From the time he suited up for his high school football team in Malden, Massachusetts, Andrew Brown, BS ’12 set his sights on a career in professional sports. Although he wasn’t destined to be a National Football League (NFL) player, Andrew was determined to find another path to the field.

Andrew, who majored in economics, belonged to an early cohort of the College of Arts & Sciences Honors Program. Honors membership was decisive in his choosing to attend Suffolk. To this day, Andrew is grateful for the recognition: "It gave me confidence that I could succeed at Suffolk and whatever I wanted to do after that." He recalls the rigor of his economics classes, especially how his training in statistics paved the way for different career tracks. His Honors thesis focused on NFL teams’ strategies for drafting young players—a project that anticipated where he would wind up professionally.

Camaraderie among Honors participants was a major benefit for Andrew. During his freshman year, he lived in Miller Hall with other Honors students. They grew into a tightly knit group that cohered throughout Andrew’s Suffolk years. While studying abroad in Monaco, Andrew met up with an Honors peer, Chris Faucher, and they toured Europe—and that same friend later was a groomsman at Andrew’s wedding.

Andrew's first job was as a financial planner at VALIAN Advisers. Next, at Tufts University, he served as a budget analyst. While on the job, he earned a master’s degree in Sports Administration from Boston College. Subsequently, he networked intensively with all 32 NFL franchises—and landed a minimum wage internship at the Houston Texans.

The internship paid off handsomely when the Texans hired Andrew as Coordinator of Football Administration and later promoted him to Director, and then Senior Director, of that office. Andrew’s role is crucial in the complex business of player evaluation and contract negotiations—a highly specialized line of work dramatized in the film and book, Moneyball. Andrew applies the skills he gained at Suffolk to analyze factors that can affect a player’s future performance. Finally, he arrives at an estimate of a player’s economic value to the team, i.e., his "opportunity cost."

Andrew routinely parleys with players, agents, lawyers, and others concerned with athletes’ careers. It’s a high stakes exercise that determines a franchise’s economic viability and on-the-field success. He comments that "building a team is like solving a big puzzle. There are only 53 slots for players—and we have to make it work within the salary cap."

Andrew concludes, "It took me a long time to get here—so I’ll never take a dream job like this for granted."