Playing The Ball
Eyes On The Goal, Feet On The Ground
PART 1 — The Beginning
It was a warm summer afternoon and the two of us were walking around the college campus after a heavy lunch.
She suddenly turned to me and asked “Neeraj, tell me one thing. Why are you so obsessed with sports? What’s there in it for you in following these athletes and/or clubs?
Is there any reason why you keep everything else in your life on hold just to watch a game?”
I paused. I wasn’t sure how to answer the question.
Different phases of my life had different reasons why I latched on to sports like a leech refusing to let go of a healthy host.
I have always been aware of the sheer absurdity in the life of a sports fan in their relationship to an athlete or a sports club, but that irrationality was something I had deliberately decided to ignore.
Growing up, I was obsessed with cricket, like every other Indian. It was my way to relax, my time away from the daily school routine I suppose. Like every other Indian, even I had dreams of representing India in cricket which, unfortunately (Or fortunately?) remained just a dream. By the time I reached high school, a fascination for football began to take shape and by the time I reached college, I had completely dropped cricket and turned into a football fanatic!
If somebody were to ask me to describe my college life in a nutshell, I would just simply reply with a single word, “Football”. I was part of the institute team since my first year and by the beginning of the third year, I was made the captain.
In retrospect, I like to believe that football, by playing and by watching, surprisingly brought out qualities in me which I had never thought I would have and honestly, even now, isn’t quite evident in other aspects of my life. Leadership, being vocal about certain things, wanting to take responsibility and lead from the front, and most importantly, being able to bring people to work together as a team is a few things that I usually don’t identify with.
But the most important thing I learned is the value of relationships I built with people I met along the way. That’s really the thing about sports, isn’t it? It is a wonderful way of bringing a set of people together for a common goal or for the love of a common entity. I was always fortunate enough to have a wonderful set of players to play with, right from when I was starting out in my first year right until my final day as captain of the football team. The memories we have together! I cannot describe the feeling I had every time we used to hurdle up before the match encouraging each other when I had every pair of eyes staring at me as I laid out my strategy for the match to be played, when we all screamed and hugged together, loss for words when we won our first ever tournament together. What was most surprising personally for me was how effortless it was to take the comradeship off the field as well. We all made sure we watched all football matches together, supported and helped each other when times were tough, and laughed at life with a drink in hand together.
Football had become an extremely important aspect of life throughout my 4 years of college life and it wasn’t until I reached my final days in college that I realized just how much football, or sports in general, shaped me as a person today. Playing football every day, watching games, and having football discussions with people (I am a Manchester United fan!) were the only things that kept me sane and grounded in an otherwise ever-changing world. Little did I know that it was going to play a much bigger role in my life than I had ever anticipated.
PART 2 — The Discovery
“Excellent! Five more minutes and the day is almost done.
I had enough for today”, I thought to myself. It was a day just like any other with the same old mundane redundant tasks (According to me anyway) and the rest of the time went in reading random articles. I sighed and went back to staring at the laptop screen.
I would be lying if I said I had a particular goal or a dream job in mind. I suppose you could say I made a mistake in not figuring out and “sort” out my future instead of going with the flow as I did. Back in college, I had made attempts at exploring different options and avenues and unsurprisingly, I failed at identifying a career path or at least a field where I could see myself investing my future. At the end of it all, I had made the decision to take a step back, to take a year off after graduation and discover something for myself and if I still couldn’t find anything, I would just settle for an MBA. But then something unexpected happened. Placements came calling at our campus in my final year. Although I wasn’t too keen on attending it, my parents insisted that I did as it would give me exposure to the whole interview process, which I had to admit was a very valid reason. And to my massive surprise, I got a job offer in a company with a decent package. I felt a sense of relief. I didn’t have to worry and think about my immediate future for now. Little did I know that my decision to sit for placements and not prepare for MBA examinations was a blessing in disguise.
Four months into the job and I knew I didn’t belong there. And by “there”, I didn’t mean my workplace specifically. I realized I cannot work in a corporate. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, or in what field I wanted to work, but all I knew was that I had to get out of there as soon as I can and started thanking my stars that I didn’t realize this after doing an MBA where the situation would have been messed up even more, with the additional financial pressure on top of other things. That’s when I started realizing the urgency and the importance to find something for myself, and that’s when it clicked. There’s only one thing I am passionate about, and that was sports, more specifically, football. I started thinking to myself, “If the field of sports is the only domain that interested me, then why not search for career prospects in the sporting world?” As I started searching more and more about the prospects, I was made aware of something called Sports Management degrees that’s offered by a lot of universities to students who wanted to pursue a career in the field of sports. That’s when I finally made up my mind. That’s when my roadmap started taking shape, even though it was vague and uncertain. I decided to pursue my post-graduation in Sports Management and take my passion for sports into a life-sustaining profession. But I didn’t know anybody personally in the industry yet, so it became all the more important for me to research and understand everything I needed to know completely.
At the time of writing this, I have been spending time trying to build a network using LinkedIn and other platforms, trying to get in touch with people who are currently working in the field has made the transition from an engineering background, while finalizing my list of preferred Universities for my further studies in Sports management (There are some top-notch universities in Europe, especially in the UK, that offers excellent courses in Football Industries Business). I am on the lookout for internship and/or job opportunities as well to gain some experience in the sporting world, while at the same time using this time to boost my skill set. Oh right, I almost forgot. I, along with a college mate, started our very own podcast called Play The Ball a couple of months ago where we discuss football news and give our match analysis amongst others (I never really was comfortable in anything that involved talking, whether it might be speeches, debates, and whatnot. This is the first time I am stepping out of my comfort zone so if I am being honest, I am kind of proud of it!). Hopefully, we can continue working on it to grow it further.
You can check out our podcast at https://anchor.fm/play-the-ball---a-football-podcast
I have also been spending time reading articles and related outlets to get a better understanding of the market, especially in India. From what I have learned, the sports industry is a booming sector not only in India but also across the world. There are far too many opportunities with far too many professionals with the required skill set available. I have been trying to get in touch with various people working in different roles, especially in Operations, Digital Media, Sports Analytics, Marketing.
As I take the next step into the unknown, there’s a lot of unknown variables that make me hesitant and almost nervous about going down this pathway. There’s always the financial risk as these courses are an investment, not knowing about the job opportunities available overseas, not knowing which vertical I want to get into(Operations, Analytics, Marketing, Business Development, and so on) and why I do not know if I would even enjoy the lifestyle. But what I do know is that I am passionate about sports enough to enjoy having a professional career in the domain. Besides, the very fact that I am concerned and anxious about these factors is a good sign as I’d like to believe that this is something I really care about and I would strive to get where I want to be, even if I don’t know where that is right now!
PART 3 — The Process and The Means
I learned there are two ways you can get worked up and get really anxious about not knowing what exactly you want to do in life, you either don’t do enough to explore and find out what exactly interests you, or if you overdo it and try to take on so many things at the same time without thinking too much about it and doing it for the sake of doing. I have seen people try taking on a lot of things simultaneously and at the end of the day, end up at the same place as I did, without a clear cut-out plan. I used to call them “under-workers” and “over-workers”. Evidently, I was an under-worker which, to be honest, I do regret being in retrospect. To give you an idea, every single project that I had done, right from my second year until my final year project including my 5-month internship project were all done in different domains in electronics. Why even the job I am working right has nothing to do with electronics! I never gave a thought about it and went with the flow, like I used to call it. I never went about exploring my interest in sports and what I could do with it. I hadn’t even considered talking to a good friend of mine who I came to know that was doing sports management. I did content writing for a couple of sports websites for a few months but it was something I saw as more of a hobby than anything else. (I had written for The Sports Rush and El Arte Del Football websites).
I don’t think there’s anybody who can deny that people are afforded plenty of time to explore, especially in the freshmen and sophomore years where you will have the time to dive into different avenues before you start narrowing things down. It all depends on how much interest you are willing to take in searching for opportunities because grades can only take you so far. I think one of the most important parts of any person’s life irrespective of the career path is the number of connections he can make. From my experience throughout college and in searching for post-graduation colleges and jobs, I found out that networking is an extremely important factor. Interacting with seniors, alumni, and professionals in different fields will give a lot of hindsight into various domains that you may be interested in or at least help you in categorizing opportunities and most importantly, it helps you understand the situation about the current market — What jobs are in demand, what technical and soft skills are companies looking for and so on. Try to use this network, or by any other means, to land an internship. Internships are the closest we can get to experiencing a real-life career before we actually get out there. Internships are extremely important because the gap between the education we receive in college and the expectations that a company has from the students they hire is unfortunately high and for all its intentions to bridge this gap, colleges have generally been largely unsuccessful in doing so. These are really important factors — Networking, exploring, skill-building — but none of these comes remotely close to the most important factor of all, patience. I know a few people who seemed to have figured it all out and are currently pursuing the career that they are really interested in. On the other hand, I know people who found the career they were looking for in their 40s as well.
The world is a playground and we, as human beings, are meant to be lost. Only when we are lost do we truly find our way out.
We may find something to our liking very quickly, or we might find something after a long and tiring search. The thing to remember at times like these is to be patient with things and not let disappointments deter your mindset. I was lost in this maze just like any other and after a few topsy-turvy years filled with disappointments and dejections, hopefully, I found my way out. If not,
I’ll keep looking and searching again and again because that’s what we do and we ought to do, relentlessly pursuing our strongest passions in this absurd life over and over again for eternity.
PART 4 — A New Chapter
At the time of writing this, I am sitting through the last days of my work here in this company. It’s funny really. I spent months thinking I was wasting my time here and that I wasn’t doing anything that was in any way contributing to the development of my skill set. But now that I look back at the last 1.5 years, there was definitely a lot that I have taken away. Even the very fact that I now understand how an organization works are quite an important piece of knowledge that I had to know (Indeed, most of us should!). I would not have decided to take my passion for sports into a full-time career otherwise and it might have been a bit too late by then. One thing I always try to insist on people, including myself, is that there is always a silver lining to be found everywhere. There’s always learning to be done from every experience we go through in this ridiculous journey we call life, in both personal and professional aspects, and you can never know everything about anything completely for sure, no matter how insignificant the thing is.
I think there is a Manchester United game about to start in a few minutes. I think that’s my cue to leave. Maybe the next time I write something like this, I am hopefully on my way to reach where I have to reach. Fingers crossed!
Thanks for reading and hopefully you might have taken something to ponder about from my personal journey through my college and professional years. This is Neeraj V Nair, Batch 2019 from IIITDM Kancheepuram, and this is my story (So far!).
I recently started as a Business Development Associate at Rebels Football Club and Academy, Bangalore.
These were my first steps, into the unknown. There’s the big game ahead, the clock’s ticking and I am excited (and a little scared of course) as I take these next steps.
Oh and I almost forgot. Feel free to connect and reach out to me through social media to catch a game or chat more!
Gmail: neerajvnair@gmail.com
Instagram: @therealneerajvn
Twitter: @therealneerajvn
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IamNeerajNair
