Stanford GSB: Stanford Business June 1997

Spreadsheet One SRO Down Under First Entrepreneur Conference at GSB The Forgiven Here We Grow Again! Intellectual Game of Investment Boeing Chief wins Arbuckle Award	Spreadsheet Two Great Leap Forward Student Job Hunting Goes Global *Calculating the Eco-cost	Spreadsheet Three The GSB Goes to War PhDs Fare Well in Job Market "Sorry, Mr. Rainwater is in a Meeting." New Porras Award
A Closer Look: Bernard Beal	A Closer Look: Mike Golub	A Closer Look: Reid Dennis
For The Record: Who We Are

A Closer Look: Mike Golub, MBA 1988

Mike Golub refers to Tiger Woods in the manner a high-tech executive might refer to a top-selling piece of software. To Golub, director of golf, tennis, and basketball for Nike Sports Entertainment, the young golf celebrity is an "asset."

Golub creates and produces events starring the megamillionaires who have helped to make the Swoosh famous. "The investments we're making in our athletes are so significant that a part of our mandate is to leverage those relationships," he says in cold bottom-line terms. But don't get Golub wrong---his choice of words belies his pure enthusiasm for putting a spotlight on superheroes. What fan wouldn't love working with the likes of basketball king Michael Jordan and tennis icon John McEnroe to produce competitions "with a Nike twist"?

"It's a huge kick in the pants to read the sports page for your job," Golub says. "At the same time, you're no longer just a fan. I love basketball, but I'm much more dispassionate about it now. It's changed how I root for and follow the game."

Although Golub started at Nike Sports Entertainment only last year, when Nike debuted the division, he's had his funny relationship with sports ever since getting out of college in 1983. He worked for three years producing TV shows and videos for Major League Baseball, stopped out to enter the GSB, then spent five years as managing director of events and attractions for the National Basketball Association.

Why the GSB interruption? Golub wanted to move from sports TV to the business of sports. It worked. Now, from Beaverton, Ore., to Tokyo, Golub is turning out a celebrity series of promotional events, charitable work, and offbeat ventures like letting McEnroe and Andre Agassi play tennis without umpires. In November, look for a Golub-arranged golf tournament in Tokyo, with Woods at center stage.

So how is it that a sports nut like Golub has maintained a business edge within the heady realm of celebrity jocks? It's probably because he's had a nodding acquaintance with enter- tainment icons all his adult life---as Dartmouth Winter Carnival chairman his "assets" were Dr. Seuss ice sculptures and soon after college he lucked into an appearance in the Bruce Springsteen "Glory Days" video. When you've worked with the Cat in the Hat and the Boss, maybe a Tiger's run of the mill.

The shoe fits. A sports and entertainment background makes Mike Golub a natural match for the shoe firm's glamour job.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JONAH BADDEN