Our final episode goes back to the guest we started with; Dr. Mary Hums joins us to talk about how the sport management field has changed since the podcast is started, topics that have fundamentally changed, and what's to come.

Dr. Carlos Gomez Gonzalez joined us to talk about experimental design. We focused on his 2024 SMR publication (Gender information and perceived quality: An experiment with professional soccer performance) on how his research team used a unique methodological approach to collect data and present results through experimental design.

Dr. Chris Green joined us to talk about Laurence Chalip and his impact on the sport management field.

For this episode we welcomed Dr. Pamela Wicker to the podcast to talk about her role at Sport Management Review and the reviewer shortage. We discussed her role as editor, the process of finding reviewers, how editors decide on reviewers, the reviewer shortage (crisis?), and the consequences of that shortage.

Our annual Zeigler episode! Dean Damon Andrew joined to talk about his journey to becoming a sport management student, first thoughts about doing a PhD, becoming a faculty member at UL, and starting his career path. Then we discussed his Zeigler article (JSM): reputation of sport management, strengths and weaknesses, growth of enrollment, prominent programs, growth of faculty, and much more!

We want to creating cutting-edge research but also apply our knowledge to practitioners, but how? Sam Ehrlich joined to talk about his career journey and how he made a name for himself in research. Then, we talked about how that led to opportunities with practitioners and consulting growth.

Our next episode focused on getting a teaching institution faculty job out of a PhD program. We had Dr. Jeffrey Ward from SUNY-Oneanta joined us to talk about his experience. We first talked about his military background and how that shaped his PhD and faculty experience. Then we transitioned to the period of dissertation defense to starting at a teaching school. Going from moving locations but also the challenges of many course preps while acclimating to new school systems.

We were joined by Dr. Jason Simmons at University of Cincinnati to talk about finding your research topic early in your career. The conversation started with his initial plans for research as a doc student, how his ideas transitioned, and how he settled on sport fandom being at the core. We then talked about early feedback from his advisor to reviewer/editor feedback that shaped his perspective.

The seventh season of the State of Sport Management kicks off with an announcement that this will be our final season. A couple early thank you's (will be more later this academic year), an overview of topics we plan on covering in our final year, and a note on the passing of Laurence Chalip this summer.

Our final live episode from the 2024 SMAANZ. We had an excellent panel of Nico Schulenkorf, Sally Shaw, Per Svensson, Heath McDonald, and moderated by Alison Doherty. They talked about their research, process, SMAANZ, and advice for others.

We have our next SMAANZ live recording! A great quartet of sport management leaders (Russell Hoye, Emma Sherry, Lesley Ferkins, and James Skinner) discussed their leadership experiences, backgrounds, and advice to those interested in future leadership opportunities.