If you’re a sports fan, there’s a good chance you thought about all the changes you would make to a team if you were in charge.

 

You definitely would not have signed Barry Zito to a seven-year, $126 million dollar deal. You would have drafted Aaron Rogers instead of Alex Smith with that first pick. The Chris Paul-to-the-Lakers trade was totally your idea. If you think like this, chances are you’ve probably spent some time perusing team websites to see who might be willing to hire you and train you to become the talented general manager you know you’ll be someday.

 

Every year, college kids line up in droves to try and work for every MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL team out there—and if you’re reading this column there’s a good chance you’re among that horde—so I thought I might be able to impart to you, dear reader, a little wisdom from my past experiences. For two years, I was one of the lucky few kids who had an internship with a pro sports team (an NFL team), and there are some things you should know before you consider applying for a job in pro sports.

 

For every pro sports team in every league, employment opportunities are limited at best. There are a couple jobs available with every team in the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, but there’s a couple of catches. The first one is that you have to know someone in the organization to get a job there. It’s close to impossible to get a job if you don’t know somebody who already works for the team. Teams always tell you they had several thousand applications for just five positions (or something like that), so the only way to pick from among that group is to pick those who have connections.

 

The next thing that’s not so good about working for a pro sports team is the pay. Simply put, it’s not very good. Like, terrible. This is mostly because most teams don’t pay their interns—they offer internships in exchange for college credit, not monetary compensation. Personally, I’ve always felt that if a front office offers you college credit instead of money, they’re exploiting you—they’re getting free labor, and a lot of it. For example, the typical workweek during an NFL training camp is between 60 and 80 hours a week.

 

That said, I can’t blame them for not paying their employees well—it’s good economics on their part. When supply rapidly outstrips demand, they know they don’t have to offer much compensation in return. Because so many kids would cut off their left hand for a chance to work for the St. Louis Cardinals or the New York Jets, they can offer next to nothing and still get thousands of applications for those jobs.

 

Despite the crummy aspects of working in pro sports, the perks are outstanding—they make the long hours and low pay all worth it. You get more team gear than one person could ever wear, free food, and the ability to walk around everywhere in a pro stadium, even on game days. Sometimes, teams will even give their regular employees access to the players’ weight room. It’s hard not to feel like a boss when you roll around a stadium during a game rocking a walkie-talkie with an earpiece (like you’re in the secret service, so legit) while you’re decked out in official team clothes.

 

The best perk has to be the food, because you get to eat at the same cafeteria that the players do, and teams go all out to make sure their multimillion-dollar investments are well fed. Did I mention that you also get to rub elbows with those players every day? It’s pretty cool to walk by an All-Star player every time you walk down the hall.

 

So if you’ve gotten to the end of this column and aren’t sure whether or not you should apply to work in the world of sports, I’ll give you one final piece of advice—do it. It’s a lot of hours and grunt work for not much pay, but you won’t find a job anywhere else that is more fun and will make all your friends jealous. And who knows: If you’re really lucky, you might get Jonah Hill to play you in a movie someday.

 

Jack Blanchat is among the few lucky ones, having interned with the Houston Texans. Ask him how he did it at blanchat “at” stanford.edu or follow him on Twitter “at” jmblanchat.