One week ago, Nikolas Rohrmann ’26 and Charlie Pliner ’26 filled what they saw as a glaring gap on campus: Brown’s lack of preprofessional opportunities in the sports industry. The duo founded Brown Sports Network, the first on-campus club dedicated to connecting Brown students with careers across the sports industry.
The club will host guest speaker events, facilitate hands-on projects and provide students with networking opportunities.
A lot of students “dream of working in sports, but most people don’t really know how to get in,” Pliner said in an interview with The Herald. “We hope this will show people what’s possible in the sports industry.”
Pliner and Rohrmann’s journey to bring sports careers to campus began last year when they created two group independent study programs. The courses — GISP 0002: “Global Football Management” and GISP 0001: “The Global Sports Industry” — offered participating students the chance to meet prominent sports professionals ranging from National Football League executives to former Major League Soccer players.
“The GISPs were a foundation for developing a concentration in sports management,” Professor Emeritus of Engineering Barrett Hazeltine, one of the courses’ sponsors, wrote in an email to The Herald. Over the course of the semester, “the rest of campus came to realize that sports and sports management are legitimate subjects for academic study,” he wrote
Brown Sports Network “is a wonderful build on the GISP courses,” Professor of the Practice and GISP-sponsor Thano Chaltas ’87 P'24 added. “From the GISPs, we better understand student interests, and we have a burgeoning network of industry contacts.”
Now, Rohrmann and Pliner hope to build on their previous efforts and make students’ ability to explore the sports industry a permanent part of campus life. Their solution, Brown Sports Network, will follow the precedent established by their GISP courses: bringing in renowned and highly connected guest speakers.
Last year, 65 guest speakers from across the globe spoke in the class, Pliner said: “From Colombia to Japan to Argentina to Italy to America, we kind of built this global prospective network of Brown alums.”
Rohrmann and Pliner plan to use the existing network to benefit the club’s general body of over 200 members.
“These guys have a Rolodex that’s unheard of,” said Brando Babini ’27, one of the club’s two vice presidents. “They’re willing to share, and they’re willing to turn that into what is now becoming Brown Sports Network.”
Alongside bringing in top executives from a variety of sports industries, the club will provide opportunities for members to work on projects in leading sports firms. According to Rohrmann, these projects will allow students to hone their design, content creation and sports analytics skills.
“What we really think is going to make us different from other clubs is the ability to work on these hands-on projects,” Rohrmann said. “That’s what we’re working on right now — building out partnerships with local organizations, but also global organizations.”
Babini emphasized that the projects not only benefit students but the sports companies as well.
“Our insights as college students who are aspiring sport entrepreneurs or executives, whatever it might be, are invaluable,” he said. “When you’re under 25 years old, you’re on the pulse. And a lot of these guys aren’t. So we provide a perspective they don’t.”
In addition to practical experience, the club will host field trips to the facilities of prominent sports companies. Last year’s GISPs visited a number of organizations, including New Balance, the Boston Red Sox and the Celtics. Through Brown Sports Network, Pliner and Rohrmann hope to add to that list.
“You can dream big when you step foot in one of these unbelievable facilities,” Pliner said. “That’s so much more than just having a guest speaker on Zoom.”
Backing up the four-person executive board are four faculty sponsors, including Chaltas,Hazeltine, Grace Calhoun ’92, the vice president for athletics and recreation and Kirsten Green, the athletics chief of staff.
When asked why he decided to sponsor the club, Hazeltine said that “one of the aims of a liberal education is to understand the world we live in, and sports are a significant part of that world.”
A board of eight student directors will work in collaboration with the executive board. Divided into pairs, the directors oversee the club’s athlete relations, business development, communications and special events.
The network also boasts an expansive advisory committee that consists of “Brown alumni who are in a senior leadership position in a sporting or sport adjacent role,” Pliner explained.
The roster, which is currently 21 members strong, includes alums such as Michael Hoecht ’20, a linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams, and Zack Malet ’10, ESPN’s senior director of business development and innovation.
Pliner added that the alumni committee often points the club toward projects or connections.
“We think that’s a unique aspect to our club,” he said. “That’s not really been there with any other clubs that we’ve seen at Brown.”
By connecting students with alums and organizations, Pliner hopes to create a “Brown ecosystem in the sports industry.”
“We hope this is just the start of something,” he said.
Lydell Dyer is a sports editor for The Herald. A junior hailing from Bonn, Germany, Lydell is studying nonfiction English and political science, and if he's not off "making words sound pretty," you can find him lifting heavy circles at the Nelson.
