Campaign Oregon

Sports With a Social Conscience

In the early 1990s, Jim Warsaw, then president of the largest licensed sports cap company in the world, was becoming more and more dismayed by the greed, misbehavior, and poor leadership in professional and college sports.

What if a university business school were to educate a new breed of leaders armed with both a sophisticated knowledge of marketing and a high level of integrity, he wondered. At the time, few universities offered sports marketing programs and none of them offered such a program in a business school.

Jim decided his alma mater was the best place to start. He invested in the UO Lundquist College of Business, persuaded others to make gifts as well, and engaged the help of his sports industry contacts.

Ten years later, the James H. Warsaw Sports Marketing Center ranks as one of the top sports marketing programs in the country. Its faculty is the most trusted media source for sports business issues. Its graduates attain high-level professional jobs in organizations such as the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and the U.S. Olympic Committee.