Everyone knows that education is all about the three R’s: Reading, `Riting, and `Rithmetic. But at ETSU there’s a new ‘R’: Racing. Starting this semester, the Department of Kinesiology, Leisure and Sport Sciences is offering a graduate track that emphasizes the business aspects such as, finance, public relations, marketing, etc. of motor sports.
Going to college to work at a racetrack may initially sound a bit strange. However, once you consider the sizeable fan-base and the huge amount of money involved in racing, it begins to make perfect sense. Add to that the close proximity of ETSU to Bristol Motor Speedway and a graduate track called Motorsport Operations seems more necessity than oddity.
At least that’s what Lee Morrow, an athletic coordinator at ETSU and Tom Coates, of the KLSS department thought. Kevin Triplett, BMS vice president of public affairs, Morrow has worked events at the speedway. He used students to help, and they began wondering what it would take to run events of that size.
“Coach Morrow began talking with Tom Coates in what was then the physical education department, and they began crafting a curriculum that would prepare students for sports and event management,” Triplett said. With the speedway’s help, round table discussions were set up, in which faculty, BMS staff, and various other authorities on the subject discussed the program. The courses they decided upon (motorsport operations, applied motor-sport marketing, public relations and mass media in motorsport, and financial management and sponsorship in motorsport) were approved by the faculty last spring and were first offered this fall.
The program is, apparently, the first of its kind in the United States. “We {the KLSS} have been unable to find any other graduate program in the country that offers a management-related degree in motor sports . as far as getting in the management side; running a racetrack, running a motor sports industry, we haven’t found any programs that do that,” said Dr. Kevin Burke, professor and department chair of KLSS.
The track involves 36 academic hours: 18 in general sports management, with the four classes in motorsport operations and an internship (or thesis) for the remaining six hours.
KLSS faculty teaches classes with guest speakers spanning the world of motor sports: from pit crew chiefs to vice presidents of operations.
Then there’s also the internship. Triplett said BMS pays for one graduate assistant a year to come and work with them; according to an e-mail from KLSS, “Graduate assistants receive a $6,000 stipend and a tuition waiver for working 20 hours per week for nine months.

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