We can’t all be athletes. Even if we have the opportunity to learn, we may not have the athletic ability to make the lessons stick. Judging by the hours of backyard wiffleball I played with my dad, for example, I should have been the shining star of Little League. Unfortunately, hand-eye coordination is a prerequisite for success in baseball (and most other sports involving a ball, for that matter), which kept me squarely out of the game. Like I said, we can’t all be athletes. (I later found my niche in swimming, so don’t feel too sorry for me.)

I’ve already written about some behind-the-scenes sports careers for lovers of the game. But there are other, lesser-known niches available for those who, like me, won’t be picking up a bat and ball anytime soon. Give these careers a test run:

Sport psychologist
Yes, sport psychology is a real science. Sport psychologists help athletes use psychological principles to achieve optimal mental health and improve performance, and they also help clients understand how physical activity affects psychological development, health, and well-being throughout life.

Sport psychologists typically have a doctoral degree in clinical or counseling psychology, with a significant proportion of coursework in sport psychology and related sport sciences. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), median annual earnings of clinical and counseling psychologists were $62,210 in May 2007.

Sports statistician
All those sports stats you’ve got memorized had to come from someone’s calculations. That’s the main job of sports statisticians – to collect and validate data from games. They may also be responsible for identifying newsworthy items of statistical interest for exploratory data analysis.

A bachelor’s degree in statistics, computer science, or math is helpful, but not necessarily required for entry into the field. Unfortunately, most careers in sports statistics are limited to part-time work, according to the American Statistical Association, and generally pay $50 to $100 per game. The best way to get your start is to volunteer your services to a local school team.

Sports lawyer
Sports law doesn’t always involve a scandal. Sports lawyers specialize in issues of antitrust, federal disability discrimination, intellectual property, and labor laws for amateur and professional sports. They often spend a good deal of time in business planning and contract negotiation.

Most lawyers need a bachelor’s degree, a law degree, and a passing score on the bar exam in order to practice, and sports lawyers are no exception. According to the BLS, in May 2007, median annual earnings of lawyers were $106,120.

If you want to keep your hand in the game (and off the field!), play to your strengths – stick to a sport-themed career.

OK, I admit it. I’m not a sports fan. It’s an unpopular position, I know – especially with a major event like the Super Bowl coming up.

I may not know a lot about sports, but I do know a lot about education. And I’m pretty impressed when athletic superstars go the distance with academics, and become fully prepared for careers beyond the field.

So in honor of the upcoming contest of the exalted pigskin, I present a roundup of super-smart and academically minded professional athletes. Let the games begin!

• Recently retired MLB starting pitcher Mike Mussina graduated from Stanford University in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He completed his degree in three years and earned All-American honors for baseball.

• NFL quarterback Chad Pennington graduated from Marshall College in 1999 with a 3.83 GPA and a bachelor’s degree in journalism. In college, he was a Heisman Trophy finalist as well as a finalist for a prestigious Rhodes scholarship.

• NBA power forward/center Emeka Okafor earned his bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Connecticut in 2004. He graduated with honors in three years, with a 3.8 GPA, as an Academic All-American.

Of course, not all professional athletes make it all the way through school. But you’ve got to give props to the ones who take the time to go back and earn their degree:

• NBA center Shaquille O’Neal left Louisiana State University to pursue his pro basketball career, but returned to school and received a bachelor’s degree in general studies in 2000.

• Football legend Joe Namath returned to the University of Alabama in 2007 – 42 years later – to earn his bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies.

• NBA All-Star Vince Carter made it back to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001 to receive his bachelor’s degree in African-American studies.

Honorable mention: Myron Rolle graduated in two-and-a-half years with a pre-med degree from Florida State University. But instead of entering this year’s NFL draft, he’s pursuing a one-year master’s degree in medical anthropology as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University. The aspiring neurosurgeon plans to enter the draft in 2010.

On the flipside, if you’re interested in sports but are a disaster on the field, there are plenty of non-athletic sports careers to choose from, like sports management or broadcast journalism.

Impressive, huh? Maybe I’ll watch more than the commercials on February 1 after all.

Who’s your favorite smart sports star?

-Robyn Tellefsen

It has all the earmarks of a buzzword or business jargon, but call it what you want, career experts in all walks of life say personal branding is vital to today’s career success. So in case you don’t know what it is, I’ll tell you.

Personal branding is all about marketing yourself or creating yourself as a “brand.” What do you stand for? What sets you apart from your competition? What are your unique attributes? How do you represent yourself online and offline?

Here’s another way I like to think of it: If you could give yourself a tagline or slogan, what would it be? Think of it as a witty extension of your job title. I like to say I’m a “higher education writer and blogger extraordinaire,” for instance. An editor friend of mine gets even more creative, calling herself the “content pimp” (although not on formal letterhead, or anything, but you get the idea).

I recently interviewed Frank Schoeneman, CEO of Empire Beauty Schools, the largest provider of cosmetology education in the country, for our sister blog, A Minute With SpaBeautySchools (check it out for some of his great beauty industry tips and quips next week), and he was touting the importance of personal branding.

“You are your own brand. What makes you so special? There are a lot of those people out there who are very good at what they do — that have better skills than you do — but there’s nobody better at being you, than you. If you’re able to develop the people skills to know your product, to know your services, to figure out how and when to apply them to the right customer, your branding has been set.”

Now remember, this is a professional in the beauty industry. Yet in our conversation, we didn’t talk hot hair colors and cosmetology trends — we discussed his mission to help students market themselves. And I think that’s true of all fields these days, which is why more and more colleges and career schools are catching on and teaching this concept to their students. Right now, though, you’ll mainly hear about personal branding offerings in the form of seminars or one-day workshops. But mark my words — you may start hearing about schools offering it as a full-fledged elective course in the near future.

Personal branding guru, Dan Schawbel, has been campaigning this idea for quite some time. He blogs:

“You need to reach across boundaries, in a world where everyone is on the same plane, and you can almost touch hiring managers at companies you want to work for. Don’t send out a 10,000 resume blast because that is just like the 10,000 emails reporters get everyday and they are discounted as spam. The real way to succeed in college is to understand how the internet can be used to get a job or start a business, and then act.”

So how do you want to brand yourself? Think about it, and start doing it ASAP. It can make all the difference, especially in a tight economy.

Just for fun, what would you like your tagline to be?

I’ve been on a few job interviews in my life, and I’ve fielded all the usual questions: Why do you want to work here? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Why did you leave your last job?

But some companies are eager to get beyond the standard rhetoric and capture a true picture of your personality and the way you think. Microsoft, Google, eBay, and Amazon, for instance, have become famous for fun techie interview teasers like these:

• How much does a 747 weigh?
• Why are manhole covers round?
• How many golf balls can fit inside a school bus?
• How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
• Describe a chicken using a programming language.

Even in non-technical work environments, creative questions can arise. Here’s a roundup of 10 wacky job interview questions, along with my own off-the-cuff responses.

1. If you were a superhero, what would your superpower be?
Flight, for sure. I often fly in my dreams (what does this mean??).

2. What would you do if you didn’t have to work?
Exactly what I’m doing now. (wink, wink)

3. Who is your favorite Sesame Street character?
Bert. He’s always getting a raw deal from Ernie, and I like to root for the underdog.

4. List three words that describe your character.
Analytical. Honest. Melancholy.

5. What did you want to be when you were 10 years old?
Once upon a time I was an aspiring actress and singer.

6. What do you do when you lose your passion for something?
I try to plug away until the passion returns. If I make a commitment to something, it’s up to me to honor it, even when it’s unpleasant.

7. If you were a salad, what kind of dressing would you have?
Chipotle. I just like the sound of that word.

8. What would I find in your refrigerator?
Leftovers, leftovers, leftovers. We’re a frugal bunch here, and we like to recycle meals as much as possible. Especially if that means I don’t have to cook…

9. What makes you laugh?
My kids laughing.

10. What is the last book you read?
“The Juvie Three” by Gordon Korman. Perhaps my enduring love of children’s books reflects simplicity of the heart rather than simplicity of the mind. Here’s hoping.

Use these questions to prep for your next job interview, or just for fun like I did here. Happy interviewing!

-Robyn Tellefsen

Pick one or more of the questions above and share your answers in the comments!