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Jason Martin entered the University of South Carolina’s sport and entertainment management program hoping to become the next Jerry Maguire, the mythical superagent. Instead, like most people trying to break into the sports industry, he is looking at years of low-paying, unglamorous jobs like selling ads, tickets and hot dogs.

That, of course, assumes he can find a job. In January, he started a four-month unpaid internship at the Family Circle Cup, a women’s tennis tournament, helping sponsors place their ads. He hoped his internship would lead to a salaried job.

Not this year. Because of the recession, Martin, who graduated this month with thousands of other sports management majors across the country, is continuing his job search at home in Virginia. If no full-time work turns up by September, he will enroll in a master’s degree program.

“Graduate school is definitely Plan B,” said Martin, 21, who is working this summer as a swimming coach. “My original intention was to get a job, but with the economy, there’s so many people who just graduated who can’t even get a cup of coffee with a prospective employer.”

For decades, the sports industry has been largely impervious to the economic cycle. Through booms and busts, leagues and tournaments expanded, stadiums were built and attendance and television viewership set records. Revenue from suite sales, naming rights and television contracts boomed.

But Martin and other graduates are finding that the industry’s growth is slowing, if not reversing. Students are receiving fewer job offers this spring or are accepting internships instead of salaried positions. Many of those internships are unpaid. The worry, their professors say, is that austerity may become the norm, forcing students to scale down or abandon their ESPN-fueled dreams.

“I used to teach that sport was recession-proof, but this recession proved me wrong,” said Gary Sailes, who runs the undergraduate program in sports marketing and management at Indiana. “I tell students that this is a good time to stay in school.”

The number of jobs related to spectator sports has risen steadily during the last few decades. According to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 138,700 people work in the spectator sports industry, 9.8 percent more than in 2002.

There is no accurate tally of how many jobs have been lost in the last year or so, but the anecdotal evidence is grim. The N.F.L. has cut nearly 200 jobs. The N.B.A. has eliminated 10 percent of its staff, and the United States Olympic Committee laid off more than 50 workers.

The L.P.G.A. dropped several tournaments, and Honda ended its Formula One sponsorship. The Jets will furlough some employees for two weeks, and the Cleveland Browns, the Denver Broncos and the Washington Redskins have cut jobs.

Many other teams and tournaments, stung by declines in attendance and sponsorship dollars, have stopped hiring. ESPN will not fill 200 vacant jobs. The Arena Football League canceled its season.

This is bad news for the 300 or so universities that offer sport management degrees. Every year, they churn out thousands of graduates who, even in good times, are willing to work for low pay in return for the chance to work around athletes and arenas. The teams, leagues and others in the sports industry have taken advantage of their willingness to make financial sacrifices, and may continue to do so.

“Sport management is one of the sexy industries, and it’s very hard to discourage students from joining the industry,” said Mark McDonald, the director of internships at the University of Massachusetts’s sport management program. “I feel for the students who haven’t done the preparation.”

Going to college to prepare for a job in sports is relatively new. Years ago, many jobs were filled through word of mouth or serendipitously. Marty Appel, the Yankees’ assistant public-relations director in the early 1970s, wrote to the team in 1967 asking for a summer job. He was lucky; someone was needed to answer Mickey Mantle’s mail.

“It was very much like a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants operation,” said Appel, who estimated there were only 40 people working in the team’s front office then.

By the late 1970s, Appel interviewed graduates of some of the first sport management programs who, he said, were better prepared to handle the growing list of demands on ball clubs.

Walter O’Malley, who owned the Dodgers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles and who foresaw the need for better-trained employees, helped persuade Ohio University to start the first degree-granting sport management program in 1966.

The number of programs jumped fourfold in the 1980s as the industry grew along with ESPN and Title IX, according to Jacquelyn Cuneen, who teaches sport management at Bowling Green. Dozens of universities, looking to increase enrollment, rebranded their physical education departments.

Sport management programs have also been broadened to teach fitness, tourism, recreation and hospitality, prompting critics to claim that many programs do not provide students with the skills to succeed at anything other than the lowest-level jobs.

More worrisome is the realization that even at rigorous programs, students are getting about half as many job offers this year compared with other years, according to Dallas Branch, who teaches sport management at West Virginia. Yeoman’s work is demanded of graduates even from the most prestigious universities like Columbia, which started a master’s level program for midcareer students in 2006.

While attending classes there, Sean Mysel is working this summer as a stadium manager for the Sussex Skyhawks, a minor league baseball team in New Jersey. But he has spent about $25,000 on tuition and $75,000 on living expenses to attend Columbia, which he hopes will help him reach his goal of running a major league ballpark.

“I know the job market is difficult for a while, but I don’t feel I have to hit the panic button,” said Mysel, 31. “At a minimum, it will take 10 or 15 years.”

Graduate students, though, are in a better position than undergraduates because they often have several years of work experience. Kati Karottki, who graduated last weekend from Massachusetts with a bachelor’s degree in sport management, did well in college and worked as a research analyst at a company that measures sponsorships.

But as her senior year began, she planned to single out several companies as potential employers. Then Lehman Brothers collapsed in September.

“I really had to redo everything,” she said.

She reached out to alumni and had half a dozen interviews. But over and over, she heard the same thing: there are other candidates with master’s degrees with more experience who are willing to work for little. This week, she is traveling to Bristol, Conn., to interview at ESPN for an analyst’s job focused on audience research. She is not getting ahead of herself.

“They have so many applicants and people to choose from, just getting to an in-person interview, that’s a big achievement,” she said. “My classmates have resigned themselves to doing another internship or taking time off to travel.”