Steve Scebelo had a busy week scheduled in Arizona leading up to Super Bowl LVII. As president of NFL Players Inc., the licensing and marketing subsidiary of the NFL Players Association, he oversees the exclusive source to connect partners and their customers directly with active NFL players, and provides clients with B2B solutions including group player licensing rights, marketing strategy and player engagement. Yet, despite all the business being conducted at the Super Bowl, Scebelo made it a priority to set up one more meeting — with current students from his alma mater.
A 1988 Western Connecticut State University Ancell School of Business graduate, Scebelo never misses an opportunity to connect with fellow WCSU alumni and students. So when he saw a LinkedIn post by current WCSU student Evan Walker, sports director for campus radio station WXCI FM, excitedly announcing that he and fellow student Patrick Frenette had received press credentials to cover the Super Bowl, Scebelo reached out.
“It is always great when I see WCSU updates in my LinkedIn feed, and I was especially happy to see Evan say that he would be going to cover the Super Bowl in Phoenix on behalf of WXCI,” Scebelo said. “Back in my student days, I was sports editor at the Echo and formed some close friendships with students at WXCI, which was right across the hall in the Student Center. I know how hard we worked and the results that were produced, which I am confident have been maintained and improved upon over the years. I knew Evan and Patrick would be representing WCSU well, and reached out so that we could meet and I could talk to them about the NFLPA and NFL Players Inc. It was great to incorporate them into a crowded itinerary in the week leading up to the Super Bowl, and it was evident that this would be the first steps and an amazing launch into a couple successful future careers in sports media, should they so desire.”
A once-in-a-lifetime experience for Walker, a Secondary Education-History/Social Studies major from Danbury, and Frenette, a Communication Studies major from Thomaston, began with the receipt of broad access press passes that enabled them to interview NFL players, coaches and Hall of Fame inductees — and ended up being elevated to a VIP experience, courtesy of Scebelo.
“Steve invited me and Pat to the NFL Players Association house, and he invited me to attend the NFLPA VIP party,” Walker said. “It was really awesome, and I was able to get an interview with him. Steve said that he started out as a sports editor at The Echo and that he wrote about women’s sports and he wanted to continue his passion in working in sports. He said that organizations like the NFL Players Association don’t overly emphasize if you went to a big or small school. Honestly, I’m not sure this would’ve happened if I went to a larger school. WCSU is a tight-knit community and as soon as Steve heard about Pat and me, he reached out to us.”
Scebelo has always had the foresight to capitalize on opportunities and relationships that have helped propel his career. A few years after his family moved from New Jersey to New Fairfield, Connecticut, when he was a freshman in high school, a chance exposure to both marketing and WCSU aligned to set him on his professional path.
“Even though I had envisioned my future as a writer, in my senior year in high school I took a distributive education class as an elective,” Scebelo said. “The class included participation in a regional Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) marketing competition that was hosted at WCSU. I won my group and went on to states in Hartford; won there and went on to the nationals in San Francisco, which was an amazing experience even though my streak of wins ended there. My success in this competition made me consider marketing as a career as it dawned on me that ‘maybe I’m good at this?’”
With marketing as his objective, Scebelo considered his college options, which included DI schools on both coasts. “One of the primary reasons I landed at WCSU will sound familiar to a lot of past and present students: cost, and the ability to get a quality education at a fair price,” Scebelo said. “What really sealed the deal was an offer to be part of the Ancell Honors program, which would give me the chance to graduate in three years.” Looking back now, he laughs and wonders, ‘what was I thinking?’ about cutting his college years short.
Enrolled as a Marketing major, Scebelo took “every marketing course I could fit in my schedule.” It should come as no surprise, he said, that one of his favorite classes was taught by Professor of Marketing Dr. Ron Drozdenko. “Consumer Behavior was the first Marketing course I took at WCSU, and I remember answering a question on my first day in class. Dr. Droz’s response let me know that I wasn’t quite as enlightened as I thought I might be, but demonstrated how I could learn more by listening to him and diving deeper into the course.”
Scebelo also dove into the extracurricular options on campus. He was a founding member of Sigma Chi’s Iota Eta chapter at WCSU, and based on a challenge from one of his marketing professors to promote WCSU’s women’s sports programs, became sports editor of the Echo.
“I thought I could best do that via media and publicity,” Scebelo explained, “so I joined the paper with the understanding that I exclusively wished to cover women’s sports — coverage that included one front page story on an epic WCSU women’s basketball victory over Eastern Connecticut State University.”
In addition to his campus activities, Scebelo worked in retail and at two paid internships, one with the Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce and another at Citicorp.
The Citicorp internship, where he worked in the summer between his second and third year at WCSU, wound up being the jumping-off point into the job market after graduation. “I was doing market research and customer relations, creating surveys of credit unions that were potential consumers of Citicorp’s software for small financial institutions,” Scebelo explained. “They asked me to stay through the fall and spring, even though I could only work on Saturdays when the office was closed, but I could still move my projects forward.”
As his final semester at WCSU approached, Scebelo did not have a job lined up. “I did not fully appreciate at the time how challenging the job market of 1988 would be, so I wasn’t really worried about it. I went on a couple interviews, including one that felt like a cattle call where they were really just looking for entry-level telemarketers, and I declined to go to the follow-up interview, which freaked my parents out a bit. I chose to relax and trust my instinct that if I did not enjoy the interview process, I certainly wasn’t going to enjoy the job. Then, as graduation neared, the manager of my internship at Citicorp let me know she had been working behind the scenes to get a new position added to the business just for me and offered me a job, which was competitively well-paid for the time. I’d say it worked out ok!”
His instincts served him well, as did his networking skills.
“One of my co-workers at Citicorp, who worked in technology, left to take a job at the Major League Baseball Commissioner’s office,” Scebelo said. “After he had been there a few months, he called to let me know there was a job open in the merchandise licensing department at Major League Baseball Properties — which he thought I might be interested in simply because he and I would talk about baseball sometimes during breaks at Citicorp. I was VERY interested, interviewed and got the job that began my career in sports licensing.”
His career has included roles as the Retail Marketing Manager at Major League Baseball Properties; Program Director, Licensing for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games; Director of Non-Apparel Licensing for NBA Properties; Director of Merchandise Services at Coca-Cola; Senior Vice President at TV Guide; principal of his own agency, Creative Properties; Vice President, Licensing and Business Development, Interim President, and now President of NFL Players Inc.
That WCSU marketing challenge to promote women’s sports as a student remained a priority, even 35 years after graduation. Scebelo conceived and led the launch of REP Worldwide, a group licensing representation business that extended the core competencies of the NFLPA’s licensing business to other groups of athletes. REP was launched in conjunction with founding partners the U.S. Women’s National Team Players Association and Women’s National Basketball Players Association, and in its first two years added clients including the Major League Soccer Players Association and U.S. Rugby Players Association. Cumulatively on behalf of all partners, in its first full year of business REP signed 54 licensees, generated $1M+ in gross royalties and $250k+ in earned commissions, and achieved profitability in year one, according to his bio.
Scebelo said this kind of success is within anyone’s reach if they practice some basic skills. “Build your network — it’s everybody: your professors, fellow students, friends of your parents and bosses at your jobs. You can kind of control your destiny if you have a strong network, especially during a recession.” He also advised that “a career path is almost never straight and direct, and has changes along the way,” citing his related, but non-linear progression through sports marketing, licensing and media. “Follow your path and try to direct it as much as you can,” he said. “Never stay in a job that you don’t enjoy. And always trust your instincts.”
For more information, contact WCSU Public Relations at pr@wcsu.edu.