By Hayley Shanks,
Publication Date: 2026-08-21 18:17:00
Former Division I football player Michael Lowe is gaining hands-on network engineering experience with the San Francisco 49ers, applying skills from Cisco Networking Academy in one of the most connected environments in sports.
As a Division I football player at UC Berkeley, Michael Lowe once stepped onto Levi’s® Stadium’s field under the bright lights of game day. This summer, he returned to the stadium in a very different role, working behind the scenes as a Cisco Networking Academy Apprentice alongside the San Francisco 49ers Network Engineering team.
Lowe knows what it’s like to compete and lead on the field from his time as UC Berkeley football captain. Now he’s seeing the game from an entirely different perspective—inside the IT operations that support one of the NFL’s most technology-driven organizations.
Fans experience every touchdown, replay, announcement, concession purchase, and media interaction seamlessly, thanks to complex network infrastructure…
