Cara Jones
palmettoreport@gmail.com

(Rock Hill, S.C.) — Winthrop University students had the opportunity last month to hear from a graduate and former athlete who now works with NBA players to help them achieve success on and off the court.

Drew Franklin, the VP of player engagement for the NBA and a Winthrop alumnus, visited the school April 16 to talk to students about his career in sports management.

“I loved coming to speak to the group. I was super excited to come talk to people not only in the sport management space that I studied in, but also just different folks with different focuses,” said Franklin, who graduated from Winthrop in 2012.

The event — which was hosted by the College of Education, Sport and Human Sciences — was held in Whitton Auditorium, where students took part in a meet and greet and listened to Franklin’s presentation about his journey from member of the Winthrop track team to leadership roles in the NBA.

“I hoped I helped in some way, some shape or form, but really enjoyed the questions, really enjoyed talking to the students here. It was super special, as I enjoyed my time at Winthrop University, so I am happy to come back,” Franklin said.

Winthrop offers an interdisciplinary sport management degree that helps prepare students for a career in the $410 billion sports industry.

“I think Winthrop, at a time in 2007-2012, really helped me kind of mold my capacity to handle things. I feel like in my industry in sports and entertainment, it’s probably the biggest skill you can have is just understanding what you can actually handle, what you can produce, what you can do, and I think Winthrop was the beginning of that,” Franklin said.

Franklin, who is based in New York, leads NBA league-wide efforts focused on player development, education and long-term success.

“About 15-20 years ago, one of the things we started to teach is financial literacy; we’re responsible for teaching players how to get better with money management. We’ve talked to the Goldman Sachs, we’ve talked to the Morgan Stanleys, we’ve done money on the table and you see it come away, we’ve done all these crazy things,” he said.

Franklin has helped to lead initiatives such as the NBA’s Rookie Transition Program and the award-winning Vision:West platform.

“I read a book by a guy named Micheal Eric Dyson, who wrote a book on Jay-Z, and it changed my outlook on how to build educational programming,” he said. “Dyson compared Jay-Z to some of the best literature and authors of our time and era.”

Franklin said the book got him thinking about how to better educate the players he works with.

“What spoke to me was growing up listening to Jay-Z, there were things that were really parallel in what he was saying and how I received and digested his music that I was learning alongside my education career and pathway, but at the time I didn’t realize that, and so I actually use a lot of that in programing with players,” he said.

Winthrop’s sport management program is the only one of its kind in the Charlotte metropolitan region and one of only two in the state of South Carolina, according to the school’s website.

The degree program is also accredited through the Commission on Sport Management Accreditation (COSMA) located in Fort Collins, Colorado.

“Not only being in the classroom, but being a student athlete working on the side, trying to socialize doing all the things college kids do, I think Winthrop gave me a great opportunity to figure that out,” said Franklin.

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