Collecting some bling
TAMPA, Fla. — Slippery Rock University graduates Levi and Allie Lewis were fitted for wedding rings together.
Now they will be adding Super Bowl rings to that collection.
The 2014 Slippery Rock University graduates and married couple have been employed by the champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers for six years. Levi is a football video assistant for the Bucs, while Allie works in group and corporate sales for the franchise.
Tim Jarocki, a Greensburg native who received his master's degree in sports management from SRU in 2004, is director of team operations for the Bucs and has been with the organization for 16 years.
“The (Malcolm) Glazer family is one of the best ownership groups in all of sports,” Allie Lewis said. “They take care of and value their employees.
“The Buccaneers are a big family. Everyone in the organization is getting a Super Bowl ring. That's one of the perks of working in sports.”
Allie majored in sports management at SRU and was a scholarship athlete, playing catcher for three seasons on the Rock softball team. She and her husband are from northern Colorado.
Levi Lewis majored in communications at The Rock.“I went out there for a visit, saw what the university had to offer and loved the campus,” Levi said. “I decided to join Allie there, and I'm glad I did.”Upon graduation, Allie worked for the NBA's Charlotte Hornets in an individual sales training program for a year. When that year was up, the Hornets did not have a job opening for her.The Tampa Bay Bucs did.“The sports world is so tightly connected,” Allie said. “The Bucs had a position open. I took that job, and Levi came with me.”Levi landed an internship with the Bucs in the team's video department. When that internship ended, a job opening came up as one of the team's video assistants moved on.“The pieces just fell into place,” Allie said.Jarocki's time in Tampa also started through an internship. His was with Raymond James Stadium and the Tampa Sports Authority.He wound up being hired by the Bucs shortly after that internship was complete.“Right place, right time,” Jarocki said.As director of team operations, Jarocki's main duties involve coordinating the team's road trips.“That includes arranging hotels, meals, meeting space, flights, who sits where on the plane ... everything,” Jarocki said. “Buses to the game site, police escorts, the whole deal.”Most of the planning for regular season road trips is done months in advance. The playoffs are a different animal — especially when the team is playing three consecutive road games.“We had to cram into one or two weeks what we would normally do in a month or two,” Jarocki said. “Before the playoffs started, we figured out six different cities we might be going to on three different weekends.“You try to forecast. You try to guess. It got pretty crazy.”Even playing the Super Bowl at home was no easy task.“We were taken totally out of our routine because the NFL takes over the stadium for the Super Bowl,” Jarocki said. “We could only use our own facilities when the league said we could. We had to do a lot of adjusting.”
While Jarocki takes care of the players and coaches on the road, he gets to know them as well.He joined the Bucs in 2004, two years after the franchise's first Super Bowl championship. One of the linebackers on that team, Shelton Quarles, is his son's godfather.Jarocki's father, John Jarocki, helps work the chains on the sidelines during Buccaneer home games.“We're around these guys more than our own families sometimes,” Jarocki said. “You get to know them as people. Like any other workplace, you get along well with coworkers with similar interests and personalities.”Levi Lewis works closely with the players and coaches as well — at all hours, day and night.During training camp, Lewis said the video people work 80 to 85 hours a week. During the regular season, they work 65 to 70 hours a week.“I may be sleeping and get a phone call from a player or coach at 2 in the morning, asking me to send them some video on a certain player or what a team does in a certain situation, because they want to study it right then,” Lewis said. “It happens.”He added that training camp is particularly busy because “everyone is preparing for everything.“We video each workout and practice,” Lewis said. “Coaches and players want video on all of the teams on the schedule. They work right away at breaking things down.”Lewis used the term “cut-ups” to describe how the video crew breaks down what they shoot and gather.“We have what a team's tendencies are on first down, second down, down and distance, in the red zone, etc.,” he said. “Leading up to the Super Bowl, we had (Kansas City quarterback) Patrick Mahomes' tendencies with virtually every situation, what Tyreek Hill does on 10-yard plays, 20-yard plays, all of that stuff.“Different players and coaches want different cut-ups at different times.”Like Jarocki, Lewis said the friendships developed with the players and coaches are one of the best parts of working for a pro sports franchise.“Those relationships last forever, even when players move on to other teams,” he said.While Allie's job changed somewhat this year because of the limited amount of fans allowed into games, she valued the season nonetheless.“My job this year transitioned more into benefits and access for our season pass accounts,” she said. “Some of the things I learned in that transition will help advance my career.”And the Super Bowl rings are coming.“I've been waiting a long time for this,” Jarocki said of qualifying for a ring. “It's been well worth it.”
