Leader-in-the-field Interview

With the ending of my freshmen year at college coming (very quickly!) to an end, I am confident in saying that I am 97% sure that I will be majoring in Public Relations. My ultimate goal is being in Public Relations for a professional baseball team. I found that interviewing Mr. Charlie Taylor would be a perfect insight on a career in the Marketing side of athletics. He so kindly found time for me during his busy schedule. We had a phone interview due to circumstances with our Lady Sooner Basketball team bringing him to Kansas City for the Basketball Championship. He was very gracious throughout our interview, and did a wonderful job answering all of my questions!


Charlie Taylor is the Assistant Director of Marketing over athletics here at the University.

What he does here exactly:

The four main goals he has as Assistant Director over marketing are: keeper of the brand, advertising, promotions, and overseeing the entertainment during games and athletic events. He works with a great group of people. It is their job to promote Sooner athletics, and to get people to athletic events at the University. Since he oversees entertainment during games, he works very closely with the Spirit Squads department also. A few keys to his job include communication and building contacts. He feels that these keys are huge, and incredibly important.

How he got here:

Mr. Taylor is originally from Davenport, Iowa. He received his undergrad in Politics from the University of Iowa, and his Master’s in Sports Administration from the University of Tennessee. While he was at Tennessee he was over two sports as well as basketball, which helped to prepare him for future jobs. To read more about Mr. Taylor’s busy life before arriving at the University you can visit: http://www.soonersports.com/school-bio/charlie_taylor.html

How he uses his major on a day to day basis:

He uses his undergrad skills such as writing, talking, building relationships and using politics. When it came to his grad-school skills he learned a lot about sports and marketing, which helps significantly with his job.

A day in the life of Charlie Taylor:

Although no day is EVER typical in the life of Charlie Taylor, he loves his job. He has a few weekly meetings, but other than that it’s about advertising, game entertainment, etc. His schedule is definitely determined by what athletic events are going on that week. He told me that it is a lot of long hours, and it is work. With his job, he doesn’t necessarily get to see the games; he is behind the scenes being a part of it. He feels that his job is about selling emotions and being a part of the big group. During our interview he told me: “what I often say about our job is that we sell smiles.” Mr. Taylor’s job is more than just about “the big wins.” He considers his job to be incredibly rewarding. Many times he has gotten letters from children thanking him because they got to meet their favorite college athlete role model and from teachers thanking him for letting their class or organization come to an event. One of the most important rewards that he witnesses is student-athletes being able to graduate. A great example he gave was that of basketball senior, Amanda Thompson. She came from a not-so-great part of Chicago, and by coming to the University she overcame odds that weren’t necessarily in her favor for graduating college.

His thoughts on leadership:

Mr. Taylor views his leadership style as one where he hires great people, gives them the vision, see how they would like to do it, and then they go to get it done. He thinks there shouldn’t be problems, just challenges that need solutions. When looking to hire people, he looks for people who can think for themselves and propose solutions. For his leadership style communication is key.


This interview gave me a great insight on what it would be like to work in Sports Marketing. I gained a lot of advice from Charlie Taylor, one of those being: to never try to make a decision above your pay grade. I will take many things from this interview to hopefully pursue my dream of one day being the PR representative for the New York Yankees.

Future @ OU

I guess you could that I have some “new goals” for OU – stepping out of my comfort zone. I recently joined a sorority, which is so unlike me! In the future, I hope that I can stay in Alpha Phi, make great friendships, and be involved within our chapter!

Things I could see myself doing at OU:
• Being active in the Women’s Outreach Center.
o I really enjoy all the things they do… Many of their outreaches are passions of mine.
• Start being involve in UOSA.
• Filling out applications to become more involved on campus.
• Participating in a sport at OU. (Besides cheer!)
o This could be playing, managing, being a water girl, just whatever! I think it would be an awesome experience!

If I could do ANYTHING at OU it would probably to be Big Woman on Campus, or maybe President of an organization. I know right now it seems pretty far-fetched, but anything can happen!

Things that interest me:• Women’s Outreach Center
• OU Athletics
• Leadership
• Volunteerism
• Marketing

I know that WAY MORE than half of the things on these lists are things that have a good chance to not happen, but that isn’t going to stop me from pursuing them. One of my new outlooks on life is to keep going until someone says I can’t. I am at the University of Oklahoma, where my options are limitless. The only thing is that I will only go as far as I am willing to go, and this experience will only be what I choose to make it.

Attitude.

I have found that the saying “attitude is everything” is not just some cliché that my mom kept chirping to annoy me. Attitude has turned out to REALLY be everything in my life. Any given circumstance can be determined by the attitude I choose to give it.

This shows true when trying to accomplish a group task in a HUGE way! For example, if I came to my group project shut off from everyone with a terrible attitude, my group would not hold me accountable to participate in my part of the task, and it could cause their attitudes to be poor. If the role was to be switched around, and I chose to come with high energy and a positive attitude, then my group would have a greater trust and respect for me. This also could help them to have a positive attitude on the outlook of our task to be completed.

Someone whose attitude has influenced me would be Toni Borza. She babysat my brother and me, and she played a huge role in raising me. She recently went home to be with the Lord after a battle with cancer. Although she was fighting this awful disease she always remained positive. She even continued thinking about others throughout this battle. She mentored a girl that she met at the doctors, and helped this girl to realize that she was a great girl worthy of being treated right and with respect. I was talking to her husband after her funeral, and he told me that Toni would want me to know that “God doesn’t make any junk, and that I should go on to do great things because that’s what I was made to do.” Since that time when I wake up in the morning I put a smile on my face and MAKE THE CHOICE that that day is going to be great and that I am going to do great things with it. Toni did a great job of helping me to cherish the life that I have been given.

“Our Attitudes are Our Most Important Assets” simply means that our attitude is the best trait that we can have. It can make or break a person’s personality or reputation. It is how people view us.

Problem vs. Challenge

“Problem turned into challenge” was a lesson we learned through doing a group activity. During this activity we were split into teams and had to find the pathway across a maze without getting “shocked.” We were only given one minute to discuss our strategy within our group, and after that minute we could not talk to each other. To add to the activity, we were pretending that it was costing us money for every minute we did not complete the task, and we also lost money by talking, or not retracing our steps properly to get off of the maze. These interferences could have completely hindered our situation, but we chose to take it as a challenge and complete the task!

Becky Barker is who came to visit us. She is the director of Leadership Development and Volunteerism.

My senior year of high school I was the president of my school’s Student Council. A big event that we do every year is the “Arctic Blast,” which is just a day at the end of first semester to reward the students at our school for a good semester. They get out of class all afternoon, we give out prizes, and there are many games and skits. The theme my senior year was black light, which was a wonderful IDEA. A group was in charge of getting black lights donated. The day before “Arctic Blast” we were informed that not enough black lights had been donated; in fact we only had two. Since I was the leader in charge, everyone looked to me to try and get this problem fixed. I could have chosen to completely freak out that day, but instead I calmly considered my options. After using my resources and calling around to the other schools that had used the black light idea in the past, I finally found a school willing to lend us their black lights. Once we got the word that Bishop Kelley High School was letting us use their lights, two of my fellow officers and I headed to go get them.