The State of Sports Law - University of Virginia School of Law

The University of Virginia School of Law is pleased to present a symposium on the current state of sports law, hosted by the Virginia Sports and Entertainment Law Journal and the Virginia Sports Law Society. The event takes place on March 16, 2012 from 8:00AM to 5:00PM. Complete details can be found here. An overview of the panels (and keynote speaker) is below:

Panel 1: NCAA Conference Realignment

As NCAA conferences realign in pursuit of the funding bonanza available from television contracts, the potential gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" continues to grow. This panel discusses the competitive impact that this discrepancy may have on those colleges and universities that are not invited to join the "super conferences." This panel explores the antitrust concerns that may arise and examines the role of Congress and the NCAA in regulating the conferences.

Panelists:

· Christian Dennie, Barlow Garsek & Simon

· Michael McCann ('02), Professor and Director of the Sports Law Institute, Vermont Law School

· Bernadette McGlade, Atlantic 10 Conference Commissioner

· Moderated by J. Gordon Hylton ('77), Professor of Law, Marquette University Law School

Panel 2: Legal Implications of Financial Distress in Professional Sports

As professional sports teams encounter financial hardship, conflicts in control arise. This panel explores the level of oversight that bankruptcy courts have over professional teams in the midst of financial distress and how that oversight may conflict with the power of commissioners to regulate the sport. Financial distress may lead the team to seek relocation. This panel examines the use of antitrust laws to secure the ability to relocate a franchise over league objection and the potential for expansion in the major sports leagues.

Panelists:

· Mark Levinstein, Williams & Connolly

· Michael McCann ('02), Professor and Director of the Sports Law Institute, Vermont Law School

· Tom Ostertag ('81), Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Major League Baseball

· Moderated by J. Gordon Hylton ('77), Professor of Law, Marquette University Law School

Keynote Address: DeMaurice Smith

DeMaurice Smith ('89), Executive Director of the National Football League Players Association, will offer his insider's view of the NFL's 2011 lockout. He will focus on the labor and legal issues surrounding the negotiation of the new ten-year Collective Bargaining Agreement with the League.

Panel 3: Amateurism and the Student Athlete

Student athletes generate billions of dollars in revenues for their colleges and universities yet they share minimally in the financial spoils. Is this a wrong to be righted and if so, how? This panel debates the role of the student athlete as an amateur or an employee and the ramifications of the designation. This panel explores whether the student athlete should be compensated and whether an education is adequate consideration for the revenue he or she helps to generate. Also, this panel examines who controls the revenue stream and what role the student athlete should have in that determination.

Panelists:

· Christian Dennie, Barlow Garsek & Simon

· Roscoe Howard ('77), Andrews Kurth and Member of the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions

· J. Gordon Hylton ('77), Professor of Law, Marquette University Law School

· Alan Milstein, Sherman Silverstein

· Rob Slavis, Assistant Athletic Director, University of Virginia

· Moderated by Michael McCann ('02), Professor and Director of the Sports Law Institute, Vermont Law School

 
Panel 4: Sports Law Analytics

As popularized in Michael Lewis’s best-selling book Moneyball and a 2011 Hollywood movie of the same name, the sports industry has firmly embraced the use of statistics, economics, and mathematics (collectively “analytics”) in various decision-making processes. Such analytics have similarly been adopted in the sports law field. This panel discusses how analytics are used in areas such as talent identification, contract negotiation, gambling corruption prevention, and antitrust litigation

Panelists:

· Robert Forbes ('07), Proskauer Rose

· Ryan Rodenberg, Professor, Florida State University

· Kelly Wilson, Assistant Counsel, Under Armour

· Moderated by Thomas Nachbar, Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law