UMASS PROGRAM IS MORE THAN A GAME COLLEGE'S HIGHLY REGARDED SPORTS BUSINESS DEPARTMENT NOW BOASTS OVER 700 ALUMNI - The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)

AMHERST - It was as an air force pilot in India that University ofMassachusetts student Vishan Bhatia realized the dream of hislifetime, he says.

'I decided that I wanted to get into the sports industry,' Bhatiasaid, sitting in a classroom in Amherst last week, providing evidence of the bright international image of the university's SportManagement Program.

'There really is no sports culture in India - cricket is reallyabout all we have had,' he said. 'But that is changing.'

Changing enough so that IMG, the huge international sports andevent management and marketing agency headquartered in Cleveland, hasopened an office in India.

IMG hired Bhatia when his stint as an air force pilot was over.

'After a while, they encouraged me to get some internationalexperience and to come to the United States,' he said. 'When I lookedat the programs at the universities here, it became quite obvious,almost immediately, that I should come to UMass.'

The Sport Management Program at the University of Massachusetts atAmherst is among the most highly regarded sports business programs inthe country, observers say. And, as Bhatia discovered, it just mightbe best among the contenders: the University of Northern Colorado,Ohio University, Ohio State University, and the University of Oregon.

'The department is almost like a feeder system for us at thispoint,' said Stuart Layne, executive vice president of marketing andsales for the Boston Celtics.

'We have a terrific relationship. They feed us a lot of good youngkids who become part of our internship program and, almostexclusively, we hire from that program for our entry-levelpositions.'

Another Celtics official is equally as effusive - if perhaps atinge more biased.

'Right now, UMass is used as a barometer when you talk aboutsports management programs at universities around the country,' saidWayne Levy, the Celtics' director of community relations. Hegraduated from the program 12 years ago.

The University of Massachusetts program is among the oldest. Therewere only two other such programs when it was established in 1972.Even now, the university is the only one of 200 schools with thedivision of study that offers a doctoral program, along with itsundergraduate and master's degrees. With 10 instructors, it has thelargest faculty in the country, if not the world, observers say.

More than 700 alumni are at work for professional sports leagues,franchises, college athletic departments, and other sportsbusinesses, providing Bhatia and the other 480 current students witha vast network of employment resources.

Prominent alumni include Dennis Robinson, a vice president in theNBA, and Jeff Price, senior director for US sponsorship andpromotions at MasterCard International, who has been the steward ofthe ongoing, award-winning 'Priceless Memories' advertising campaign.

And the Sport Management Program may be about to become moreheralded.

It has created the PRISM Awards, which will draw nominees fromsports businesses across the country. PRISM is an acronym forProfessionalism, Results and Innovation in Sport Management.

The awards, to be presented in spring or summer - in partnershipwith Chicago-based Team Marketing Report Inc., a sports businessresearch firm that publishes a widely disseminated newsletter - willrecognize excellence and commitment to quality management. Eligibleare professional sports leagues and franchises, including the minorleagues.

'In a multibillion-dollar industry like professional sports, thereis currently no award to recognize outstanding quality managementachievement. The PRISM Awards fill that gap,' said Lisa PikeMasteralexis, who 18 months ago succeeded Glenn M. Wong, a nationallyrecognized expert in sports law, as department head. Wong remains aprofessor in the program.

'Our long-term goal is that the PRISM Awards become to the sportindustry what the Baldrige Awards are to manufacturing,' Masteralexissaid.

The PRISM Awards are already drawing notice for the SportManagement Program.

'Sports marketing is getting so much more sophisticated, and Ithink this award program will really give people in our industrysomething to shoot for,' said John McDonough, vice president ofmarketing and broadcasting for the Chicago Cubs.

Masteralexis and other members of the faculty and staff - as wellas the sports management students - are hoping for a second coup nextyear. They are hard at work creating the Center for the Study ofSpectator Sport.

'All of us on the staff are interested in audiences and the peoplethat watch sports, either live on television or in person,'Masteralexis said. 'How that works is something that is veryimportant. Our goal is to create a center where media andorganizations can come to us for assistance, and it gives us anopportunity to study some of these things in more depth.'

Back in the classroom, students say the Sport Management Programhas substance backing the new and ambitious initiatives.Conversations with about 15 students this week in the aging CurryHicks Building, where the department is housed, revealed that theylike the rigorous undergradute academic standards of the SportManagement program.

The requirements include solid business courses: finance,management operations, macro and micro economics, accounting,marketing, statistics, and computer science.

Others like the association with faculty members, such as BillSutton, a professor who has a doctorate and is currently onsabbatical, doing research for the NBA. Sutton once ran the graduateprogram at Ohio State.

Other students like the practical experience of managing their ownevents - like Haigis' Hoopla, the school's three-on-three basketballtournament, sponsored in part by New Balance - or participating inmarketing studies done by the program for leagues and franchises inthe major professional sports.

'This fall, I sold thousands and thousands of dollars insponsorships for our three-on-three basketball tournament,' saidChristine Millbauer, a field hockey player who had a large choice ofschools but settled on the University of Massachusetts at Amherstbecause of the Sport Management Program.

'There's not a lot of other places where you can do that and whereyour teachers and your department have the trust in you to putcontracts out to corporations that have a lot of money to spend.'