Imagine a class where a student's presentation can be about the Boston Red Sox and where the lecture topic of the day could be the NBA salary cap. A class whose guest lecturers include a Boston Globe sports columnist, former professional athletes, and a former NBA coach.
If that's not enough, the class's instructor wears an NBA World Championship ring.
"The Business of Sports: A Study of the National Basketball Association", an Experimental College class, is taught by Jan Volk, former general manager of the Boston Celtics. "Generally, I had the best job in America, except for maybe ten days a year," Volk said, reflecting on a position he held for 13 years.
Ex. College Director Robin Gittleman contacted Volk by about teaching at Tufts. Previously, Volk has taught at Harvard's Business and Law Schools, Boston College Law School, Suffolk Law School, and the University of Connecticut.
This is Volk's fifth time teaching the class at Tufts, and he says he still finds the material interesting. "The interaction with students is stimulating," Volk said. "I think I take as much away from the class as they do."
Despite years of coordinating a professional sport team, Volk said organizing a college class is challenging. "There's a big difference between giving a lecture to a class or two, and creating a syllabus and implementing it," he said.
Overall, however, Volk says he's satisfied. He loves the stimulating class participation and how insightful his students can be. "It's amazing to take a group of bright students and have them not be held back," he said. "Sometimes they ask questions that someone with my experience wouldn't think to ask," Volk added. "It is not uncommon to learn something about my business that I didn't know."
Of the twenty students enrolled in the class, Volk says most of them are passionate about sports. Andy Hart, a former student of Volk's who graduated from Tufts last year, now works for the New England Patriots in the team's public relations department.
If Volk learns from his students, they certainly learn plenty from him. Junior Andrew Hambelton says he is amazed how enjoyable he finds the class, especially as an athlete. But the course is not just fun for Hambelton, who says he's gaining real-world knowledge as well. Volk's stories are great, he said, "they are stories that are meant for us to hear in the academic sense [and are] not meant for the media."
"We get a real inside view of the NBA," Hambelton added.
Hambelton, who plays baseball at Tufts, hopes to attend law school. He says he wants to stay involved in sports, but realizes he can't always be a player. "I can't play baseball forever," he said.
As a sports fan, junior Pete Berkowitz is getting a lot out of Volk's lectures. "It's interesting to hear his perspective on things [and] the stories he has to tell and the people he knows," Berkowitz said.
The guest speakers for the class, some of Volk's personal friends, include TV broadcaster and former NBA player and coach Tom Heinsohn, Bob Ryan, a Globe columnist, and M.L. Carr, a former basketball player, NBA head coach, and team executive.
"I'm a huge sports fan, [and] if I could pick a dream job it would be to GM a team," Berkowitz said. "The class is [Volk] describing the dream to all of us and describing how very cool the job is."
During his 26-year career with the Celtics, Volk was part of five NBA World Championship teams. He has also served on two distinguished committees: the 1992 United States Olympic Basketball Team (Dream Team I) and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA.
Volk was excited to teach the subject matter his career involved: professional sports. "It's something almost everybody has an opinion on; people are very interested in what you do," he said.
"It can be a stressful business. Most businesses are concerned with the bottom line," he said. "In a pro sport franchise, you're just as concerned about the top line in the standings in the daily sport pages."
Volk was born in Iowa, but grew up in Newton, MA. He attended Newton High School (now Newton North) and Colby College and played sports throughout high school and college. After graduating Colby in 1968, Volk attended Columbia Law School, and began work for a NYC law firm. It was his professional experience that caused Volk to rethink his plan to work as a traditional lawyer. "I knew what I didn't want to do," Volk said.
After passing the Massachusetts Bar Exam, Volk learned of an opportunity to work for the Celtics in its sales department. Although he had never worked in the industry, he says he was "intrigued by the challenge." The job was very difficult, according to Volk, but soon after joining in 1971, he was named head of the season ticket office.
Eventually, he was given legal projects by Red Auerbach, then-president of the Celtics, who wanted to test Volk's legal skills. Auerbach met Volk through his summer basketball camp where Volk worked for many summers; it was Auerbach who told Volk about the job in sales.
Volk credits Auerbach for introducing him to another side of professional sports. "Auerbach exposed me to the business of sports through his eyes," Volk said. "The concept of the business of sports was evolving and my career evolved with it."
In 1974, three years after he started at the Celtics, Volk became the team's legal counsel. Later, he began working with player contracts, making sure the team followed the league's contract rules.
In 1976 he was named team vice-president, and in 1981 he assumed the responsibilities of assistant general manager before being promoted to general manager in 1984. He left the Celtics in 1997 to work for the Denver Nuggets for two years and now serves as a consultant to a number of NBA teams.
Volk and his wife Lissa have two children, one of them - Shari - is a 1998 Tufts graduate. Shari helped her father's transition to teaching, working as a TA for her dad over three semesters.
