Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
Chasing down rebounds for basketball star Kyle Korver inside an empty gym isn’t exactly a resume line you’d expect from a classical and Near-Eastern civilizations major.
Ashley O’Connor, a student manager for the Bluejay men’s team back then, just really enjoyed the side gig, and the people in the program, and the front-row seat to competition.
She never would have predicted that working on the Creighton sidelines would put her on a path to professional success. But that’s exactly what happened.
After graduation, O’Connor, BA’00, landed an internship at the Missouri Valley Conference office. Former Bluejay coach Dana Alman vouched for her. That was it. That was her break.
Two decades later, O’Connor is a vice president of programming and acquisitions for ESPN, overseeing the network’s partnerships with Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and Little League baseball. She leads a team that sets game schedules, assists with finalizing TV rights deals and contributes to the network’s overall strategy.
Just last year, ESPN became the exclusive rights holder of MLB.TV, the league’s out-of-market streaming service. O’Connor played a role in the landmark deal.
“Not to sound cheesy, but I really do trace my professional career back to Creighton and Coach Altman,” O’Connor said. “It was one of those things where one door opened, which opened another door, and another. It all fell perfectly into place.”
So perfectly, in fact, that when she received her first call from ESPN, she hadn’t even applied for a job.
Learning the language of college athletics
After that aforementioned internship, O’Connor went on to oversee all things women’s basketball and other championship events for the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, then returned to the MVC for a second stint to run championships, coordinate officiating and more.
When she and her husband later moved to Connecticut, she sent her resume out — and gave a mentor at the NCAA permission to pass her name along to his contacts.
And then, ESPN called.
“I can't speak to the ESPN folks as to why they hired me, I suspect a lot of it was the fact that I spoke the language of college athletics, and I knew the community, I knew the people,” O’Connor said. “I understood what colleges and conferences were looking for. And so I was then able to sit on the other side of the table.”
Her job now is to watch sports, think about sports, strategize around sports consumers, and experiment with sports programming. She has three TVs in her office. She’s constantly picking the brains of her colleagues.
When she first joined ESPN, she was a program coordinator for college basketball. Then the NBA. Her most recent promotion came two years ago.
And actually, even though her knowledge base and expertise didn’t originate from Creighton, she said her time on campus did prepare her for an ever-changing profession where problem-solving and innovation are required to keep pace with the times.
Some lessons are timeless
When O’Connor started at ESPN in 2005, cable was king. ESPNU had launched just a few months before her hiring. Social media wasn’t a thing. You couldn’t watch sports on your cell phone.
So much has changed in 20 years.
“Credit goes to all of the really, really smart people that work here who must have had a crystal ball,” O’Connor said. “But for myself and the majority of people who work here, our approach is that the status quo isn't enough. It's always about what's next and how do we make this bigger and better?”
She had that mentality while in college, too.
As a student manager, she took road trips with the team and formed lasting relationships with players, coaches and staff members. She stayed after practice to rebound for players, including Rodney Buford and Kyle Korver.
She initially came to Creighton with the plan of becoming a physical trainer. Then she shifted to the humanities. Her time with the basketball team opened her eyes to the world of athletics.
Everything she did — whether she realized it or not — was teaching O’Connor life lessons that still stick with her today.
“Creighton provided me the opportunity to learn how to think,” O’Connor said. “We figure out how to just be a good student of life, how to learn how to work hard, and keep learning as we go.”
