Love of Journalism Led Alum to Found a Sports Agency

Jack Jensen directs a video shoot
Jack Jensen ’09 started The Rec League, a production company that works directly with brands, artists and athletes to build authentic creative content. Photos courtesy of Jack Jensen.

SOJC alum Jack Jensen ’09 says his passion for sports and journalism inspired him to start his own sports creative agency.

By Sophie Fowler, class of ’26

Sports have always been important in Jack Jensen’s life. A former high jumper on the University of Oregon’s Track and Field Team and an avid Ducks and Nuggets fan, Jensen ’09 knew from a young age that he was heading toward a career in sports.

“Sports have been the biggest thing in my life,” Jensen said. “They teach you everything you need to learn in terms of working as a team and having individual responsibility.”

Today Jensen is a founder, writer and film director at The Rec League, a sports creative agency he started after graduating with a journalism degree from the UO School of Journalism and Communication (SOJC).

Passion for advertising planted seeds for creative sports agency

Two things brought Jensen to the UO — journalism and high jump. But halfway through his studies at the SOJC, Jensen developed a passion for advertising.

“I wanted to go to Oregon to be a sportswriter and then found advertising later -– around junior year,” Jensen said. “That opened a few new doors to utilize creativity and writing differently. Looking back, it was the best decision I ever made to go to the University of Oregon.”

Jack Jensen completes a high jump during a University of Oregon track meet
Jack Jensen ’09, a former Duck high jumper, merged his passion for sports with his interest in marketing, public relations and journalism. 

Once Jensen graduated, he sent a letter to every basketball publication he could find until he got his first job as a writer at Dime magazine. After he started working at Dime, he landed a job as a writer at 72andSunny, a global creative company in Los Angeles.

“I worked both jobs at the same time,” Jensen said. “So during the day, I would work at 72andSunny, and all night, I would work on Dime, and that was for multiple years,” Jensen said.

After years of moonlighting, Jensen started to feel that the people working on the creative side of sports accounts at agencies were generally not as passionate as he was about sports. He wanted to change that, which is how he got the idea to create The Rec League. It launched in 2018.

His dream was a sports agency that would be authentic in its work and approach the job from a fan’s perspective.

The Rec League's early days

In 2016, Jensen and his roommate Trent Ubben came up with an idea for a sports-focused creative company that would be different.

“We went into it open to just what it could become,” Jensen said. “It was really just about learning, finding an opportunity and taking a risk.”

Jensen and Ubben started working out of Jensen’s Los Angeles apartment, shooting short films with no money, permits or clients. Their main hope was to tell stories for brands, athletes and fans.

After years of working two jobs, late nights and a lot of pick-up basketball games, the team finally landed clients and eventually became a full-service creative agency in 2018. Their production company works directly with brands, artists and athletes to build authentic creative content for clients and fans.

“We just continued to try to look at opportunities and build them and try to do more with every opportunity we’ve been given and just see where that leads,” Jensen said.

Now they work with a range of big-name clients, including EA Sports, Underdog, Premier League, Amazon/Thursday Night Football, On and the Denver Nuggets.

For EA Sports, The Rec League worked on a promotion to relaunch College Football 25, a video game that’s been on hiatus for the past 10 years. The game allows players to play as their favorite college teams. When the relaunch announcement was released, it immediately went viral. The video got over 50 million views on social media. Jensen was able to get Ducks fans and alumni on the creative side to help out with the announcement.

“That went crazy online, and it was really fun,” Jensen said. “And we got some Ducks on our side that joined in on it. So we tried to sneak Oregon in (the announcement) as much as possible. That was pretty cool from just a geeking-out fan perspective.”

Reflecting on his time at the SOJC

Jensen is grateful for Allen Hall, the opportunities to network, taking advantage of faculty office hours and meeting so many like-minded individuals during his time at the SOJC. 

Jack Jensen shows his camera screen to another person
Jack Jensen ’09 got his start by shooting short films with no money, permits or clients with his roommate Trent Ubben. They eventually built a sports marketing agency called The Rec League. 

“I loved being on campus. I loved being in Allen Hall,” Jensen said. “There’s opportunity everywhere — networking is a huge thing. Be good to all. You never know where a contact or a friend goes in sports.”

Jensen’s advice for anyone who wants to get involved in sports is to make sure you love it.

“If you want to work in sports, you know there’s not just one path to it,” Jensen said. “You don’t need to be a pro player; you don’t have to have a certain pedigree. But you have to love it. You have to want to be involved. You have to want to be interested in it because it means so much to so many people.”

Sophie Fowler, class of ’26, is a third-year journalism major with a minor in multimedia. She is a member of the Clark Honors College and an intern with GoDucks Media, the SOJC Communications Office and TrackTown USA. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.