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From East Rutherford Through State College, Penn State Alum Ryan Smith Makes To Top Of PFF

Ryan Smith grew up a football nerd.

It all started at the age of 3 when Smith attended his first New York Giants game with his father. After that, his love for football began to grow. At 6, he started to go to games consistently.

Even though Smith never played football, his passion for the game never stopped him from his goal of working in the football industry. The bonding moments with his father at Giants games set the foundation for him to work at Pro Football Focus (PFF) and eventually become its director of business development.

Smith began his college career at Penn State in 2013 unsure of what he wanted to study. He was undecided for his first two years until deciding to major in supply chain management. Even though he wanted to pursue his goal of working in sports, Smith went in this direction, feeling that it was the safer option.

In November 2014, Smith had the opportunity to shadow the marketing department for the Giants under Nilay Shah, senior vice president of marketing and brand strategy. During this experience, he learned how NFL marketing teams operated during game day. Smith aided the digital media manager during the game, helped the assistant pregame, received first-hand experience of how a media team works together, and attended postgame press conferences in the media and locker room.

Despite all this occurring in a short time for just one game, it helped him get his start in the industry and see what was possible for his career while he was still at Penn State.

During his sophomore year, Smith was presented with an opportunity he knew he had to take advantage of. There was an opening at PFF as a part-time data collection analyst, so in the spring of 2015, Smith started his role where he analyzed players from the NFL, college football, and high school football.

In his junior year, Smith began to try to get as much experience as possible in the football industry. He started to do lots of different things for PFF, with extra opportunities since the company was a startup when he joined. Not only was Smith collecting data, but he was also writing articles, doing podcasts, and creating scouting reports for college football teams that were not using PFF at the time.

“I was collecting data during the week and working about 40 to 60 hours a week while I was still a full-time student,” Smith said. “I feel like [data collection] was the backbone of what I started to do with PFF. That experience and trying a bunch of different things helped me go down the business development route where I currently am.”

Smith was doing all these responsibilities while finishing up his supply chain management degree alongside being a member of the Penn State Sports Business Club and THON. Smith was involved with the former THON organization Monarch, which he said was the highlight of his time at Penn State for all the work that he and Monarch put into helping families and children with childhood cancer.

During his senior year, Smith got the opportunity to go on a club trip from the Sports Business Club to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, which turned into one of the key events in his career.

On this trip, he met the founder of PFF, Neil Hornsby, and its chief revenue officer, Bryan Hall. Smith connected with both, especially with Hall, who helped him a lot when he was starting at PFF.

“It was a critical experience for me [to] not just to work behind the screen and showcase what I could do but connect in person with these key decision makers at PFF,” Smith said. “It helped me springboard my career because I feel [that] it’s very important to meet with people in person.”

For that reason, Smith credits the Sports Business Club for helping him get to where he is today. He continued all the work he was doing for PFF during his senior year and graduated in May 2017. After graduating, Smith transitioned into the full-time role of data collection analyst at PFF.

Not only did Smith continue his responsibilities as an analyst, but he began to take on more business development responsibilities at PFF. He worked with the business development team as an account manager, which allowed him to acquire new skills.

Through this role, Smith acquired a sales skill set through field-level experience that ended in 18 new FBS team sales during the 2018 season. He also accelerated PFF’s customer adoption by helping PFF add its 32nd NFL team client and build up to providing 70 FBS schools with cutting-edge football analytics.

After five years in these roles, Smith got his first leadership offer to become the business development lead in 2020. He took advantage of this opportunity and began to take on leadership responsibilities. Even though this role lasted for five months, he switched roles and became the director of PFF’s agency services where he oversaw sports agency market strategy as well as managing the execution of partnerships with players, coaches, and executive agencies.

In 2022, Smith was promoted to the role of business development manager. Using his experience from previous roles in business development, he oversaw three verticals of big data, big media, and agency operations primarily in new, undeveloped markets with new revenue. That meant that Smith had relationships with NBC, Amazon Prime, FOX, CBS, NFL Network, and the Big Ten Network. His responsibilities also spanned data-powered games, betting, financial services, and consumer tools.

His bosses at PFF took notice of the growth Smith had during his nine years at PFF and his hard work in this leadership role. Then last year, he got the opportunity to become the director of business development.

“I’ve worn a lot of hats through the years of a good amount of experience because I usually said yes to a lot of opportunities,” Smith said. “That’s how I’ve gotten to my current position today mostly in the business development department here at PFF.”

As the director of business development, Smith has a lot of priorities. He shared that his day-to-day involves overseeing the revenue of all of PFF’s non-team business. That means that Smith must open up new markets to PFF like broadcast networks, sports betting, financial services, video games, streaming, and NIL.

Smith has to facilitate broadcast media work with all the NFL Primetime crews and talents like NBC, ESPN, FOX, and Amazon Prime. To work directly with the talent at these networks, he works with PFF’s media insights team to look into stats that would help broadcasters like Tom Brady during the broadcasts of football games.

Smith talked about how he and his team work with college football bowl games such as the Senior Bowl and college football awards. He said that a lot of the awards use PFF to pick the players they feel are the most deserving of the awards. In the end, his primary responsibility is closing out all the deals he and his team make with various companies that use PFF’s data.

Smith knows how much hard work he and his team have to put into this job. For that reason, Smith knows that he has to make sure that he employs the right leadership skills to be successful in team building and making decisions with his team. To employ these skills, Smith tries to employ a good amount of the leadership lessons he’s learned from one of his favorite authors, Simon Sinek.

“One of the main concepts that [Sinek] tries to get across is that leadership is not about the position, it’s about the influence and leading to the left and to the right of you,” Smith said. “[It’s] what I’ve tried to do throughout my entire career and it’s not just in work. Leadership goes beyond just a professional sense and that’s one of the principles that I like to portray.”

Along with the responsibility of being a good leader, Smith said that his top goal is to renew existing business and expand it to capture new revenue in existing markets, new ventures, and new markets.

Over his almost 10-year career at PFF, Smith has achieved many accomplishments. Not only is he thankful for being able to stay at the same company since he graduated from Penn State, but he’s proud of being able to move up within the company from being a part-time data collection analyst to the director’s level on the business development team.

Smith also said it’s incredible to see how PFF has grown from a startup when he joined to where it is today with the great people he’s worked with. For that reason, Smith said that he’s excited about PFF’s future and grateful to be part of a working environment that shares the love and passion for football that he does.

As Smith looked back on his journey, he credits his mentor, Hall, for helping him get to where he is today. Their connection is why he said that it’s important to have mentors because most wouldn’t be where they are today without other people.

“I learned a lot from Bryan Hall, who had a lot of experience before I got to PFF, and has helped me along the way,” Smith said. “[He’s] been instrumental in helping us build out all of our verticals and our entire revenue business.”

Not only did Smith stress the importance of having a mentor to those who are looking to work in the sports industry in the near future, but he also said how important it was to build out his network during his career.

“Reach out to people and talk to them by networking and getting a better sense of different areas that you could get involved with by just asking people about their stories,” Smith said. “It comes down to working your way in, getting a sense of where your niche could be [and] also outworking everyone. There are definitely challenges to work in the sports industry, but there’s a place for everyone as long as you want it badly enough, you’re willing to make the connections, and put in the work.”

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About the Author

Fernando Martinez

Fernando is a junior who is majoring in broadcast journalism and minoring in Spanish and Sports Studies. Born in Mexico City and now lives in Paoli, PA, he is a big fan of pretty much every sport. His favorite teams are FC Barcelona, the Cowboys, and the Phillies which involves a lot of suffering for him. You can follow him on Instagram at fernando9015 or email him at fpm5162@psu.edu if you have questions on why he is a Cowboys and Phillies fan.

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