The Game of Their Lives

A new partnership between Mays Business School and Texas A&M University Athletics trains athletes to keep scoring well beyond their playing days.

By Jeannie Ralston

Photos provided by Mays Business School

February 14, 2023

It was Chris Valletta’s dad who got the wheels rolling years ago with one question. Valletta ’00, who played as an offensive lineman for Texas A&M University, had just left the NFL and was anxious about starting a new job in sales. “I’m not sure how to be successful in this job,” Valletta told his father.

Though simple, his father’s response served as a launching pad for Valletta’s life mission and, in ways, for an innovative, one-of-a-kind partnership between Mays Business School’s Reynolds and Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute and Aggie Athletics.

“Well, what did you do to be successful in football?” his dad asked.

Valletta remembered how that impacted him. “I started making a list of all the traits I used in my sports career,” he said. And the list was long. “Dedication, discipline, the desire to be the best at what I'm doing, the ability to handle adversity and perform under pressure. Knowing how to communicate, be a team player, be coached, respond to a loss and respond to a win.”

Through his role with AmplifyU, Chris Valletta '00 helps student-athletes prepare for future business success.

When Valletta applied those skills his first year on the job, he became his company’s top salesperson and later co-founded MISSION, which produces cooling gear for active people in the heat, in partnership with athlete-business icons Serena Williams, Drew Brees and Dwayne Wade. He’s written a book about the connection between sports and business success, given a TEDx Talk on the same topic and appeared on numerous national TV networks discussing the power and potential of athletes as leaders in business. For years, he’s been lobbying for a formal program at Texas A&M to help student-athletes recognize how their instinctual skills are useful off the field or court.

In a bit of synchronicity, Valletta’s dream became a reality last year with the efforts of others at Texas A&M, and AmplifyU was created.

Amplify What?

“We want you to think about life after sports before it hits you in the face,” Dr. Janet Parish, director of the Reynolds and Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute, told the assembled student-athletes in a personal time management class. The student track stars, volleyball players and equestrians listened attentively as Parish talked about how to maintain priorities when their time is much less structured in the real world.

Over the four-day AmplifyU immersion course in January—the second time the program was offered—students took part in short courses like Parish’s, as well as competitions and other experiential learning activities such as an etiquette dinner, a networking mixer, and insight sessions with former athletes and industry representatives.

AmplifyU is composed of two tracks: AmplifyONE focuses on personal development topics such as social media; personal branding; name, image and likeness (NIL) law; entrepreneurship; personal finance; selling yourself; and creating your elevator pitch, while AmplifyALL centers on leadership topics like marketing, management strategy, building business teams, and creativity and problem solving.

In many aspects, AmplifyU is similar to programs the Sales Leadership Institute already offers for engineering and medical students. “I realized we can shape what we're already teaching in terms of sales, marketing and business and add some legal components and topics more specific to athletes,” Parish said. Like participants from other disciplines, student-athletes will receive a certificate of completion, and the courses will be listed on their college transcript.

The program also enhances the famous Aggie Network by creating a community among former athletes, Mays faculty, student-athletes and companies that are interested in recruiting new hires among this talent pool. Valletta believes athletes possess the skills that will help fill the leadership gap he and other business professionals see today.

But at the start of their careers, former athletes are highly recruited for sales positions, said Parish. “With athletes, the harder they work, the better the reward. That's true in sales too,” she pointed out. “Most of our partner companies, like MISSION, Microsoft, Reynolds and Reynolds, Unum and Sewell, love hiring athletes because of that work ethic.”

Amplify Who?

It’s not a coincidence that AmplifyU was born soon after the Supreme Court allowed amateur players to control their name, image and likeness (NIL). “I realized more people than ever would be trying to take advantage of these athletes,” said Alex Sinatra ’11 ’14, a sports lawyer and the CEO and founder of Your Potential for Everything, a strategic sports consulting business, who helped provide the impetus for AmplifyU. “I knew we needed to give them the resources and education to understand contracts and recognize when a deal is good or when a person has their best interests at heart.”

With athletes, the harder they work, the better the reward. That's true in sales too.
Dr. Janet Parish

AmplifyU satisfies key requirements under Texas law on educating student-athletes on NIL, but as a formal program associated with a top-tier business school, it goes far beyond. “When we first met with Athletic Director Ross Bjork, his main comment was, ‘I want a real partnership. I don't want just a press release,’” Parish reported.

Indeed, the main mission is to develop well-rounded athletes who compete in any sport, from swimming to softball, and to prevent the kind of disasters that too often befall retired athletes. “A large percentage of professional athletes go broke after their playing days because they don't know how to be the CEO of their own career,” Sinatra said.

Dat Nguyen ’98, a former Aggie linebacker, certainly has done well after his seven seasons as a Dallas Cowboy. He is now a successful Chick-fil-A franchise owner but still wishes a program like AmplifyU had been available to him. “Something like this would have helped me tremendously with my transition from playing to the business world,” he said. “We never had a chance for internships because we had limited time between sports and academics.”

When Jaden Harris ’26, a high jumper and triple jumper on the Aggie track and field team, found out about AmplifyU, he said signing up for the January session was a “no brainer.” Most valuable to him was learning about loans, credit cards, starting and keeping a business, and employee management. “These topics will help me with a base knowledge of business and how to talk to people,” said Harris, who hopes to become a model or actor in the future. “Learning how to network will be a big part of my success.”

Amplify How?

AmplifyU’s creators would like to see the program become a permanent fixture at Texas A&M to serve the hundreds of student-athletes who compete across 20 Aggie teams every year. The idea is to offer it twice a year, with one block in January before the spring semester and one in May after the term. “We hope we can get most athletes during their offseason,” Parish explained.

Student-athletes in AmplifyU develop business and leadership skills and network with former athletes and industry representatives.

Every other year, organizers plan to host a conference that will be "an educational, motivational event and networking opportunity for everyone involved with AmplifyU,” Parish added.

Valletta sees this program as a model for every university in the country and hopes AmplifyU can be brought into high schools and even middle schools. He has another dream: “I hope the attractiveness for corporations is so strong that we can guarantee students jobs,” he said.

To reach these goals, the program aims to raise $8 million for an endowment. To jump-start the program, Valletta contributed $60,000 to fund the pilot AmplifyU session in May 2022 and has since added a gift of $100,000 toward the endowment. “Too often, people see these athletes as commodities to be traded and sold, and they forget that they're humans first,” said Sinatra. “I hope people will invest in them as human beings whose inherent value is not dependent upon their performance on the court or the pitch or the field.”

Ava Underwood, ’26, who plays on the Texas A&M women’s volleyball team, recognizes the gift she was given as a participant in the January course. “It was truly life changing,” she said. “The information provided is great insight on how to make the most of your talents and abilities as a student-athlete. There is nothing comparable to the unique caliber of this experience in the nation, and we are blessed as Texas A&M student-athletes to have the opportunity to be part of this special program.”

To team up with AmplifyU and help Mays coach student-athletes for a lifetime of success, contact Cassie Mahoney ’15 below.

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