Bob Baffert, Todd Pletcher schooled in business side at Arizona

ELMONT, N.Y. — Bob Baffert and Todd Pletcher, the two primary human figures in Saturday's Belmont Stakes, have almost been omnipresent in major races from coast-to-coast over the last 15 years. Their barns annually churn out multiple prospects for the Triple Crown, and they have ranked among the top three trainers in North American earnings every year since 2009.

But Baffert and Pletcher have something else in common: Degrees from the University of Arizona and a passion for Wildcats basketball.

Though it is barely known outside of the racing world, Arizona's Race Track Industry Program — the only one of its kind in the U.S. — has pollinated every level of the sport with its graduates. Its alumni list includes racing secretaries, track managers, simulcast coordinators, racehorse auction company presidents, breeding farm executives and even the race and sports book supervisor of a major Las Vegas casino.

But its two best-known graduates will go head-to-head Saturday when Baffert brings American Pharoah to Belmont Park with a chance to become racing's 12th Triple Crown winner, while Pletcher tries to keep that accomplishment vacant for a 37th consecutive year with Materiality and Madefromlucky.

"It is a small niche program and kind of always has been," said program director Doug Reed, who has worked at Arizona since 1994. "There are a lot of well-known executives on the racing industry side, but they don't get the publicity and TV time that Baffert and Pletcher do. Bob was wearing his U of A hat during Derby week, and we got inundated with calls."

In many ways, their educational backgrounds cut against stereotypes commonly associated with horsemen, many of whom entered the business as teenagers and worked their way up from low-level jobs like cleaning out stalls or walking hots.

Pletcher, whose father Jake was a trainer on the Midwest circuit, said he would have likely gone straight to work without his parents' insistence on getting a college education. Pat Pope, then the racing secretary at Louisiana Downs and a graduate of the Arizona program, suggested he check out Tucson.

"I had already decided I wanted to train horses for a living, so it made sense to go to a college that at least had something to do with the industry," Pletcher said. "I flew out to Tucson in December of my senior year, and if you've been there that time of year, it's a pretty nice place to be.

"Having grown up on the backside, you kind of know this part of it, but the cool thing about the program at Arizona is a lot of it is frontside management, and it gives you a little different perspective on how that operates."

Baffert, who grew up two hours south of Tucson on the border in Nogales, also knew early on he wanted to train horses. But his decision to attend Arizona had less to do with the program – which was just getting off the ground when he entered college – and was instead based on proximity.

"That was the only option to go up there. It was either that or (Arizona State) — and we don't like ASU," Baffert quipped. "The racetrack management program, they had just brought it in so I took some of those courses. It was fun and all that, but in the back of my mind I wanted to be a horse trainer.

"I had to go to school because of my mother. She had to make sure we graduated. She always said when I started training horses, 'When are you going to get a real job?'"

The potential for getting a so-called "real job" is exactly why the program was created in the early 1970s by a group of executives who noticed the lack of people in the industry with degrees. They pitched the idea to several major universities, but Arizona's school of agriculture was the only one to express interest — even though there's no major Thoroughbred track in the state.

Now, Reed says the program typically has somewhere around 45 students per year and three full-time faculty members with 70 percent of its budget coming from industry sources. There is also a strong emphasis on placing students in summer internships, one of which sent Pletcher, who graduated in 1989, to Hall of Fame trainer Charlie Whittingham's barn.

"It was pretty cool to spend the summer working for one of the most famous trainers in history and get college credits," Pletcher said.

Though it would be difficult to teach someone to train Thoroughbreds in a classroom — experience and feel for the horses is still the most important part of the job — many students take courses in equine nutrition and physicology in addition to learning about the business side of the racetrack.

Asked why someone who wants to be a trainer would benefit from the program, Reed pointed to the marketing and organizational skills it takes to build a major operation like Pletcher, whose horses won a combined $22.4 million last year. A few other up-and-coming trainers, including West Coast-based Phil D'Amato, also have degrees from Arizona.

"Go to Todd Pletcher's web site and scroll around and tell me he's not running a business," Reed said.

That attitude represents a significant shift in the way people build careers in horse racing, according to University of Louisville professor Tim Capps, whose equine industry program is similar in some ways to Arizona's but is not specifically geared toward the horse racing industry.

Capps said when he came to Kentucky in the 1970s to work for The Jockey Club and would visit big breeding operations, the only people who typically had college degrees were the farm manager and the veterinarian.

"If you walked around a major farm in central Kentucky right now, you'd find a number of people with degrees and I think it speaks to the specialization of the industry," Capps said. "A lot of the younger trainers you run into today got an undergraduate degree in animal sciences. At the same time they got the horse disease and decided this is what they wanted to try, but they wanted the degree anyway because who knows where life would take them."

It also allows them to have something resembling a normal growing-up experience, which is often missed at the racetrack because of the unique lifestyle requiring early mornings, 365-day care for the horses and moving from city to city to chase purses.

Though he's not sure it gave him an edge training horses, Pletcher said the opportunity to do simple things like being a member of a fraternity would have been lost on him had he not gone to college. He said his teenage son Payton, who is considering following in his father's footsteps, will likely consider attending Arizona.

"You have to learn how to balance your life out a little bit and be organized and detail-oriented," Pletcher said. "If nothing else it's sort of an important time to mature and grow and do some of the fun stuff you don't get to do when you go to work full-time."

It also turned Pletcher and Baffert into college sports fans who maintain a connection with the powerful Arizona basketball program. Pletcher has hosted former coach Lute Olson as a guest at the Kentucky Derby and has invited current coach Sean Miller, whom he met when the Wildcats played at Madison Square Garden two seasons ago.

"I have a little bit of a texting relationship with Lute," Pletcher said. "That's pretty cool because he's a hero."

Baffert has an even closer relationship with Olson and even named a horse in his honor: Midnight Lute, who won the Eclipse Award as champion sprinter in 2007. Baffert attended Arizona's Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games with Olson in Los Angeles during the most recent NCAA Tournament but said he has also in more recent years developed an affinity for UCLA football.

The niece of his wife, Jill Baffert, dates UCLA senior center Jake Brendel, who was part of their Kentucky Derby entourage.

"I've really become sort of a UCLA fan being right there at the Rose Bowl. I try to make all the games," Baffert said. "And Oregon, to me, is like watching American Pharoah. He's like Mariota. He's just so entertaining and that's what really catches people's eye about American Pharoah. When he's on his game, he's entertaining."