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Husband and wife sports management professors Gina and Jeff Pauline understand the science of sport
By Heather Mayer
Posted: 4/15/08, 11:16 PM EST Section: Feature
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Even when the New York Yankees fans sit down to watch a game it's hard for them to concentrate on just their beloved pinstriped baseball squad. Gina focuses her attention on the types of sponsorships present, the facility management and the marketing tools. Jeff is a more intense fan of the game itself, noticing players' behaviors on and off the field.
Both part of Syracuse University's sports management department, Gina, 30, and Jeff, 37, have shifted from their undergraduate degrees in psychology to studying the marketing aspect of sports and sports psychology on a collegiate level.
"I knew I wanted to work in sports in some sector because it was a segment of my life that I've always known and really wanted to continue," Gina said.
While working at Ball State University in Indiana, Gina heard about SU's new sports management department and recognized its potential. Originally, she applied for the director's position but was not offered the job.
Once the department started looking for faculty, it called Gina, who was then seven months pregnant but determined to become part of SU.
"It was fairly obvious (that I was pregnant)," she said. "But they (the department) were great about it."
The University Partnership for Spouses program at SU, which works to find jobs for spouses working at the university, coincidentally found work for Jeff also in the sports management department and called him for an interview a week after their daughter Gabriella was born in May 2006.
Working together in SU's sports management program seemed like the ideal opportunity for the Paulines, whose love of sports existed since childhood.
Like Gina, who swam the 100 and 200-meter butterfly in college, Jeff was also an athlete - an avid tennis player - and wanted sports to be a part of his professional life.
"Sports always had a huge influence in my life, I guess," Jeff said. "In high school, I played a lot of different sports. I always enjoyed sports. I enjoyed sports in college as well. The idea of being part of a team and the dynamics of a team were always very interesting to me."
During undergrad in the mid 90s, the two found themselves thumbing through the course guides, trying to find classes that would suit them, Gina at Binghamton University (N.Y.) and Jeff at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Gina, with a psychology degree, wanted to work in the sports psychology field but later concluded that career wasn't feasible.
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