The programs helping soccer players explore careers in media: ‘We need good people in this industry’
Julie Foudy was in the prime of her playing career, and still one year shy of winning a second World Cup title with the U.S. women’s national team, when she made her ESPN debut covering the 1998 men’s World Cup in France at 27 years old.
Not long before, Foudy was deciding between medical school and a career in sports media, but a chance encounter with an intuitive producer pushed her toward the latter, setting her on her way to more than two decades in broadcasting.
“You’re really comfortable on camera,” she remembered the producer telling her. “You should think about doing television.”
Now an established soccer broadcaster and part-owner of NWSL side Angel City Football Club, Foudy shared her story with the inaugural class of the Player Plus: Media Academy over lunch in classroom 106 at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles. The group consisted of current and active players who, like Foudy in 1998, were ready to explore a possible life in broadcast media.
When Foudy learned of the professional development program, akin to a three-day sports media boot camp, her immediate thought was: “How can I help?”
“We need good people in this industry. We need women in particular coming through,” Foudy told last month on the program’s second day. “I’m always saying to women and players, ‘Come shadow, come watch, come listen.’
“There’s not a great pipeline, which is why this is so important.”
The goal of the program, organized by the U.S. Women’s National Team Players Association (USWNTPA), was to offer athletes a bridge between their playing careers and one in sports media. Participants received a crash course in broadcast media, honing their skills in sideline reporting, play analysis, color commentary and in-studio work. Players were also coached in podcasting, social media and brand awareness. At the camp’s conclusion, they had showreels they could use to pursue future jobs.
The USC program, and others like it, is part of a new wave of career development offered to professional soccer players in the United States.
Organizers say these programs contribute to filling a growing need in media, while the players who join them say it helps them consider what life after soccer will look like. Former players occupy a growing space in soccer, from roles on panel shows to the commentary booth and sidelines. Every major network that airs American soccer employs more than one former player in various roles on its broadcasts.
For its pilot year, the USWNTPA also partnered with the MLS Players Association and had four MLS players join the program, with funding for each participant coming from the players’ union.
While the program is a first for the USWNTPA, these programs are common for professional athletes. Other leagues, like the NFL and NBA, have also partnered with USC Annenberg on previous programs. The NBA’s version, also organized by its players’ union, has been running for 15 years, with Antonio Daniels, Shaquille O’Neal, Vince Carter and Steve Novak among the alumni.
“We were very excited by the opportunity of having women athletes come join us in these programs,” Willow Bay, dean of USC Annenberg and also controlling owner of Angel City, tells . “We know that women’s sports are typically under-resourced and have suffered from a lack of investment and, as a school, we think it’s really important to make sure that we are being proactive in our outreach to encourage women athletes to take advantage of the same kinds of educational (and) professional development opportunities that men have access to.”
The partnership between USC and the players’ unions predates Bay’s investment in Angel City and was something players asked for.
“There’s a huge demand right now that, given the growth of women’s sports and the media growth surrounding that, we need this talent pipeline to be much bigger than it is,” Bay says, “and we need it, obviously, to be well equipped to communicate across all these new platforms.”
That growing demand is why the NWSL also partnered with its players’ union to kickstart its own pipeline in 2023. It organizes an annual program for current and former players to gain a “hands-on introduction” to sports broadcasting.
Like at USC, the NWSL Broadcast Bootcamp rotates participants through a series of stations in live production, interviewing and producing and directing over two days. The program is based at production company NEP Group’s Florida location. Commentators JP Dellacamera, Mike Watts and former USWNT player Lori Lindsey were among those working with the program this year, which wrapped Tuesday.
The boot camp, which is funded by the NWSL, has already facilitated players’ moves into broadcasting. CBS Sports analyst Darian Jenkins was part of the league’s inaugural class two years ago, following her retirement from the Orlando Pride in January 2023. In two seasons, Jenkins has become a familiar face and leading voice on NWSL broadcasts.
“She came in, she did her tryout, and, within 45 minutes, I knew that she had an opportunity to become a broadcaster,” says Brian Gordon, the league’s senior vice president of broadcast. “With Darian’s success, now we have a case study of giving players an opportunity to try something that they might be interested in doing, whether they’re currently playing in the league or have retired.”
In its first year, the program had three participants. This year’s edition featured 11 players, with three more signed up but unable to attend because of the winter storms.
One advantage for the NWSL is its ability to work directly with the league’s broadcast partners — CBS, ESPN, Prime Video and Scripps Sports/ION. The historic media-rights deal reached in 2023 helped fuel the need for more talent, as did the league’s upcoming expansion to 16 teams in 2026. “We’re expanding our schedule, so we have 50 more games next year due to expansion,” Gordon says. “We need more talent, and we need talent that is credible.”
Lindsey says the creation of these programs speaks to a larger moment in women’s sports and how they are covered.
“The media deal that we have, specifically with NWSL, is the reason why we’re able to do this,” she says. “We didn’t have that when I retired (in 2014) … I very much wish, whether I was a current player or even after I retired, (that I) had this available to, one, learn from people that had been in the industry, but then, two, to learn all facets of the production side. A lot of times, you are just thrust into an environment and with this craft, and you have no clue what you’re doing.”
Jessica McDonald, a 2019 World Cup winner with the USWNT who retired following the 2023 season, shares Lindsey’s sentiment.
McDonald says the USC program would have been helpful before her broadcast debut. She joined Optus Sports as an analyst for the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, returning her to a country where she had played for Melbourne Victory and the same city’s Western United during a 13-year career.
“I started doing this without being taught anything,” McDonald said. “Getting thrown in the fire without experience was pretty intimidating. Since then, obviously, I feel more comfortable, but it would have been nice … knowing what to expect.”
Nearly every player in the media academy at USC described feeling like they were “drinking out of a firehose” after a second long day of training.
The program, which came with a 26-book handbook, filled a compact schedule led by a suite of USC Annenberg’s journalism professors. Facilitators included Fox Sports Radio co-host Rob Parker, as well as retired players including Foudy and Stu Holden. Former two-time WNBA All-Star Chiney Ogwumike rounded out the group leading this academy.
Longtime USWNT defender Becky Sauerbrunn, who was part of the cohort, sees the academy as a valuable resource for players, especially when considering retirement.
“We can’t play forever, and really had no resources available to help you transition into that next phase,” says Sauerbrunn, the players’ union’s first president. “It’s really important that we have things like this to offer players in that transition, because it can be really daunting and really scary.”
The USWNT players’ union spent nearly half a decade working for player equity, successfully ushering in an era of equal pay after a historic settlement with U.S. Soccer in 2023. Only recently has the union been able to shift its focus to other issues facing players.
“I wish we made enough money as women’s players to just be like, ‘OK, we can walk away, and we’re set up for life’,” Sauerbrunn says. “We’re not there yet. So, to have something to help you get into that next phase of whatever occupation you’re going to choose, I think is huge.”
Sauerbrunn, who announced her playing retirement six days after the media program, discovered she really enjoyed in-studio roles, such as debating and delivering hot takes. She also used her time at the academy to hone her podcasting skills for the weekly show she hosts with former USWNT teammates Sam Mewis and Lynn Williams called Good Vibes FC.
The 10-member USC cohort included players at various stages in their careers. Kei Kamara, 40, was the oldest active player in MLS last season, beating Brad Guzan by a mere nine days. The youngest member of the group was 26-year-old Kevin O’Toole, who considered himself a “newbie” compared to his veteran colleagues. The USWNT players ranged from 29-year-old Ashley Hatch, to Sauerbrunn at 39.
The group dived into hot-topic debates including “Will the USMNT ever win a World Cup?” or “Should VAR be eliminated?” for camera practice and sometimes continued them off-camera. Each participant naturally melted into their preferred medium, whether that was to dissect a play in-studio or to talk about mental health in the vulnerable setting of a podcast studio.
The advice shared with the group varied from technical — “Don’t look at a camera when you’re debating” — to practical — “When seated, sit on the backside of a blazer for a more polished look.” The group took the advice like any coachable athlete would, and with the mentality that with more reps comes improvement.
For Merritt Mathias, who announced her retirement in October at age 34, her career ambitions aren’t as linear as eventually landing in sports media. She has the long-term goal of joining a team’s front office. To get there, she believes growing her broadcast personality and building up that side of her resume would go a long way. Foudy, after all, is also part-owner of Angel City, the team Mathias last played for.
“Being an owner or founder is not necessarily a career path. It is an end-goal,” Mathias says. “What it looks like along the way, I’m not quite sure, but I do believe having experience in podcasting, media, having an understanding of how all that works, to bring that experience and expertise into a front office of a club will matter, and it will be something that will differentiate me in a lot of ways.”
The media academy wasn’t solely for those approaching or already in retirement.
Hatch, a forward with the Washington Spirit, recently launched The Ditto Podcast, a self-improvement show. The USC program, she said, allowed her to sample all options ahead of her — but that doesn’t mean she can’t start now.
“It’ll give me the luxury to be able to actually think, ‘Is this something I want to do, or is this something I have to do out of necessity?’. It will help me guide my decisions,” Hatch says. “There’s also a lot of opportunities for players while they’re playing and, because of this, I can take some more of those opportunities and continue to develop this side of my skill sets, and not necessarily think, ‘Oh, I have to wait until I’m done (playing)’.”
Before Foudy’s lunch conversation wrapped in Classroom 106, Kamara thanked the USWNT legend. He recounted how Foudy once came to his home for an interview, and that moment stayed with him and his wife, a former college soccer player herself. Having Foudy before him now as a teacher, coaching him through in-studio work, was a full-circle moment.
“The way I see this game in America, we have such a rich history, a younger rich history, and Julie and Mia (Hamm) and some of those people are such amazing role models, not just for the women, but for the men too, that needs to be understood,” Kamara said. “They opened the door for soccer, and then they’re pushing the door even more to the media world.
“If I can see somebody that I know or follow doing it, it motivates me to go there.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
US Women's national team, Angel City, MLS, Soccer, NWSL, Sports Business
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