Ty Herring never imagined that as a college student he would get a glimpse behind the curtain at the NFL’s West Coast headquarters in Inglewood. But for two weeks in June, he worked side by side with the creative team that packages game footage and graphics for the NFL Insider television program.
“You walk into this incredible atmosphere,” says Herring, recalling the moment he arrived at the headquarters. “Highlight clips are playing on all the TV monitors, and team branding is hanging everywhere. It was amazing.”
Herring, who will be a sophomore in the fall semester, was one of 20 students selected from a pool of more than 300 applicants for a paid internship in the NFL’s Technical Operations Training Camp. “The other students in my cohort came from all over the country—Louisiana, Virginia, South Carolina,” says Herring. “It was great to meet so many talented people who I know I’ll stay connected with in the future.”
Linda DeYampert is Director of Studio Environmental Health & Safety and a proud Toro. She earned her business degree at CSUDH in 1999 before beginning her long career with the NFL and says the organization has many attractive options for college graduates.
“We are the NFL media group, so we have a lot of behind-the-scenes roles that impact everything we do,” says DeYampert. “These include the control room, our technical operations center, post-production editing, media ingest area, studio facilities, camera operations, graphics, and engineering.”
The Technical Operations Training Camp aims to expose interns to the full range of opportunities by giving them an inside look at what goes into packaging game content for news broadcasts and weekly highlights programs, says DeYampert.
Herring grew up in Sacramento and moved to Los Angeles after a friend suggested that he would have more creative options for a future career.
“A relative of mine also worked with the XFL football league, and I saw how he was able to do some incredible things on the marketing side,” says Herring, who did sports photography in high school.
“Being at CSUDH has really opened things up for me. I’ve been able to intern as photographer and videographer for the Innovation Incubator, and networking at events like the annual South Bay Economic Forum event helped me make important contacts.”
David Ochi is director of the Innovation Incubator, which cultivates entrepreneurship opportunities for underserved students and communities across the South Bay. He said Herring really hit the ground running as an intern.
“What I love about Ty is that he and Johnnell Bragg, another of our interns, came in with a strategy for a better approach to our social media,” says Ochi. “They built a whole calendar and scheduled regular photo and video posts, which was exactly what we needed to boost our engagement on Instagram and across other channels.”
The two-week internship gave Herring a crash course in the fast-paced world of sports news and entertainment, and he says he could see himself working in the industry one day.
“One of the things we learned as interns was the importance of building relationships with our cohort and with people working at the NFL,” says Herring. “The world of sports entertainment is relatively small, and you’re almost certain to cross paths with people down the road when working in this field.
Herring says he doesn’t know yet what career he wants to pursue, but the NFL internship has given him a lot to think about. “I definitely plan on staying connected to the people I met at the NFL,” says Herring. “I would love to get another opportunity to intern in Los Angeles or New York. There’s a lot more to learn.”
