Students from Slippery Rock University's sport management program attended Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans from Feb. 7 to 9, working at fan events outside the stadium and escorting media in the stadium. Submitted photo

Some of Slippery Rock University’s sport management program students went on a field trip unlike any other — to the Super Bowl.

The students had the opportunity to work at Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans last Sunday, Feb. 9, in a trip that focused on fan experience, media relations and other areas relevant to their industry.

Brian Crow, a professor in SRU’s sport management program, said the NFL initially reached out to various academic programs, sent an invitation, then connected groups like the SRU students with staffing agencies for the event.

Crow said the program was able to get funding for the trip from student government at Slippery Rock University.

The group worked Feb. 7 to 9 in and around the Superdome.

The “NFL Super Bowl Experience” — an event that featured interactive games, and opportunities for fans to get star player autographs, and photos with Super Bowl rings and the Vince Lombardi Trophy — was an event outside the stadium the students worked at along with other Super Bowl employees.

“It was the experience of a lifetime, working the NFL Experience,” Niko O’Toole, an SRU sport management student, said. “It was like an adult’s playground. Fun things like the 40-yard-dash and getting autographs. I was working in the Hall of Fame area, talking to guests, reading about history. It was something you don’t see every day.”

On game day, Feb. 9, the group of students participated in media relations, finding information and escorting the more than 2,000 credentialed media to the media workroom, the photographers’ staging area and workroom, and the auxiliary press area and press box.

“We spent every day in New Orleans. Students got to see the shear scope of a global event like that, celebrity sightings and things like that, the security that goes into it,” Crow said. “It shows the difference in putting on a local event compared to a global one.”

This was not the first time Slippery Rock University students have worked a massive sports event. Crow said the sport management program sent students to the Super Bowl last year in Las Vegas. They have also had students work at college games, last year’s NCAA women’s basketball Final Four and are sending students to this year’s men’s Final Four.

Students had to apply to go on the trip. For students like O’Toole, who weren’t accepted as a freshman last year and applied again, all the good things they heard about the experience, along with real-life opportunities, sold them.

“I’m in this major because I enjoy work surrounding fan experience,” Mikayla Perry, another sport management student, said.

Perry had previously worked at an ESPN College Gameday TV event on the day of last year’s Penn State versus Ohio State matchup.

“Everything from the conversations and networking, to hearing people’s stories, it’s something special,” she added.