UNLV students look back fondly on Super Bowl internships
Bryce Hinton has spent most of his life playing sports, has planned on working in sports and has chosen a master’s program at UNLV to help achieve his goal.
What he never imagined was that choosing to study in UNLV’S Intercollegiate Professional Sports Management (IPSM) graduate program would land him an internship with one of the world’s largest and most well-known sporting events, the Super Bowl.
He is one of about 40 students who worked as fully paid Super Bowl interns for the Super Bowl Host Committee in preparation for Sunday’s game at Allegiant Stadium between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers. It’s the first time a host committee has used paid interns, officials said.
“It’s an amazing feeling being able to consider our group trailblazers for this internship program, and also just any sports internship,” said Hinton, who is graduating with his master’s degree in May. “UNLV is sending a really good message and letting people know that Las Vegas is striving to become a sports capital and is, if not, now the sports capital.”
Hinton and colleague Jelani Baker started the program when it launched in the fall of 2022 with 15 undergraduate students.
It was the brainchild of a few university officials, including Jay Vickers, the chief operating officer of the UNLV Sports Innovation Institute — an initiative established in 2018 by the university’s division of research and economic development. Nancy Lough, director of the IPSM program and a professor at UNLV, introduced Hinton and many other students to the Super Bowl internship opportunity.
With the help of the NFL Foundation, Las Vegas Super Bowl Host Committee and United Way of Southern Nevada, more than $300,000 was raised to fund the program and pay interns.
The interns received $25 an hour and could work no more than 20 hours a week, said Solomon Escalante, a second-year student in the program.
Escalante interned under Myisha Boyce, chief community engagement officer with the host committee, to recruit businesses for the committee’s Business Connect program. Fewer than 100 businesses had been recruited when he first started in January 2023, but it jumped to around 700 by the time his internship was up.
“Helping the community of Las Vegas in the form of business
contracts that get awarded to folks, that has been really, really special,” Escalante said. “Super Bowl means a lot to them.”
When Baker got an email about the internship, he felt like it was only natural for him to apply. Vickers helped Baker tune up his résumé, and the 25-year-old landed a position where he became a “jack of all trades” for the committee.
He and Hinton did everything from reading contracts and helping with activations to supporting the Business Connect program.
And it all started on Day One with the bid, a thick binder that Baker said was over 300 pages and contained everything the NFL expects from host committees. Baker remembers the topics he took notes on and was awed to see it all come together.
Coby Carner, who graduated from UNLV’S IPSM program in December, spent last summer as a host committee marketing intern. Carner participated in marketing meetings, where attendees included the likes of Raiders President Sandra Douglass Morgan. A Las Vegas native, Carner said he never imagined the region would have an NFL team, build a venue as impressive as Allegiant Stadium or bring a Super Bowl to town. The internship provided him “a once-in-a-lifetime thing … to be able to capitalize on the Super Bowl coming here.”
Even a student at UNLV’S William S. Boyd School of Law got her chance to shine with a host committee internship. D’ahna Scott, who’s in her last year at the law school, initially joined the internship program last summer while also working as a summer associate for a law firm.
Sam Joffray, the host committee’s CEO and president, tailored an internship to Scott’s schooling in the legal field, Scott said.
The Vegas Sports Jackpot, the committee’s charity raffle for the United Way of Southern Nevada, became her responsibility. In that role, she got experience working with contracts.
“That aligned a lot with what I want to do when I graduate, which is: I want to work in the sports entertainment industry as an attorney, and I think that the internship for me really opened a bunch of doors,” Scott said.
And it seems this won’t be the last crop of interns that work a Super Bowl.
The host committee has created a playbook that future Super Bowl host committees in other cities use, Joffray said.
Joffray added that this “playbook” can even be used for other events like the Final Four, national college football championship games or other major sporting events that will be making their way to Allegiant Stadium in upcoming years.
Carner, who last week started a position as marketing director for National Youth Sports Nevada, said working as a Super Bowl intern was the topic of conversation during his job interview.
“Considering how many people work in sports, how many students there were, we’re really lucky to even be able to get that opportunity,” Carner said. “It really is such a great experience, (and) it’s hard to kind of compete with that if someone else wasn’t able to capitalize on an opportunity like that.”