She Can Be... A Marketer

STARKVILLE – A garage door slowly raises to reveal Mississippi State's football team prepared to take the field. Music blares from the loudspeakers, and the video board cuts to camera shots from inside the tunnel to the locker room. At the moment cleats touch grass at Davis Wade Stadium, fire erupts from pylons along the players' path.

A woman high above the 40-yard line, cueing each element of the team's introduction as thousands ring cowbells in one of the most climactic moments of a Saturday in Starkville.

That woman is Michelle Pontiff, director of marketing for the Bulldogs, and the person responsible for scripting the familiar and exciting gameday experience at hundreds of MSU sporting events.

"The fun thing about my job, and I don't think most people know this especially from an outside perspective, is that We are responsible for the 'run of show,'" Pontiff said. "I will describe it to anybody as puppeteering. We are the people that pull all the strings that make the game, outside of the plays itself."

It's a job many people may never realize exists. Pontiff didn't. When she first arrived at Southern Miss, she was pursuing an undergraduate degree in architecture. Sports and marketing weren't exactly in the picture.

One day she was at a game as a fan and recognized one of her classmates working on the sidelines. She asked what he was doing and he explained the sports management program he was in.

"I've always been involved in sports, but going into college, I had no idea there was an entire profession dedicated to working in sports," Pontiff said. "Like most, I thought my days on the field were over. I decided to give it a shot, so I started volunteering with them and moved into that major."

Pontiff will admit she got a bit of a late start for a competitive field. Even once she switched majors, her path strayed from traditional. As she prepared for graduation, she had taken on a role with the Golden Eagles' women's basketball team that she wasn't ready to leave. In order to stay in Hattiesburg, she took a graduate assistantship in athletic academics as a tutor while still volunteering on the marketing side.

"A lot of times traditionally, people are marketing GAs," she said. "I just didn't have that luxury, and I wanted to get my school paid for. Academics was my in. I was still able to volunteer, so it worked out in my favor."

Throughout her career journey, Pontiff would say learning has been the most-important part of any job. She wants to always be challenged, and when she's felt that there is nothing left to learn, she's moved up to the next chapter.

Learn as much as you can. You'll never learn everything, so you should be learning every step and every year, every job you take, every experience, every mistake you make, you are learning.

Learn as much as you can. You'll never learn everything, so you should be learning every step and every year, every job you take, every experience, every mistake you make, you are learning.

Pontiff came to Mississippi State in February 2018. Her daily responsibilities include directing marketing efforts for football, volleyball and women's basketball, directing MSU's Maroon Memories program and overseeing the marketing department's internship and graduate assistant program.

She is especially passionate about the internship program because it gives her the chance to share her knowledge, experience and connections in the industry with students just getting their start in the field.

"That's something, I take a lot of pride in," she said. "I think it's really important because if I wasn't given that opportunity when I was in their shoes, I wouldn't be in this job."

For National Girls and Women in Sports Day, Pontiff was asked what it means to her to be a woman working in the field and what she would say to young girls who may aspire to do the same.

The question took some time to answer, because it's not one she thinks about a lot.

"I will tell you that being a woman in sports has no direct effect on my subconscious or conscious ability to do my job. Being a woman is just one thing that I am," she said.

She's frustrated sometimes when people volunteer to help her carry boxes or offer to help her do her job.

"We move a lot of stuff," she explained. "Honestly, they probably would think nothing of it if it was a guy carrying the same amount of boxes, but lifting 25 pounds is part of my job description. That's what I'm being paid to do. I don't need shortcuts. I don't need accomplishments, thank yous or pats on the back to do my job."

Pontiff is aware that sometimes being a woman makes conversations more difficult to navigate. She doesn't want to come off as weak or needy or demanding, labels she says can often be assigned to women working in sports.

She's learned to see the bigger picture and pick which battles truly matter to her. That's something she said was a struggle for her and she is still trying to master.

"Have I ever been persecuted for being a female?" she asked. "Absolutely not, but I do think having conversations are difficult unless you are able to have true relationships with people you work with. That's how you avoid coming off as all of those things. You need to be able to frame the conversation in which you are painting your own narrative."

I think it devalues somebody if you just say like, 'Great job!' if they didn't do a great job or you don't know what they did. I want a thank you or a higher praise from me to mean more. If you just compliment me every time, that takes away from it.

I think it devalues somebody if you just say like, 'Great job!' if they didn't do a great job or you don't know what they did. I want a thank you or a higher praise from me to mean more. If you just compliment me every time, that takes away from it.

When it comes to advice for the girls who may come after her, that answer was a bit easier. Learn.

"If it's somebody in like the high school to college range, I'm going to tell you knowledge, experience and then people. That's the three things that got me to where I'm at. If it's a little five-year-old, I'm going to tell them that every time you fall down or anytime you get kicked around, you get up and you evaluate how not to make that mistake again. You do not let something deter you from going after what you want. You get smarter and figure out how to fix it and get around it."

Each woman in the athletic department that was profile for the Bulldogs' National Girls and Women in Sports Day campaign was also asked to complete the following sentence: "She can be…"

At first, Pontiff jumped out with powerful, but then she took a long moment to consider if that was really the word she wanted.

"My second thought was a little bit more philosophical," she said. "I thought powerful, then I would rather say something that's more non-aggressive. I don't know what the word is. Powerful to me just doesn't do it justice because when I think 'powerful,' I think semi-aggression. I think inability to really create relationships."

After a long pause, that word finally came to her.

"I got it. Significant."

Significant. The dictionary definition reads: "sufficiently great or important to be worth of attention." Thinking back to her work ethic, her desire to constantly learn and improve and the value she places on a true thank you, there may not be a better word to describe her work in athletics.

She can literally do anything she wants, be anything she wants, but you can't just take that as a naive notion. It's more of. You have to work for it. You have to dedicate yourself to it.

She can literally do anything she wants, be anything she wants, but you can't just take that as a naive notion. It's more of. You have to work for it. You have to dedicate yourself to it.

Mississippi State University Athletics

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