08/21/2026
In the Fall of 1975, my older brother (Joe “Woody” Woodrum) asked me if I wanted to work as a ball boy for Marshall University football games. Being a 13-year-old who grew up playing and loving sports, how could I refuse? Little did I know that 51 years later, I would still be working MU games (now working on the MU radio broadcast).
In 1979, when I enrolled at Marshall, I wanted to be a lawyer, so I enrolled in the pre-law program in the MU College of Business. During my sophomore year at Marshall, I took my first law class – Business Law. The textbook was five or six inches thick, and I found out that I was not cut out for law school. When I went to switch my major, I discovered that MU had created a new major called Sports Management & Marketing. I thought wow, a degree that would help me stay in the sports world past my graduation. I immediately switched majors. I graduated in 1983 as part of the first class of Sports Management & Marketing majors at MU.
After a couple of years of working in sporting goods (while still volunteering for MU), I talked to my friend and mentor, Dr. W. Don Williams, who convinced me to come back to Marshall and pursue an MS in Athletics Administration. To help pay for school, I worked as a graduate assistant for the Health & Physical Education Department as well as the MU Athletic Department. Upon graduation in 1986, MU Athletics hired me to a full-time position which began a 14-year run inside MU Athletics (being a part of the building of Edwards Stadium was my favorite job ever). After that I took a job working for ISP Sports (located inside Marshall Athletics) as the General Manager for Multimedia Rights. ISP expanded my horizons in a dozen directions, and the opportunity to help build something remarkable was life-altering. ISP became IMG College (and now today Learfield), and I became the Regional VP for the Midwest. We ran that office out of the Shewey Building inside Edwards Stadium. Imagine managing the Multimedia Rights of universities like Ohio State, Michigan, Notre Dame, Kentucky, and Nebraska from the campus of Marshall University. While I managed a big chunk of collegiate sports sponsorship sales, my office and heart were always at Marshall and in West Virginia.
After IMG, I switched gears and started working in K-12 school athletics by helping startup companies like GoFan, TPG, and Campus Multimedia – three of the biggest players in high school sports. Everything that I have ever done or accomplished in my career is due to the instruction and experiences that I got through my education, my MU professors and athletic staff that mentored me along the way. I have had a long and blessed career in sports administration, and Marshall University is the reason. Go Herd!
- Jim Woodrum, Sports Business Alumni
