Sixth Time's the Charm
The first five times he applied to Bleacher Report, Eric Drobny MA ’12 did not even receive notices of rejection — he was completely ignored. The sixth time, he grabbed their attention. Nearly four years later, he oversees five programmers and directs news updates on the Olympics, soccer, tennis, golf, rugby, and more as the manager for Team Stream International in Bleacher Report’s London Office. Drobny’s team recently won the Sports Technology Award for Best Sports App, while their audience has grown from a few thousand to more than 12 million. What secret does Drobny possess? Simple hard work and perseverance.
Drobny began the Sport Management program with teaching and leadership experience, and soon began a five-month internship with the San Francisco Junior Giants. He credits opportunities outside the classroom as “the most useful course” of the program. He is not alone. Though students must complete a minimum of 160 internship hours, the average USF Sport Management graduate student completes over 1,000 internship hours in their two years.
"I always thought of classes as the on-deck circle and the world of sports outside the walls of USF as the game," Drobny said. "After doing hundreds of hours of internships in everything from charity work to event management, I realized language was my interest. I had to be an editor.”
Drobny found his professors and classmates to be the best motivators for achieving his goal. Seeing his peers go through the same process and learning details of their successes and failures helped give him the courage to make the most of his opportunities. Naturally, the true experts are the professors. As Drobny notes, “Dr. Rascher and Dr. Cellini were the best motivators for me to step into the box and swing away. I can’t thank them enough for that direction and pragmatism when pursuing my profession.”
Drobny was one of four people working on Team Stream when he joined Bleacher Report in 2011. Now the Team Stream division employs 27 people around the world, including the five Drobny manages in the London Office. Fewer than 30 years old, his journey has yet to conclude.
