We know that Hofstra has not had a football team for a while, but the success of Hofstra alums in the NFL remains strong. At present, HU has two prominent football players with Super Bowl rings: Marques Colston of the New Orleans Saints and Willie Colon of the NY Jets (who won his Super Bowl ring with the Pittsburgh Steelers).
Now, there is a great story in today’s New York Times about Tracy Perlman, a Hofstra alumna who graduated in 1992. As the NFL’s vice-president for marketing and entertainment, she is one of the highest-ranking women in sports!! April Donnelly, another Hofstra alumna who is mentioned in the Times’ article, is the NFL’s entertainment and player marketing director.
What does Perlman do? According to Lynn Zinser, in today’s Times’ article:
“This week, she has been bouncing from Super Bowl concerts that she and her staff organized and booked, to a taping of a Rachael Ray show in which three players prepared tailgating fare, to a youth clinic at Chelsea Piers run by the former player Anthony Munoz. ‘It’s just so far beyond the field now,’ Perlman said. ‘We really have taken what is so amazing from our players and extended it into entertainment.’”
“Perlman, who helps organize and promote the Super Bowl halftime show and other league-sponsored concerts, is ranked in the top 20 of Billboard magazine’s recent list of the most powerful women in music. She and Sarah Moll, the league’s entertainment and television programming director, together cracked the list of 100 most powerful people in music.”
“Perlman is keenly aware of the research showing that 40 percent to 45 percent of N.F.L. fans are women, yet few women reach the league’s top ranks. She insists that being a woman has not held her back at the N.F.L., and names several other senior vice-presidents who are women, but she also attends a lot of meetings where she is the only woman.”
Click on Perlman’s picture to read more from Zinser. Go Hofstra!!
Photo by Richard Perry/The New York Times
It seems that, although progress is being made with women in the NFL ranks, more could be made in order to give a better representation of the fan base. If women continue to show interest in NFL office positions, this can eventually happen, providing they are qualified. It’s good to know that a few Hofstra alum are currently playing for the NFL, although not for my favorite team.
Reblogged this on marryscott.
It’s nice to see that women are playing a predominant role is the sports and music world. Perlman helped to make a wonderful halftime show. If more women could be as motivated as her, I believe there would be more women in the top ranks.
She is the prime example of a woman who most likely had to face many obstacles being a women in the NFL world, but stuck through it and because a high rank women who never gave up. She shows how it is not impossible for a woman to obtain positions in “male dominant sports”. Also she is a Hofstra Alum which is great and she helped put on an amazing half time show because that was the best part of the whole super bowl this year.
It is amazing how sports entertainment has changed over the course of time and how women have become involved with it. For example 48 years ago when the first super bowl was played there no pre-game parties and athletes were not what they we today. Athletes were no as rich as they are today. Being an NFL player was almost a part times job. Also having a female working in the NFL would have never be even a thought when the first super bowl occurred in 1966. These changes and having an equal job opportunity I believe has definitely increased female fans in the sport of football.