As professionals in the sports world it is often assumed that we do nothing and just play games all day.

It is quite the opposite actually. The behind-the-scenes work that goes into making things look fluid on the sporting field takes a great deal of work.

It is time-consuming, strenuous and even sometimes mundane work with its personnel sometimes forsaking their personal lives to make sure that those being entertained and informed are allotted with everything they need to enjoy their experience.

There are perks to working in the field of sports ? most notably, working in sports ? but the hours that these often alluded to “dream jobs” require means the workforce in the sporting world need special individuals who understand what it takes to prosper.

Though a pup in the grand scheme, I have seen through my experiences over the past years just what kind of people that really means.

It takes people who are willing to go out of town for a week and work 75-100-plus hour weeks to make a tournament go smoothly, and then do the same when they get back to the office.

It takes individuals who are willing to go to sleep at 1 a.m. after a 15-hour day just to have it all start over again the next day.

Most importantly, for those that think that working in sports is the ultimate: it takes people willing to work a lot of hours for a paycheck (for the most part) that some would deem despicable just because they want to work in sports for a living.

This is why although there may be a plethora of philosophies that surround the sports world, surmising work in sports is simple and can be said in a few simple words ? “working in sport is the ends, and not the means.”

One such person that fully understands and puts this thought process to his everyday life is Senior Associate Commissioner Geoff Cabe of the Southern Conference.

Cabe understands fluidly that he is lucky to do what he does for a living because many people would love to fill his shoes, and daily work to do thusly.

The senior member of the Southern Conference staff, Cabe is the personification of your paradoxical new age leader in what has increasingly become the so-called “customer century,” due to the fact that he is as much of a hard-working, goal oriented individual as he is a humble, take-the-spotlight-off-me kind of leader.

Despite this particular paradoxical blend, Cabe is an individual that obviously can get it done as a leader since he has held interim commissioner status two times over his tenure with the Southern Conference.

The UNC Asheville graduate has been with the conference almost his entire working life, starting with the conference in 1988-89 as a media relations intern.

Since his initial start with the SoCon in 1988, Cabe has served in myriad different capacities for the conference, working as the media relations director from 1991-95 before moving on to the championships department from 1995-99.

Cabe’s official title since 2002 has been Senior Associate Commissioner, where he pretty much presides over the entire operations of the conference, managing the Southern Conference’s championships, public affairs, awards, marketing, promotions, merchandising, licensing and electronic media efforts.

The man responsible for directing the SoCon’s Men’s Basketball tournament every year also understands that he is extremely lucky in the fact that, while he may work seven days a week sometimes, he is still working in sports for a living.

“We (people in the sports industry) are very fortunate to do what we do for a living,” notes Cabe, ... because those seven days a week may include four days of going to watch a baseball tournament and getting the chance to watch the caliber of baseball at the championship we have.

“That first Wednesday of the baseball tournament I always realize how fortunate I am to work in the athletics industry because it is a Wednesday afternoon at 2 p.m. when most people are cramped up in a desk, and here I am about to watch four baseball games for my job. That is pretty nice.”

A great deal of the fortitude that Cabe takes with him for his role with the Southern Conference probably comes from his past, particularly of the sporting variety since he is of the ilk that all of our sporting experiences help to make us who we are and, more importantly, define who we have become due to the lessons that you learn through sport.

A four-sport letterman in high school, the Highlands, NC native was an All-Western North Carolina honorable mention basketball selection who happens to have his jersey retired at the site of the majority of his exploits on the court, Highlands High School.

As aforementioned, the humble Cabe would rather not talk about the honor though since, as he puts it, “he played high school in a real small conference and he was not in the most talent rich area in the nation.”

Cabe does at least acknowledge how special the honor is in its own context, though articulating that he had no grand illusion that he was going to revolutionize the point guard position at any point.

Cabe may not have been a world changer on the basketball court, but he has meant a great deal to the conference that has been his home for almost 17 years and that is an end unto itself.