What does a sports manager do, exactly? Any resources would be great as well! :)

bunny-gypsy, it might be easier for you if you can tell us what you're contemplating for your story, because otherwise I fear you're going to get overwhelmed with information. Like in publishing, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably and yet mean different things. For example, in baseball, the manager is the head coach on the field. The general manager works in the head office, acquiring players, dealing with contracts, etc. He's basically the go-between between the owner and the coach/manager. In European soccer (football) the head coach on the field is called a manager, but in the US we are more likely to call him the head coach. Like baseball, in American football, there is a head coach on the field and a General Manager in the office.

One question is are you considering a sport that is recreational or professional? Because that makes a difference, too. Frex, my kid's rec league soccer and baseball teams had no managers (coaches, but no managers the way you describe them above), but their high school teams sometimes did have students in that function.

If you can give a basic structure of what you're considering, I imagine whatever resources people will point you to will be more to-the-point for you.

In the real world of today's Earth, it depends entirely on the specific sport. It's a title, more than anything else.

caw

What a team manager does is so variable, anything from basically cheerleader, to janitorial staff to legal counsel to an actual sports medicine physician, that you could have the, "manager," do whatever you want.

At the youth/high school level, a team manager is usually the person on the team who handles money, brings the balls and corner flags, deals with organizing team travel, sometimes helps with injuries, meets with parents, and sometimes does water and snacks (usually at a younger age). This leaves the coach (who in youth sports often coaches more than one team) free to deal with tactics and player management. The manager is kind of a point of contact for everyone. They're the one I (the ref) usually find to get paid, and they get to replace the coach when he gets thrown out arguing a meaningless throw-in call at midfield 14 minutes into the game.

For college soccer and up (Div1, anyway--Div2 and 3 NCAA schools might operate more like the above) the manager above is more like an assistant GM (general manager). A general manager for a sports team handles contracts, trades, and oversees operations. He's basically hired by the owner to run the team, although the more organizational tasks are usually delegated to an operations team or an assistant GM. Sometimes the full GM handles scouting, sometimes he doesn't. Some pro GMs are more involved "in the room" and with the players, but those ones usually get a bad rep with the coaches, who are in turn hired by the GM to deal with the players.

This is model most North American sports operate on. In European soccer (and rugby, I think), the manager ("gaffer") is more of an all-around head. Especially at smaller, local clubs (which may still be pro) he is much more involved with players on a day-to-day level, though he may have an assistant coach who handles more of the player management (it's very common to have an assistant who is the "player's coach" for personal issues, leaving the head coach purely for tactical stuff; even youth teams do this, though the AC is more likely to be a parent volunteer, like the manager). The European manager coaches on a day-to-day level but also handles contracts and such.

As others have said, in European soccer and rugby the team manager is what in the US you would call the head coach. The larger teams have specialist coaches for different functions but the manager picks the team, does the media interviews and carries the can for the team's failure. Players' contracts and transfers would usally be handled by the chairman or director of football but with input from the manager.

A manager can be hired by an owner or a General Manager, depending on how the organization is set up.

The owner of a professional franchise is just that. An owner. They pay to own the team, and they receive the profits or take the losses. Often extremely wealthy people own the teams, sometimes (frex, in the case of the Seattle Seahawks) one person owns the team. More often it's a consortium of wealthy people. Often, one of the consortium is more "the face" of the ownership than the rest. In very rare situations, the team is owned by average Joes and Josinas.

The professional organization (ie FIFA, or the NFL, or MLB) do NOT own teams except in the extremely rare instance when the owner can't pay the team obligations anymore and hasn't found a successor. The NBA took control of a team for a short time while they looked for new ownership, but that's very rare. The reason is, the league oversees the teams re rules and issues of operational fairness. So it's a conflict of interest for them to also be an owner.

Things are much more variable at the youth level than at the pro level. I think most pro organizations around the world work about the same because it's run more as a business.

In the UK chairman = owner = the guy who fronts the consortium or holds the majority shareholding. Google Roman Abramovitch if you want to get an idea of how one highly succesful English club is run.

Lol at highly successful. Don't make slip a John Terry 2008 in.

In North America, the GM and head coach roles are traditionally split, even in soccer, because that's what they do in hockey and basketball (not sure about gridiron, which has a weirder coaching structure). GM hands out contracts, including the coach's.

If I'm a rich arsehole with money burning through my offshore bank accounts and I want a play toy that isn't sex-related, I buy a football team. In the NFL, this is the only way to do things because they don't allow corporate ownership. In other sports, it's increasingly common for corporate conglomerates--often media groups--to buy teams mostly to generate content and advertising. Though some rich arseholes try to be involved in running the team, there is almost always more success if they hire somebody to do the dirty work for them. That's the GM. In European soccer, GM is also head coach, though sometimes he has a "Director of Football" to help out.

Owners go bust all the time--for a truly epic saga, search out the Portsmouth football club in England. FIFA is really just a governing body of national association reps and, by and large, the national associations don't want anything to do with running clubs. If an owner bottoms out and there's no buyer, the club enters "administration" where assets--including players, the stadium, etc.--are sold to try and pay creditors. This doesn't happen with youth teams because most youth teams are pay-to-play--parents foot the bill for the entire experience.

Youth managers are usually volunteer parents or sometimes older brothers/sisters, except at some elite clubs for kids with potential (usually more in the parents' eyes than the kids', but that's another issue) where the manager may be a club rep, though even then it's rare. Mostly coaches choose a manager at the start of the season, give them $1200 worth of ref fees, and let them decide with the other parents which tournaments to enter.

Some youth teams where I am even get to have volunteer "field marshals" because their parents were causing too many youth refs to quit after one season due to the abuse. They aren't field marshals--a real field marshal is someone at a halfway decent tournament who knows enough about what's going on to get me a game sheet before someone becomes an ineligible player instead of after--but there can be any number of team roles. Anyone who's got some sort of role is usually approved by the club--sometimes they have to have a background check and if they're part of the bench staff they have to be registered on the game sheet as "team officials," which is as far as FIFA bothers to label them, and they are only mentioned in the Laws as having the right to behave an a responsible manner. Funny how often that doesn't happen.

bunny-gypsy said:

Oh, I don't know if college sports are considered recreational or professional?

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Same as any activity - Professional means you get paid for it.

Managers manage the team or individual. They set up matches, gather resources, account for money... Just about anything you would to do to manage a product.

Jeff

bunny-gypsy said:

Oh, I don't know if college sports are considered recreational or professional?

I assume high school level are more recreational?
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Actually in the US there currently a battle in the courts regarding college athletes as how to categorize them. Pretty much the big 10 (top ten teams in whatever sport) it would be reasonable to consider them professionals, the rest, more likely something else. I don't think that recreational is the right term except for intramural sports. With intermural (teams from different schools) it's not professional unless they are getting paid (stipends, scholarships, prizes, cash) It's really only recreational if there is no money or recognition involved which is typical of intramurals. The others are non-monetary displays of tribalism along socio-econonomic or religious or racial lines. I feel like I'm not really explaining it well. I've known a lot of people who don't care about the superbowl (American football) but make a point to never miss the Army Navy game

College eligibility criteria is a very arcane field and until you've spent some time with the NCAA (or equivalent) rulebook there's really no understanding it.