Constance Schwartz-Morini Built a Powerhouse Sports Career on Losses, Lessons, and Leverage

Reported by Women's Health Magazine.

Constance Schwartz-Morini negotiated her first deal in high school — not a recording contract or an endorsement, but an exit from frog dissection. Her biology teacher doubled as the bowling coach, and Constance, a competitive bowler since age 10, offered a trade: join the team, skip the scalpel. Terms accepted. "I literally negotiated my first NIL deal, I guess," she says. It sounds like a punchline, but it was actually a preview — of the strategic instincts that would eventually help her cofound SMAC Entertainment, the bicoastal talent management and production powerhouse she built alongside Michael Strahan in 2011, according to Women's Health Magazine.

Her path there was anything but linear. She grew up playing T-ball in Yonkers, moved to softball through high school, competed in track and softball at Greek Orthodox Youth of America games at Syracuse every Memorial Day. Sports, she says, taught her the thing business schools rarely put on a syllabus: how to lose. "Do I get every deal I want? No. Does it sting? Yes. But you've got to take the loss just like you celebrate the win." She was never the star — she was the player who crouched lower to shrink the strike zone, the one who understood that her role, however small, was still a role worth playing.

From the NFL to SMAC

She entered the NFL as an assistant in 1991, worked her way up to director of television programming, and launched the league's entertainment marketing division — booking Super Bowl talent, often trading access to the spectacle itself as currency. A stint at a record company led her to LA and The Firm, where she eventually became lead manager for Snoop Dogg, steering his brand through a decade of evolution and into major commercial partnerships. When that chapter closed, she didn't pivot — she built. SMAC now represents a roster that includes Erin Andrews, Diana Flores, Nikki and Brie Garcia, and Deion Sanders, spanning Hall of Famers, Heisman winners, broadcasters, and entrepreneurs.

Fifteen years in, Constance says the thing she protects most fiercely isn't market share — it's culture. Many of her team members have been with her since their first jobs. "I always wanted this to be a place people enjoyed coming to. Ideas don't only come from the top." On mentorship, she doesn't frame it as obligation: "It's just in my DNA. If one conversation can change someone's outlook, it's worth it." And on an industry that still runs, in places, like a boys' club? She's not complaining. She's buying the building.

The lesson Constance Schwartz-Morini keeps proving, deal after deal: the people who learn to lose well are usually the ones who end up winning biggest.

Read the original at Women's Health Magazine.