By JOSEPH DELPHEY

On Friday, Sept. 5, a group of students slightly larger than the number of available seats gathered in the Business School lounge for a zoom call. On the other side were two employees of the Chicago Fire, the Major League Soccer (MLS) team that has represented the city since its formation in 1997. The two employees present were Angelo Vicario, the Director of People and Culture at the club, and Eddie Rock’99, who is the team’s Head of Strategy. Both had extensive experience in the sporting world before making their way to the Fire, but also emphasized the time that it took them to make it to their current positions. Vicario grew up in the Philippines, and worked there, in Hong Kong and Australia before moving to the U.S., where he got a job with the Chicago Cubs. There, he filed. He didn’t specify where he was working at the time, but the particular office was moving locations, and given his position as an intern, he was given stereotypically tedious work (as well as being let go twice and rehired thrice due to budget cuts).

Rock’99 originally pondered managing a football team, but unlike the managerial landscape today, it was much more common in the early 2000’s for managers to have professional playing experience, which Rock, despite having captained the Beloit team, did not. He followed up college by going to law school, something Vicario completed as well. Though neither man directly said he regretted his choice, they did not advise attending unless one was also planning to practice as an attorney for five or six years. Through connections he had made as a manager, Rock started to work as an agent with some of his friends, who eventually founded a firm which he co-ran until his move to the Fire eight years ago. Just like Vicario, he stressed the “nose to the grindstone” aspect of moving through the business world, emphasizing how he followed eight-to-five workdays as an agent with a job waiting tables at a local restaurant. At the Fire, he works as the Head of Strategy, a position that works somewhere between the business and sporting side of the club, focusing on ensuring efficiency as well as a long-term plan for the club.

The event was certainly informative, with the two encouraging attendees to reach out if they needed a point of contact and providing information about how their experiences differ from the modern environment of sports management, but it did follow the similar advice patterns that seem to always be present when advice is given by an older generation to a younger one. The themes of networking, going into growing fields and working hard to get where you want to be circulated the room.

I will say that the last idea particularly irks me, that we shouldn’t seek out things we enjoy. The two are clearly enjoying their current positions, but had to make sacrifices of time and effort, some of which, such as law school, they didn’t see as entirely worth it. I believe this advice, however, to be another part of the business world’s handbook that I find to be morally questionable at times. This was brought to the forefront when Rock brought up the new Chicago Fire stadium, mentioning it as part of the club’s exciting current operations. Greg Casey Hanrahan’86 was also present on the call, and is the current Executive in Residence in Sport Management at Beloit. He complimented Rock and Vicario for the plan of the stadium with loft language, but the project was never centered on. I believe it should be here.

The stadium is part of “Project 78,” a development project looking to surround the new stadium with high rise apartments, recreational space, and restaurants, filling up what Rock described as the “last undeveloped land” in downtown Chicago. Many complaints have come from residents of Chicago, highlighting how the project will likely do little more than gentrify areas around the development, a fear shared by residents of St. Paul when Allianz Field was finished in 2018. Even as a supporter of Minnesota United, I find it hard to justify the stadium given that the project has barely broken ground seven years after its initial proposal. Even if it is completed, does business really need to operate in this way, where jobs are entered because it is a burgeoning market and land that is left undeveloped, unturned into capital, is a waste?

_{Featured image: Chicago Fire Football Club}