How one marketing executive is turning stories about championship sports teams into victories for his own company.

By Matt Steinmetz

Champaign, Ill.-based Sports Publishing LLC got its start in 1998 as a spin-off from Sagamore Publishing—publisher of parks, recreation and leisure textbooks—when the company published a biography of University of Illinois men’s basketball coach Lou Henson, a legend among basketball fans throughout the Midwest. The book was an instant hit, and a new company was born. Today, Sports Publishing puts out 80 titles annually, spanning college and professional teams and star athletes in almost a dozen sports.