Q&A: Alum promotes ongoing sustainability efforts in sports

Since his time on South Hill, Brian McCullough ’06, has entrenched himself in the intersection of sustainability and sports. Currently an associate professor and program chair of sport management at the University of Michigan, McCullough has worked with other experts in the field and organizations such as the International Olympic Committee.

McCullough received his Bachelor of Science in Sport Management and played on the baseball team at Ithaca College before continuing his education at Texas A&M University with a Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Sport Management. He later returned to Texas A&M as the director for the Center for Sport Management Research and Education, spearheading a historic athletics sustainability plan.

Throughout this time, McCullough also worked with Green Sports Alliance, which was founded in 2010 to “encourage the sports industry and its partners to measure, mitigate and advance their sustainability and social impact.” Oct. 6 marks the ninth annual Green Sports Day held by Green Sports Alliance under the theme “Community Resilience.”

Sports editor Isabella McSweeney spoke with McCullough about his experiences and findings about sustainability throughout the sports industry.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Isabella McSweeney: How does messaging to promote climate change differ between pro sports and college athletics?

Brian McCullough: Just like any other marketing campaign, you want to make sure that you’re leveraging your fan segments in an appropriate way. … You’re not necessarily going to be targeting those that are fully bought in because, in essence, it’s wasted time and airspace. It’s really trying to find that one segment, or segments that can move the needle and starting to get them to engage in more appropriate behaviors.

IM: How can sustainability findings at a larger, sports-oriented Division I school connect to a smaller school like Ithaca College?

BM: Any margin that you can create, especially here, means so much more. … The nice thing is, because of the reduced budgets, [athletes are] pretty much bussing everywhere. … So there are different opportunities that we can do here at Ithaca that already reduce the impact, but as you look at different things, it’s about efficiency. ‘How can we conserve water? … How can we operationalize these different things and save ourselves money?’

IM: As a founding member of the Sport Ecology Group, what ways have you been raising awareness about new sustainability findings?

BM: The whole premise behind the Sport Ecology Group is trying to get our research into the hands of practitioners. It’s the biggest divide between practitioners and the ivory tower that is academia, so we’re trying to obliterate that and try to make it much more accessible. … It’s been part of my daily life — you produce the academic research, but then here’s putting out a message, whether on LinkedIn or an email list of people saying, ‘Hey, here’s our latest findings. This is how it’s relevant to you. This is what we can help you with.’

IM: What is the biggest project you have worked on?

BM: The most satisfying project that we worked on was with the USA Special Olympic games that were hosted in Seattle. … One of the things that they wanted to promote was the walkable games, so we were working with them to devise this campaign and create the architecture. They create the messaging and all the creative on that, but we provide the background research. In a pre-event survey, we found [that] about 70% of people [caretakers and Special Olympic athletes] were planning to rent a car. And we found in a post-event survey after the campaign that 7% of people actually rented a car. … It was really an education awareness campaign because all the facilities were on the light rail line in Seattle, so your badge served as your free ticket on the light rail. That made us really happy; we did our job and helped them achieve their goal.

IM: How have perceptions around sports and sustainability changed during your time in the industry?

BM: You go to some conferences, and it seems like we’re having the same conversations over the last decade, and some of those conferences are very ‘rah rah,’ kind of a cheerleading type thing. I get it, because you’re trying to recruit and get people positive and celebrate these different things and successes, but sometimes we have to be real with these people and say, ‘Here are the challenges that you will confront, this is how we overcame them, this is how you can have success.’ It does bother me that some teams, on Green Sports Day, which is Oct. 6, will highlight their recycling and composting programs. That’s great, but you’ve been doing that for 10-plus years; let’s start with something fresh. … The biggest changes that are happening now are in facility design, where people see they can save a lot of money. Climate Pledge Arena was a fantastic example to show how you can also commercialize it. But it was also a circumstance of local laws and legislation and the community itself pushing toward that.

IM: Do sports teams face pressure from fans to change their environmental policies?

BM: [Fans] are still going to come back and root for the team. There’s plenty of examples, whether it’s domestic violence, criminal cases, scandals within the league itself, responding inappropriately or ineffectively to the Black Lives Matter first wave and second wave — still came back. We’ve collected data that shows that with greenwashing, there’s a lot of grace that fans will give to their team. If a team were to greenwash, [fans] will place it on the sponsor much more than they do the team, even though both should be equally to blame. As teams start to engage in this, they’re not really pressured to, because ‘You’ll still like me.’

IM: Lastly, how did you get into the industry?

BM: At [Texas A&M], my advisor at the time was researching diversity and inclusion in sport, and I totally believe in that line of research, but kind of selfishly, I was like, ‘I don’t know how I create an identity for myself outside of [my advisor’s]. What else could I potentially do?’ We read a research article on the environmental impact of the Rugby World Cup in Wales, and I said, ‘Who’s doing this type of work?’ And it was a few people, but not a lot. There you go. I could combine these two passions that I’ve had for my whole life and then we can go from there.