A world of sports: An interview with Keiser Professor Justin Harmon
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Professor Justin Harmon, Program Director of Sport Management at Keiser University’s Flagship campus, has always loved sports. As a kid, Justin played any sport he could get involved in.
“I always played streetball with my neighbors. I was part of the Title IX generation, one of the first generations to play co-ed sports, and I remember playing t-ball with girls on the team.”
Justin recalls how some parents took their kids out of their leagues because they didn’t want their boys playing on a team with the girls.
“That had a deep impact on me because I played with Heather Dinich. She lived across the street, and we used to always play football together. It was crazy to think that we shouldn’t play together just because she was a girl. I am an advocate for women’s athletics; I never got hung up on the stereotype that women can’t play sports. There are so many sports in the world, and there are women who are very good with very good strategies.”
Justin’s sister and father are both athletes. He recalls one of his earliest memories: finding an old picture of his father running track and being moved to follow in his footsteps. He joined the track team, played football, and when his family moved overseas just as Justin was about to start his high school career, he picked up basketball.
“My father worked for Royal Dutch Shell, the petroleum company, and they brought him to The Netherlands to help bring some of the American processes to the Dutch National headquarters. My sister had just started college, so my parents told me I could either come with them or go to St. Louis and live with some family we had there. I had only known my parents my whole life, so I told them ‘I’m coming with y’all!’”
Justin didn’t speak Dutch, so he joined an international high school and found it to be a pivotal experience in his life. He had friends from Japan who were into sumo wrestling; friends with soccer-celebrity parents like Johan Cruyff; and it seemed that sports were part of everyone’s lives, no matter their background.
“Our neighbors knew we were from Texas and assumed we must like football, and at the time Dutch football—American football but in Holland—was in its early stages. They had the Amsterdam Rams and the Amsterdam Crusaders, and our neighbors got tickets for me and my dad to go to a game.”
Justin got the chance to talk to the coach after the game and was invited to one of the team’s practices. The team had a limit on the number of American players they could have at one time, and since Justin was only thirteen compared to the other, college-level players, he decided football wasn’t for him.
Back at school, it was typical for the boys to play soccer and the girls to play field hockey, but Justin wasn’t the kind of kid who cared if he was the only boy on an all-girls team.
“You should have seen their faces. The school had never heard of a guy wanting to play field hockey. They weren’t sure how to handle it, but I came over and I scored all the goals until the coach told me there was a new rule: I could not score any more goals; I could only pass to my teammates and set them up to score.”
Coach Hedges worked with the Dutch National team and wanted to get him to try out for the youth program.
“That never came to anything because I didn’t want to pursue it. I was doing it for fun. But the experience opened my eyes to think about the world of sports, not just American football.”
Professor Harmon’s realization led him to pursue his degree. He began studying International Politics at Georgetown University with the intention of going to law school, but he knew he didn’t want to leave sports behind.
“I wanted to combine the two. When I was looking into colleges, I never saw sport management as a major. By the time I got to law school, the sport management discipline was just getting off the ground.”
While other schools were only offering classes in sports law, Tulane University was the first school in the country to offer a specialization for students earning their J.D. degree. Justin graduated from Tulane in 1998 and worked for the nonprofit organization “Hoop Dreams Scholarship” to help inner-city DC high school students make their way to college.
“I worked there for nine or ten months until I heard of a new league starting up called the IBL; the International Basketball League.”
Justin worked diligently. Early mornings, late nights, and even through snowstorms when no one else could make it to the office. He had work to do.
Then, in January 2000, the league made some budget cuts and Justin applied to the American Basketball Association (ABA), taking the position of Assistant Director of Team Operations in Jacksonville, Florida. That year, it snowed in North Florida.
“I did not move to Florida for snow, so when a friend of mine said they were setting up a similar job in West Palm, I moved.”
During the company’s slow startup process, Justin kept an eye on the job market.
“My mom used to take me with her when she was doing her Masters’ classes at Texas Southern. She would take me to the student lounge with my little green army men and I would hang out and try to get free cokes from the machine while she studied.”
Justin loved campus life, and he resolved to come back to teaching. He was hired as an adjunct in 2002 and as a full-time professor in 2004 and has stayed on this campus ever since.
Professor Harmon’s Sports Management program exposes his students to the business side of sports and includes classes in ethics and gaining practical experience in the field. Justin is constantly evolving the program to meet real-world needs as the sports environment shifts to include more technology such as eSports.
“I want to be a team player. I might not be able to score the ball, but I can pass you the ball and help you score. In my experience, people will pay you to do the thing you love. I like helping people succeed. It comes back to when I played basketball: I can’t dribble, I can’t shoot, but I can pass the ball and find an open person. I’m always going to be the facilitator in my mind. That’s what I’m doing now in education, and I love it.”
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