they choose.