Fulbright: The Missing Link Between College Sport and Global Education

In September 2021, I wrote a blog titled “F is for Fulbright.” 

At the time, Fulbright represented something I felt I had missed. 

I never studied abroad as an undergraduate and for years that absence followed me into new professional roles, doctoral coursework, and individual moments of reflection. 

I didn’t feel regret in the traditional sense. However, it was a quiet awareness that I missed out on a global, inimitable experience.

I share this context because it shaped the work I would later lead.

In 2025, I served as a consultant supporting the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. My specific focus was on expanding awareness and access for college athletes. More specifically, my role was to examine how Fulbright intersected with college athletics and to design strategies to close any gaps through education, programming, and partnerships.

My consultancy experience fundamentally changed how I think about Fulbright, sport diplomacy, and the role college athletics can play in global education.

Let’s walk.

College athletes are rarely positioned as Fulbright candidates.

The program is often framed as something reserved for students with uninterrupted academic timelines, traditional research trajectories, and maximal flexibility after graduation. Athletes do not always fit that mold neatly and as a result, they are frequently excluded from the conversation and recruitment altogether. 

But let me be very clear – This exclusion is not about ability or readiness.

It is about systems, assumptions, and institutional priorities.

In reality, college athletes bring many of the very qualities Fulbright seeks. They are extremely disciplined, naturally curious, and deeply relational. They are accustomed to representing something larger than themselves and navigate cultural differences. 

Athletes are already practicing diplomacy, even if we as educators, administrators, and faculty do not name it as such.

In college sport, diplomacy is not abstract. It unfolds through sustained person to person interaction across nationality, race, language, and culture. Locker rooms, training facilities, and competition spaces function as environments where athletes continuously negotiate identity, belonging, and representation.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is designed to advance this same work at a global scale. Its mission centers on fostering mutual understanding through cross-cultural exchange. When athletes teach, research, or study abroad through Fulbright, they extend the diplomatic work already embedded in sport. They carry sport with them as a shared language, a point of connection, and a bridge across difference.

Preparing athletes for Fulbright is one pathway to this work, but the broader opportunity is systemic. Fulbright offers a globally recognized framework that allows colleges and universities to formalize, strengthen, and extend the person to person exchange already happening in college sport beyond the campus.

Over time, my reflection on Fulbright evolved into my work through Walk With TFB, where I focus on building pathways at the intersection of sport, education, and global mobility.

As part of my Fulbright consultancy, I shared this work publicly at national conferences, including the Black Student-Athlete Summit and the Forum on Education Abroad. 

Those spaces confirmed something critical. 

Athletes were deeply interested in Fulbright and international educators were genuinely excited about engaging them. Yet the connection between the two remained underdeveloped. Introducing Fulbright to athletes requires deliberate institutional collaboration across athletics, international education, and advising structures. Historically, this collaboration has largely been fractured.

Presentation at the 2025 Black Student-Athlete Summit

I also spoke directly with former NCAA athletes who went on to become Fulbrighters.

Their perspectives reinforced what I was observing across institutions. Fulbright was transformative for them, but the pathway was seldom clear while they were competing. Many former NCAA athletes described discovering Fulbright late in their college careers or navigating the process without structured athletic department support.

Their success occurred despite the system, not because of it.

This skepticism surfaced in other ways as well. In conversations with athlete development professionals, I listened to uncertainty about whether Fulbright would generate sufficient interest among college athletes or feel applicable to their work. Sport diplomacy was acknowledged as valuable in theory, yet Fulbright itself was often perceived as too niche, too academic, or too far removed from the realities of college athlete development.

I took those concerns seriously.

In fact, they sharpened my understanding of current challenges and reinforced the need for clearer translation, stronger institutional alignment, and programming that meets athletes and practitioners where they are.

As a college athlete development educator myself, I understand where those professionals are coming from. 

College sport is operating under immense pressure. Revenue generation, commercialization, NIL, media rights, and competitive success dominate daily decision making. In this environment, international education and global learning are often treated as luxuries rather than necessities.

But this framing is a grave mistake.

Global engagement and international education in college sport has long been viewed as a “nice to have,” instead of something essential to the mission of athlete development. When budgets tighten or priorities shift, global learning is often the first thing framed as optional or worse, non-essential. This mindset limits how athletes are prepared for a world that is undeniably global and reinforces a narrow definition of development tied almost exclusively to competition and revenue.

International education should not take a backseat in college athletics. It should be leveraged as a return on investment. Global experiences help athletes build cultural fluency, adaptability, communication skills, and a global mindset that directly translate to competitiveness in the workforce. 

We’ve seen the NCAA commercials. 

We know that approximately 98 percent of college athletes will go pro in something other than sports. Preparing them for that reality is not a distraction from athletic success. It is a responsibility.

TFB at the 2025 NAFSA Convention

One theme that did emerge through this work is that private Division III institutions have often been more effective at introducing Fulbright to college athletes. In many cases, this is less about resources and more about proximity. Closer coordination between athletics, faculty, and Scholarship and Fellowship Offices has made global opportunities more visible for athletes.

I share this success because it shows this work is already happening. 

College athletes securing Fulbright awards is very much possible.

At the same time, the opportunity within Division I and II athletics is significant. 

Regardless of competitive level, a universal truth across college sport is that athlete development is centered on preparing athletes for life after competition. With greater scale, visibility, and reach, Division I and II programs are uniquely positioned to integrate globally recognized pathways like Fulbright into academic advising and athlete development programming that can transform outcomes for athletes at scale.

But this work does necessitate clearer institutional bridges. 

Scholarship and Fellowship Offices cannot assume college athletes will find their way to these opportunities on their own. Athletic departments cannot be expected to know the full fellowship landscape without support. In many cases, athletic departments are rightly focused on NCAA and conference grants, which play an important role for college athletes. However, this focus can unintentionally limit awareness of globally competitive fellowships like Fulbright.

Scholarship and Fellowship Offices should be proactively reaching out to athletics to introduce their work, timelines, and advising capacity. College sport administrators, reach out to your scholarship office. These relationships matter and are often the missing link between interest and applying.

In response to these gaps, I built an athlete-focused Fulbright resource guide as part of my consultancy. 

The goal was not to create a workaround, but to offer a proof of concept. The guide reframed athletes as strong, competitive candidates, addressed practical barriers directly, and equipped institutions to support athletes intentionally rather than incidentally. This report is now helping to inform Fulbright’s outreach and recruitment efforts, as well as ongoing work to better understand and share the long-term impact of Fulbright for former NCAA athletes.

Looking back at the September 2021 version of myself who wrote “F is for Fulbright,” I see someone naming an aspiration. 

In 2026, I now understand that Fulbright represents something larger. 

Fulbright is a pathway, a platform, and a responsibility.

The “F” in my name still stands for Fulbright. 

Today, it also stands for the future of college sport, international education, and diplomacy.

Thank you Dan, Lee, Andra, and Lora for the opportunity to lead!

The 2025 consultancy was just the beginning.

We ain’t done yet.

It’s happening. We walking!

TFB