When I used to tell people that I was interning for Major League Baseball, a sports PR company or a sports team, it was often followed by a head jolt and a, “Really?!” I couldn’t tell if they were just shocked that a girl was interested in a job in sports or if it was just simply that interesting to work in sports. But apparently, I’m not alone.
Brett Ehrlich, national sales manager at SportsNet New York and Binghamton University graduate, gets the same reaction.
“It absolutely is the cocktail party job,” Ehrlich said. “When you walk in somewhere you might have an investment banker to the right and a doctor to the left, and everyone wants to talk to the guy who works in sports.”
Ehrlich, BU class of 1995 graduate, worked his way from the Binghamton Mets to a company working for the New York Mets. But Ehrlich, a lifelong Mets fan, wasn’t always destined for a career in sports. If it wasn’t for a change of heart in the final week of his senior year at Binghamton, Ehrlich’s career would have been completely different.
Ehrlich always had a vision of getting involved in sports from the time he sold pretzels and hot dogs at Binghamton Mets games. He knew breaking into the sports industry wasn’t going to be easy, so he had to be creative in getting his foot in the door.
“I knew I had to get something sports-related on my resume,” Ehrlich said of the B-Mets job. That position helped him earn his way into the sports division at Turner Broadcasting after starting out in the advertising department.
Ehrlich, a native of Rockland County, moved over to the NBA in what was supposed to be his “dream job.” But it wasn’t what he anticipated. When a former colleague signed on to work as the vice president of marketing for the new Mets network, Ehrlich received a call to hop on the SNY bandwagon.
“Stay connected to your contacts,” Ehrlich said. “You never know where they’re going to end up and it leads to opportunities down the line.”
Now at SNY, Ehrlich’s day-to-day task is to sell advertisers on his product: the New York Mets and its network.
“We are responsible for all of the advertising and sponsorship on the network,” Ehrlich said. “I manage all of the business that we generate outside the New York market.”
By being on a national and not regional scale, Ehrlich has grown used to the travel involved. Securing advertisers like Aflac, Coors and Nissan requires him to roam the country to convince a company to advertise and sponsor on SNY.
“We’re a regional sports network, so the rest of the country doesn’t know who we are,” said Ehrlich, who must show detailed presentations about the network since companies can’t flip on the channel to see it.
But when the New York Mets is your product, the wins and losses not only play a factor in Ehrlich’s selling point to advertisers, but also the company culture in the office. With the recent demise of the Mets this September, the Mets’ failures directly impact Ehrlich’s job.
“That’s the good and bad of working in sports — you get so tied into the performance on the field,” said Ehrlich, who had an easy time selling the first-place Mets for the majority of the season. “Unfortunately, for the next six months, all anyone will want to discuss is the collapse of the Mets.”
But while Ehrlich’s job would have been a lot easier had the Mets made the playoffs and potentially won the World Series, working so closely to the Mets does have its benefits throughout the year.
“You get to live out the fantasies of working with a sports team,” Ehrlich said. “You’re not on a field, but you’re heavily invested in a team.”
Ehrlich’s career path from the pretzel man at the B-Mets stadium to his modern-looking New York City office in Rockefeller Plaza wasn’t an easy climb. He is always willing to speak to students about his experiences and understands that he was once in a BU student’s shoes.
“I wasn’t smart enough at that time to use my connections and be bold enough to reach out to people who had jobs that I wanted at the time,” he said.
But while Ehrlich is happy to help out students, he wants to remind them that getting a job in sports requires more than just a love of the game.
“If we just wanted the biggest sports fan, we’d go to Shea and grab the guy with the Beltran jersey and put him behind the desk,” he said.
For a Mets fan who worked his way to the top, the soon-to-be married Ehrlich is certainly enjoying waking up in the morning for work.
“I have pictures of being four years old in a Mets T-shirt when everyone around me was a Yankees fan, so I’m living the dream job right now.”
Published Oct. 9, 2007 in Binghamton University's "Pipe Dream" Newspaper
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