Min’s Major League Baseball experience is a hit in the Sport Management classroom

Sport Management Professor Sungick Min, left, at the San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park in 2015. Outside of Fredonia, Dr. Min covers South Korean players as a Major League Baseball reporter. He also serves as a consultant and scout assistant for a South Korean professional baseball team.

Fredonia’s Sport Management major offers students the opportunity to learn and experience what it is like to work on the business side of the sports world. One Fredonia professor is using his outside-of-the-classroom industry endeavors to provide his students with real-world insights. 

Dr. Sungick Min has been an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Professional Studies since 2013. He teaches Marketing and Public Relations in Sport, Principles of Sports Management, Leadership and Management in Sports, Facility Management and International Sports Management. 

Dr. Min is an influential teacher who inspires students to find opportunities in the sports world by sharing his own experiences. He has worked in professional sports for the past 12 years. Currently, he works for the Korean sports newspaper, Sports Chosun, as a Major League Baseball (MLB) Correspondent covering players from South Korea. Some of the players he has worked with include Chan Ho Park from the Los Angeles Dodgers/Pittsburgh Pirates, Byung-Hyun Kim and Sun-Woo “Sunny” Kim from the Colorado Rockies and Hee-Seop Choi from the Florida Marlins. In his most recent work he covered Shin-Soo Choo from the Texas Rangers. As he covers each player, he travels to their home and away games. After he watches the game, he participates in the post-game interview with the manager and then interviews the Korean player as well. Once he gathers all of the information, he goes back to his press box, writes the story and emails it to the newspaper. This job has provided Min with a lot of connections, experiences and international relations.

Along with being a correspondent, he also works as a consultant and scout assistant for one of South Korea’s professional baseball teams, the SK Wyverns (a winged, two-legged dragon). This job has him observe athletes on U.S. teams who he would recommend as possible players for the Wyverns. Last year, the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) had him visit several different MLB teams with members of the Wyverns’ marketing team. He visited the Dodgers as well as the Chicago White Sox, Washington Nationals, New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants.

“Both [being a reporter and a consultant] are tremendous opportunities to represent Fredonia, introduce our Sport Management program, and find out first-hand what franchise owners want from potential graduates and interns,” Min said.

When he’s not teaching or traveling the world to find new players, Min takes time to do some research as well. In early 2015 he conducted a study designed to investigate the ways in which World Wrestling Entertainment promotes and markets its brand, programming, events and products. Following the study, he wrote the article, “An Empirical Analysis of the Effectiveness of World Wrestling Entertainment Marketing Strategies,” accepted and published in January’s edition of The Sport Journal. Even more recently he  had his paper titled, “Alternative Shareholding Structures and the IPO of Alibaba,” accepted for publication in the Academy of Economics and Finance Journal. Along with these, he has 25 other published articles about the sports world and marketing.

Min’s real-world knowledge is greatly appreciated by his students. He offers them a positive and informational perspective on how they can use their knowledge from the classroom to apply to internships and future jobs. 

“I am currently in Marketing and Public Relations in Sport, and what he’s taught me in class I’ve found to be applicable to my internship at the Buffalo Sabres,” says Krystina Ventry, a senior from Lewiston, N.Y., who has taken every one of Min’s classes to date. “Being able to apply what I’m learning in the classroom to my experience with the Sabres has been extremely beneficial for my career.”