Sports Law Professor Glenn Wong Laments the Cutting of Athletic Programs, Explains Why It’s Happening

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The vast majority of all organized sports, girls or boys, are conduits for teaching teamwork, discipline, goal setting, and responsibility. They start, as examples, at the T-ball and Peewee football levels and continue through middle school, high school, and college. The benefits of character-building cannot be over-emphasized. Many an athlete will testify to sports essentially preparing him or her for life’s journey.

With such positive results, one would think that sports programs at the college level would be expanding. Just the opposite is occurring though, even with the abundance of revenues that are being generated.

Glenn Wong, sports law professor at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, recently penned an article in USA Today in which he wrote this “is a complex question with no easy answers.”

He went on to point to two factors:

First, “institutional priorities (are being) constrained by an ever-widening revenue gap between many of the top schools and all others.”

Second, “Power 5 schools can and do pour the money back into their football and basketball programs, investing in everything from facilities to support, strength and conditioning, and coaching staffs. Again, this is in their best financial interests, as the revenue-generating opportunities in football and basketball are significantly higher than those presented by other sports.”

Wong’s complete article can be found at – https://usat.ly/2phUXAH

 

Sports Lawyer Mark Lanier Honored by National Trial Lawyers Group

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Members of the National Trial Lawyers Group have singled out attorney Mark Lanier as its Trial Lawyer of the Year, while recognizing the Lanier Law Firm among the Top 25 most influential litigation firms in the United States. Lanier accepted both awards at The National Trial Lawyers’ February 2017 Trial Lawyers Summit in South Beach, Florida.

In addition, members elected Lanier to the position of president-elect of The National Trial Lawyers. He will serve as president in 2018.

With offices in Houston, New York and Los Angeles, the Lanier Law Firm has been involved in various sports and entertainment law cases, including sports concussions, name and copyright infringement, unpaid endorsements to athletes, right to publicity lawsuits and sickle cell related deaths.

Pepperdine School of Law Launches LLM in Entertainment, Media and Sports

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Pepperdine University School of Law Professor Maureen Weston has seen first-hand what a great sports law program looks like. After all, she is a long-time representative on the Board of Advisors at the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University, one of the nation’s premier programs.

So when all the right pieces fell into place, such as a hungry student body, a very active sports law society and a proud group of sports law alumni, Weston and others at Pepperdine knew it was time act.

Last month, Pepperdine announced that it will offer a Master of Laws (LLM) in Entertainment, Media, and Sports (EMS) beginning in Fall 2017.

Designed for international and domestic JDs and law students specializing in the fields of entertainment and sports, the 26-unit EMS program is part of Pepperdine’s larger network of programs including the Institute for Entertainment, Media and Culture (IEMC); Sports and Entertainment Law Society (SELS); Palmer Center for Entrepreneurship and the Law; Intellectual Property Student Association; and the Industry Expert Speaker Series. These programs provide additional opportunities for students to connect with alumni working at distinguished organizations in the entertainment and sport fields.

Weston, the co-faculty director, told Sports Litigation Alert that what may separate Pepperdine from other sports law programs is that the program melds “entertainment, media, and sports law with dispute resolution and business courses” as well as “Pepperdine’s location in the heart of the Southern California entertainment industry.”

In other words, the pieces were already in place, “but everything was in silos,” noted Weston.

In addition to offering the LLM in EMS, Pepperdine is host to a variety of entertainment, media, and sports law events including the National Entertainment Moot Court Competition, first public sports arbitration, Farmer’s Field Mediation. Symposiums including Arbitrating Sports; Doping and the Culture of Sports; Women in Hollywood: 100 Years of Negotiating the System; and The New Normal in College Sports have also been hosted.

Learn more about the Pepperdine School of Law LLM and certificate in Entertainment, Media, and Sports here. For more information about Pepperdine University School of Law visit law.pepperdine.edu/ems

Sports Law Professor Corinne Daprano: Hiring More Women Could Help NFL Solve Some of Its Problems

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Accusations of domestic violence and/or sexual assaults have become a big problem for the sports industry.

This year’s NFL draft was just the latest venue. The Cincinnati Bengals selected Joe Mixon, Sooner running back, in the second round, and he comes with baggage. While in college he punched a woman in the face.

How to improve these sad circumstances?

According to Corinne Daprano, an associate professor of Sports Management at the University of Dayton, “the NFL league office can hire more women…to advise the league on its domestic violence and sexual assault policies.”

The NFL’s C-Level management is a male-dominated business. Perhaps it’s time for change.

More about Corinne Daprano can be found at http://bit.ly/2qmxIC7

SRLA Announces Award Winners at Sports Law Conference

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The Sports and Recreation Law Association (SRLA) has announced several award winners from its recent annual conference, which was held March 2-4 in Las Vegas.

The Betty van der Smissen Leadership Award was presented to Steve McKelvey, Associate Department Chair for External Relations & Associate Professor Sport Management in the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, who is also the organization’s outgoing president.

The Herb Appenzeller SRLA Honor Award was presented to Annie Clement, retired from the graduate faculty at the University of New Mexico, who has also taught at The Ohio State University, Bowling Green State University, and Cleveland State University.

The Lori K. Miller SRLA Young Professional Award was given to Natasha Brison, Assistant Professor, Health and Kinesiology, at Texas A& M University.

The SRLA Research Fellow was presented to Dr. Thomas Baker, Professor, Department of Kinesiology (Sport Management) at the University of Georgia.

The Best Paper Award was presented to Mark Conrad for his paper entitled “The Supreme Court Tackles Disparaging Trademarks — Will the Washington Redskins win on First Amendment Grounds?” Conrad is Associate Professor, Law and Ethics, at Fordham University.

The Bernard Patrick Maloy Graduate Student Research Award was given to Graduate Student Sarah Carrick (PhD Student majoring in law), who wrote “The Tort from Nowhere — Appropriation and Athletes’ Personality in Ontario” and is being advised by David McArdle of the Stirling University School of Law

Winner of the Undergraduate Student Research Poster Competition were University of Alabama students Taylor Seagle and Jacob Brabant (How Morality Clauses Can Impact the Outside Actions of Olympic Athletes), who were advised by sports law professor Dylan Williams.

For more on SRLA, visit http://www.srlawebsite.com/

Next year’s conference will be held in San Antonio February 29-March 3.

Sports Law Attorney Scott Andresen Comments on Company Capitalizing on Cubs’ Success

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Your team’s hot, so you get this idea. Why not go to CafePress and sell the teams logo-ed tees and hats. Capitalize on the moment, right? Who doesn’t want to make a quick buck?

Really, really bad idea.

Take last year’s Cubbie’s success in the playoffs, leading to a World Series Championship. Rogue vendors came out of the woodwork and the Cubs and MLB went to work—diligently in the pursuit of anybody practicing trademark infringement.

And they clamped down on everybody with the assistance of the Chicago Police Departing, putting unauthorized vendors out of business on the spot.

Now counterfeiters can challenge “overzealous trademark policing in court.” But that’s another bad idea. Litigation’s expensive and a losing proposition for the counterfeiters.

As stated by Scott Andresen, founder of Chicago law firm Andresen & Associates, specialists in the fields of sports and trademark law, “My advice to someone pinched selling bootleg T-shirts would be to beg for forgiveness, say you’ll never do it again, pay a reasonable settlement and move on with your life.”

Complete details at http://trib.in/2cMQWMe

For more about Scott Andresen, go to http://bit.ly/2oTn3gk

Sports Lawyer Timothy Epstein Joins Advisory Board of Sports Industry Group

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Timothy Epstein, chair of Duggan Bertsch’s Litigation group, in February 2017, joined XLIVE’s Advisory Board. This annual conference series is comprised of industry leaders practicing in the fields of music, sports, film, culinary, beverage, eSports, and technology. This platform allows for discovery and discussion of the latest industry trends and confronting issues.

Tim serves as chair of Duggan Bertsch’s Litigation group, and brings to the Firm a reputation as one of the top lawyers in sports and entertainment in the country.

In Tim’s early years, Jill Polk of Armstrong Teasdale in St. Louis was quick to comment, “Tim has never been a follower. He emerged as a leader as early as our law school years, making his own way. After law school, Tim grew a sports law and entertainment practice from his own desire to become an expert in the field.”

An accomplished legal writer, Tim has authored and contributed, nationally, to a variety of law reviews and periodicals. Respected by his peers, he has garnered numerous bar association leadership positions as well as serving as a legal analyst for ABC, Fox, and WGN.

Tim also teaches Sports and Entertainment Law as an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University’s Chicago School of Law. Read more about Tim and his expanding roles in the Sports Law industry at –

http://www.dugganbertsch.com/Timothy_L_Epstein

Cameron Myler – from Athlete to Lawyer to NYU Sports Law Professor

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Some athletes are lost when it comes to deciding what to do next when they retire from their sport. They’ve never given any thought to the afterlife. The next thing you know, he or she is a has-been—tomorrow’s next life insurance agent, or maybe stuck in a training program with a food franchise. The good times are gone. The reality of life has set in, and yesteryear’s lifestyle has come and gone.

Such was obviously not the case for Cameron “Cammy” Myler.

A four-time United States Olympian, competing in the sport of luge, “Cammy” took her undergrad degree from Dartmouth and travel down the road to the Boston College Law School where she earned a J.D. in 2001.

Initially, “Cammy” joined the NY law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, practicing in the Intellectual Property/Litigation Group for two years. She then moved on to NYC’s Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, an entertainment and media law firm.

Today, she is a clinical associate professor at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies (NYU-SCPS). Courses she teaches include “International Sports Governance, Amateur Sports Governance, Legal Issues in Sports, and Organizations in Sports to both graduate and undergraduate students.”

Read more about “Cammy” at – http://bit.ly/2pq3Ep3

Sports Law Professor on Referee Bias in the NBA

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“Take that for data,” the Grizzly coach emphatically stated, following the conclusion of his now memorable press conference.

A visibly upset David Fizdale was beside him during his rant following Memphis’ game (2) loss in this year’s NBA playoffs. The stats showed that the Spurs had a sizeable advantage in free throw attempts. How could that happen? Did the refs have something to do with it? Maybe, maybe not.

Ryan Rodenberg, an assistant professor of sports law at Florida State University, explores “ref bias” in his “think twice” article that cautioned against this type of thinking.

In reviewing several different studies on the subject matter, Rodenberg concluded that the Pedowitz Report, in some instances, questions the impact that referee bias may have on the integrity of the game. However, Rodenberg’s careful analysis and study of other allegations of “bias involving certain NBA referees against a specific player (Tim Duncan), a coach (Pat Riley), and an owner (Mark Cuban)” found nothing to suggest the existence of bias.”

Read here for more detail  –

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/10/think-twice-before-accusing-an-nba-referee-of-bias-studies-suggest/280948/

More about Dr. Ryan at http://education.fsu.edu/faculty-and-staff/dr-ryan-rodenberg

Think Twice Before Supporting the Idea of College Athlete ‘Employees’

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By Donna A. Lopiano, Ph.D and President of Sports Management Resources

“We should pay NCAA college football and basketball players because it is totally unfair that their coaches get millions in compensation while athlete compensation is capped at the value of a full athletic scholarship!”

This statement summarizes media and public sentiments currently in vogue. If Division I men’s basketball and football programs move in that direction, they will also have to leave their “motherships” (their non-profit educational institutions) because they can’t afford the Title IX obligation of having to equally compensate female athletes. Currently, only 20 institutions bring in more revenues than they spend. Before sport managers support any effort to professionalize college athletes by making them paid employees, they might want to consider what would happen if Division I college football and men’s basketball created professional leagues.

Because the professional sport league would have to be constructed as a for-profit business operated outside the institution, the resources of the non-profit higher education institution legally could not be used to subsidize the for-profit business.

No longer under the not-for-profit umbrella of the educational institution, the new professional basketball and football programs would no longer benefit from tax preferences (i.e., the 80percent tax deductible donations driving season ticket and seating preference sales, use of tax-free bonds to construct athletic facilities, etc.). Thus, it is not clear whether the financial viability of a new league would be assured.

The new professional football and men’s basketball team and league revenues would be fully taxable at the federal and state levels and in some cities, salaries and wages may be subject to employee payroll taxes, unlike the college programs.

Athlete employee salaries would be fully taxable at the federal and state level and athlete employees would have to pay unemployment taxes and social security. Rather than accepting less than their current non-taxed athletic scholarship compensation, players would form a players’ association/union and demand $100,000 annual minimum salaries — the equivalent of the non-taxable athletic scholarship they would be giving up. While these athletes would not have to attend classes in season, removing the current pressure and conflict with academic demands, athlete employees wishing to attend college in the off-season would have to pay for their own housing and food and the cost of tuition, required fees and books. Tuition and fees would not be tax deductible if the athlete earned more than $80,000 per year.

Instead of carrying squads of 85 players, all receiving full scholarships, squad sizes would be close to NFL limits (53) and include a smaller, lower cost taxi squad. Fewer players would benefit as employees than being a student under the college scholarship system.

Gate receipt income and attendance would suffer a decline if watching paid professional players, a product of lesser quality than the NFL, is not as attractive a sport product to viewers as amateur students playing for their alma maters.

The institution would have to charge the new professional football and basketball teams fees to lease their stadia, weight rooms, locker rooms and meeting spaces and obtain the rights to use the institutions’ names and marks. These fees would have to be substantial since the professional teams would be taking all earned revenues in those sports (gate receipts, media rights, advertising and sponsorship fees, concessions, parking, etc.) for their own support The institution would need to set these fees at a substantial level to include paying off existing capital debt that would be retained and to offset the anticipated decline of donated funds to the institution’s athletic program if the institution wants to continue supporting the retained non-revenue extracurricular athletic program. These substantial costs may reduce the attractiveness of the new professional college league to investors.

The new football and basketball professional sport businesses would have to incur the considerable costs of providing full athletic injury and disability benefits for all players, benefits institutions do not currently provide to college athletes.

Given the fact that only 50percent of Division I FBS football and basketball programs pay for themselves with no institutional or student fee subsidies and the fact that this statistic does not include capital costs, it is doubtful that all 128 NCAA FBS members would risk operation of an independent professional football and basketball business on financial feasibility grounds. Depending on how many and the quality of the institutions willing to give up their extracurricular amateur teams, the programs that remain in the NCAA intercollegiate athletics system may represent competition with the new professional league.

Scholarships and operating budgets for Division I women’s sports and other men’s non-revenue sports remaining at institutions moving their football and basketball programs to the professional model, would need to be eliminated or substantially reduced to the extent that former football and basketball revenues would now flow to the new taxable professional leagues. These scholarships represent college degree opportunities. Moving these remaining intercollegiate programs to lower competitive divisions may have to be considered.

The college or university would have to pay off multimillion dollar collegiate long-term coaching agreements while the new professional league would have to negotiate new coaching agreements. The professional league coaching salaries would most likely be less lucrative once athlete labor and other costs mentioned above are factored into the financial equation.

The value of the NCAA’s Final Four Division I basketball championship, which currently generates $770 million that annually supports all 488,000 NCAA athletes in all three competitive divisions would most likely decline considerably, probably to the level of the NIT, if the great majority of top FBS basketball programs choose the professional model.

The $440 million College Football Playoff, currently owned by the ten FBS conferences (with the top five conferences taking home 75percent of revenues and the remaining 25percent to the bottom five) would probably revert to the new professional league. Instead of these funds funding athletic programs serving athletes attending the 128 FBS schools, these revenues would most likely be diverted to providing salaries and benefits to the new league’s professional athletes, further diminishing the resources currently available for the remaining intercollegiate sports.

In short, sports managers should think twice before succumbing to the prospect of athlete employees. These new professional basketball and football leagues would primarily benefit those basketball and football players going on to play in the NBA, NFL or international professional basketball and football leagues each year — an estimated 582 football and 471 basketball players each year (NCAA data based on the 2014 NBA and NFL drafts) while diminishing significant resources currently used to support college educations of the remaining 488,000 NCAA athletes. Is this a justifiable step for collegiate athletics?