UC Berkeley CS 39Q: Sonny Vaccaro

Priorities Under Pressure: A Critical Assessment of How the University's Core Mission is Affected by Intercollegiate Athletics.

Course: CS 39q, University of California at Berkeley, Fall 2011.

September 22nd, 2011:
Sonny Vaccaro
Former sports marketing executive at Nike, Adidas, and Reebok


Considered one of basketball's most well-connected insiders, Sonny Vaccaro remains a formidable force in contemporary sports marketing and grassroots basketball. His visionary promotional innovations (beginning with the signing of Michael Jordan to his first major endorsement package) revolutionized the sports marketing genre with shoe contracts, team affiliations and other ground-breaking promotional partnerships which have helped propel the fortunes of countless athletes, collegiate programs and professional teams. In a career spanning 30-plus years in the shoe industry, he brought his marketing and player development alchemy to basketball programs at the world's three largest athletic shoe and apparel companies. He also served as a catalyst in the current Ed O'Bannon v. NCAA litigation which centers around the rights of players to retain ownership of their images subsequent to their participation in collegiate athletics. Mr. Vaccaro holds an undergraduate degree from 1962 from Youngstown State University.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• sports
• intercollegiate
• athletics
• priorities
• budget
• crisis
• uc
• berkeley
• cal