“This class was like no other I’ve taken at USC,” said Elijah Patterson, a business administration major at USC Marshall. “We developed a real product for a real company, and in the process, sharpened our skills in content strategy, editorial decision-making and creative collaboration.”
As a junior, Patterson was looking for a class that would push him beyond lectures and readings. He found it at USC Annenberg in a new directed research class, a hands-on opportunity to help shape the future of a rising digital media startup.
Through USC Annenberg’s “think tank” course model, Patterson and 11 other students partnered with OffBall, a platform dedicated to elevating stories and conversations at the intersection of sports and culture. Over the course of the semester, students became active collaborators in the company’s evolution — contributing to editorial decisions, developing a new campus media product and pitching a strategy that could soon roll out nationwide.
Launched in September 2024, OffBall curates standout stories, trends and commentary from across the sports culture landscape through its homepage, newsletters and social media channels. As co-founders Michaela Hammond and Christian Stone looked to grow the brand’s presence among college audiences, they turned to USC Annenberg and its enterprise-driven course model to help explore what that could look like.
Through this experiential learning framework, students actively contribute to real-world solutions for companies while faculty bridge academic theory with professional practice. Industry partners, in turn, gain valuable insight, creativity and consumer instincts from their target audiences that often lead to new product ideas, audience strategies and talent pipelines.
The class was co-taught by Stone, who also serves as OffBall’s editor-in-chief, and Matt Dianella, head of brand communications, content and programming at Red Bull Media House. Together, they designed the course as both a behind-the-scenes look at OffBall’s editorial process and an open invitation for students to contribute to its future direction.
“Early on, we had our OffBall editors give students a front-row seat to how they hand select content that offers the best of sports and culture without relying on aggregation and AI,” Stone said. “We expected students to just observe the process, but instead they became active participants in updating the website: choosing stories, writing headlines and selecting photos.”
Stone added that students’ real-time feedback on what resonated with them helped OffBall fine-tune its editorial voice for their target demographic (ages 18-24).
For journalism major Shruthi Narayanan, seeing her ideas live on OffBall’s homepage the next day was a defining moment. “It felt really good to provide our input and feel like we were a vital part of the process,” she said.
In addition to offering a window into OffBall’s editorial engine, Dianella and Stone challenged students to consider how the brand might translate to the USC community. While students initially explored a range of formats — from social media accounts to in-person events — they ultimately proposed a student-produced newsletter as the most direct and resonant medium for their peers. That decision was informed in part by early assignments that required students to create their own version of a newsletter as well as analyze successful newsletters they subscribed to.
“We started out by asking students to make their own version of a newsletter and expected some bullet points in a Google Doc,” Stone said. “Every single one of them turned in something that was fully formed and designed using platforms like Canva or Figma. The whole class just intuitively demonstrated that they had that enterprise gene in them.”
The students’ strong initiative led the instructors to begin product prototyping earlier than planned, resulting in OffBall@SC, a weekly newsletter with a USC-specific identity and a tone described as “for the students, by the students.” The prototype offered OffBall a scalable model for localized campus content, tested by its intended audience.
To bring the concept to life, Dianella and Stone organized the students into three core teams — writers, editors and creatives — with peer-nominated captains leading each group. Writers selected stories, crafted headlines and wrote short blurbs; editors created the structure and flow of each issue; and creatives handled visual design and layout.
“It felt like we were our own company,” said Patterson, who led the editing team, and is pursuing a minor in sports media industries at USC Annenberg. “We developed the newsletter's setup and topics while constantly communicating with each other to find a way to deliver a final product.”
Dianella and Stone fostered a collaborative environment where students learned from one another just as much as they learned from faculty. Drawing on their diverse majors, including journalism, communication, business and public relations, as well as experiences as student-athletes and interns with organizations like the L.A. Clippers, UFC, L.A. Rams and USC Athletics, the students helped shape a shared vision for the project.
“One of the key tenets to our approach was just listening and leaning into all the perspectives students brought to the table,” said Dianella, who earned his BA in communication from USC Annenberg in 2002. “We wanted to go beyond just the philosophy and theory, and allow them to gain real, hands-on experience.”
The semester concluded with a simulated investor meeting, where students pitched their vision for OffBall@SC to members of OffBall’s leadership and advisory teams, with a potential launch planned for Fall 2025.
Ayonnah Tinsley, who served as editor-in-chief for the project, spearheaded the final presentation and helped bring together the team’s creative and strategic work into a cohesive pitch.
“Not only was it a class project that I got to add to my resume, but it felt like the perfect full circle moment to my sports career at USC,” said Tinsley, who graduated in May with a bachelor’s in arts, technology and the business of innovation from the USC Iovine and Young Academy. “I went from barely understanding how football works my junior year to writing about it for class, to spearheading a presentation about USC's newest sports outlet. I'll always remember how cool it felt to be editor-in-chief for a semester.”
Co-founder Hammond said the students delivered above and beyond expectations, providing OffBall with a student-vetted content strategy and a clearer path toward national campus expansion.
“This class represents the next generation of creators and thought leaders we need to lead the sports and culture dialogue forward,” she said. “Their work was not only innovative, but inspiring — and it gave us real ideas and talent to help shape OffBall’s next chapter.”
For Narayanan, the experience cemented her interest in content strategy and gave her confidence.
“Understanding what it means to build something from scratch is exactly the kind of future-proof skill that I’m going to need in the digital content space,” she said.
Patterson also looked to his future as he expanded his professional network with each guest speaker in the class, eventually forging an especially meaningful connection with Mason Burgin, OffBall’s vice president of content strategy.
“Mason’s career path is basically the exact thing that I want to do,” Patterson said. “It’s great to connect with others that are in the field and see there is a way to get to what you want.”
Innovative, immersive coursework is at the heart of USC Next Level Sports — a joint initiative between USC Annenberg and USC Marshall that is redefining how we prepare students for careers in the global sports industry. Through real-world collaborations, cross-disciplinary learning and future-facing curricula, we’re positioning USC as the premier hub for the academic study of the dynamic future of sport.
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