ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the background and the history of the sports communications publicity industry, and the wide range of people who have assisted in its growth, and have gone on to other things in very successful careers. Given the amount of time and effort that goes into the field in this era, it is hard to imagine that the business really is less than 70 years old. We will take a look at some of the pioneers of the business in some of the key areas where we spend a great deal of time-collegiate sports, television, and general sport publicity-and pull some lessons that they have passed to us as industry to apply today. There are many valuable areas that the sports publicity field continues to apply today in order to make the business viable. Those lessons which we will talk about going forward remain the base for the sports publicity field. They include:
• pitching • relationship building • note taking and writing • historical accuracy.
