Hello everyone! Well, I think first I should introduce myself. As you can see, my name is Tony Lessel and I'm from St. Louis. I'm a senior at Southeast finishing up my course work as a Sport Management Major with an internship with the Detroit Lions. My entire life I was raised on sports, but unlike most kids it wasn't on just St. Louis sports. I was raised heavily on all Michigan sports from the Red Wings, Michigan State and of course the Lions. Alright, enough about me and back to why I’m writing this. Well, I’m a couple weeks in to the internship now and I’m working in the Premium Sales department. We don’t have a very big staff for the amount of work that we do. Something that I get a kick out of is that everyday I get to work at the brand new Ford Field stadium that recently held the Super Bowl this past year.

The first week that I started I was able to take a tour around the entire stadium and got introduced to many of the people that work in my office. Since it was a week of the first home game of the year, co-workers were frantic to get things done before the big game. Most of the week I was working on allocation of suite tickets and helping out my bosses any way that I could. Since I was thrown into the middle of everything in my first week, I didn’t get to do anything to exciting. On Friday before the game, I had to go around and set up almost every suite for the game with programs and media guides. Then, it was game day and a boss and I were in charge of what’s call the North Club Lounge. It’s a large area that has a cigar bar, several stands with food and a long bar right in the middle of it all. It also has several couches and chairs with a very large screen TV. Everything went fairly smoothly until about the 3 quarter when the beer on tap at our bar started to pour slowly and warm. We thought this would be a problem but no one complained which I attribute to either people that were already drunk and didn’t care or those that were still watching the end of the tight game that we lost in a last second field goal 9-6.

On to the second week, where I was able to get deeper into the operations part of the organization. I was able to set up some tickets for suites and also delivered gifts from the Lions to the suite holders. I was put in charge of a networking system that we are going to put in place where suite and club holders can list there businesses in a brochure for others to use for reference. Since the team was in Chicago for a game, the week wasn’t nearly as hectic as the week before.

Now, it’s the 3rd week and things are starting to pick up again. Things in the beginning of the week started off the same as usual. Setting up tickets for suites and helping with spread sheet and what not. But the main difference between this week and the previous ones was that I was able to make a trip to Allen Park which is the Lions practice facility. Myself and a manager went to get autographs for charity raffles and suite holders. While there I met a few of the Lions that I hoped I would. Among those were Roy Williams, Jason Hanson, John Kitna and Josh McCown and their newly drafted stud Ernie Sims. I also met some players that used to be in the St. Louis Rams, Dre Bly and Az-Zahir Hakim. Dre didn’t even hesitate to say “what’s up homie” to me and Az is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet! It’s great to see him back in Detroit since the just signed him days ago after he was with the team a few years back. Another person that I got to see but not meet was Mike Martz. But the person that I wanted to meet the most and got to was Matt Millen. Now, I know most of you won’t know who he is but he’s the general manager of the team. This is where I was my career to ultimately lead so meeting him and talking to him for a bit was great. He is also a nice and very laid back guy with lots of stories. I can only hope to meet up with those guys again down the road.

On a little side note, people think that working in sports would be so much fun and is full of perks. Well yes its fun and yes it’s full of some perks but you work like you’ve never worked before. This is a non stop business where something can always be improved and someone is always angry with you. You need to love this profession and I must say that after my first game of working this is definitely what I want to do for a living.

Until next time,

Tony

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