Matt Robinson is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health and Human Performance at Baylor University with a degree emphasis in the area of sport pedagogy/sport management. Prior to attending Baylor, Matt garnered sixteen years of experience coaching American football at the collegiate and high school level. During fifteen years at the collegiate level, Matt coached in thirty-five NCAA national playoff games, and led teams to 11 conference championships, the 1998 NCAA division II National Championship, and the 2004 NCAA Division III National Runner-up. While coaching, Matt mentored many young people in the ways of servant leadership believing servant leadership to have an important place in sport and life.
Matt made his first academic presentation on servant leadership at the Inaugural Global Congress for Sport and Christianity 2016 in York, England which was attended by delegates from around the world. The presentation was titled “Servant Leadership in Coaching: Toward a Practical Understanding”. He followed with presentations at the conference of the Texas Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance in Galveston, TX and the Applied Sport Management Conference in Baton Rouge, LA. In the presentations, Matt presented the concept of servant leadership and suggested practices for teaching undergraduate and graduate students in sport pedagogy and sport management how to develop servant leadership qualities.
Recently, Matt submitted an educational review on servant leadership in sport to the Sport Management Education Journal. The manuscript has been reviewed, is currently undergoing minor revisions, and will hopefully be published within the next year. In the manuscript, the author offers an explanation of servant leadership and a timeline of servant leadership research. Additionally, an original model is presented for the purposes of understanding servant leadership dynamics in sport and recommendations for teaching activities are provided.
Matt and his wife, Michelle, celebrated their 20th anniversary last year. They have two beautiful children, Will (12 years) and Delia (7 years). As an advocate for servant leadership, Matt is hopeful that an increase in empirical attention on servant leadership in the area of sport will bring to light its many benefits and that servant leadership might become more widely accepted as a viable and effective model of which sport managers and coaches should be aware and utilize.