MY BOOKS

Advancing the Ball:

Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL
(Oxford University Press)

Following the NFL’s desegregation in 1946, opportunities became increasingly plentiful for African American players – but not African American coaches. Although Major League Baseball and the NBA made progress in this regard over the years, the NFL’s head coaches were almost exclusively white up until the mid-1990s.

Advancing the Ball chronicles the campaign of former Cleveland Browns offensive lineman John Wooten to right this wrong and undo decades of discriminatory head coach hiring practices–an initiative that finally bore fruit when he joined forces with attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran. Together with a few allies, the triumvirate galvanized the NFL’s African American assistant coaches to stand together for equal opportunity and convinced the league to enact the “Rooney Rule,” which stipulates that every team must interview at least one minority candidate when searching for a new head coach. In doing so, they spurred a movement that would substantially impact the NFL and, potentially, the nation.

Featuring an impassioned foreword by Coach Tony Dungy, Advancing the Ball offers an eye-opening, first-hand look at how a few committed individuals initiated a sea change in America’s most popular sport and added an extraordinary new chapter to the civil rights story.

The Business of Sports Agents

(U. of Penn Press)

Successful sports agents are comfortable with high finance and intense competition for the right to represent talented players, and the most respected agents are those who can deal with the pressures of high-stakes negotiations in an honest fashion. But whereas rules and penalties govern the playing field, there are far fewer restrictions on agents.

In The Business of Sports Agents, Kenneth L. Shropshire, Timothy Davis, and N. Jeremi Duru, experts in the fields of sports business and law, examine the history of the sports agent business and the rules and laws developed to regulate the profession. They also consider recommendations for reform, including uniform laws that would apply to all agents, redefining amateurism in college sports, and stiffening requirements for licensing agents.

Sports Law and Regulation:

Cases, Materials, and Problems (Aspen Casebook)

This book explores both amateur and professional sports as well as issues common to both industries. A comprehensive collection of cases and materials provides balanced perspective and flexible coverage, while the organization provides instructors the flexibility to cover selected sections or chapters for a separate course in either Amateur Sports Law or Professional Sports Law.

Sports Law and Regulation: Cases, Materials, and Problems contains the appropriate amount of introductory and explanatory materials, notes, and questions to facilitate students’ understanding as well as hypothetical problems for applying new knowledge.

Sports Law: Governance and Regulation

(Aspen Publishing)

Four of the nation’s leading sports law scholars have merged their expertise to produce this problem-based sports law and governance text for undergraduate and graduate students. Drawing on their work developing the field’s leading sports law casebook for law students, the authors present this text in the traditional law school case method style, but with an eye toward accessibility for non-law students. Whether students are interested in careers in professional or amateur sports law, this text will equip them with the foundational knowledge necessary to identify legal issues, minimize risk, and become a generation of problem solvers within the sports industry. Contracts, torts, agency, labor and employment, racial and gender equity, antitrust, and intellectual property law are all addressed, as are health and safety issues and high school, college, and international/Olympic/regulatory concerns. Moreover, the text explores the sports industry with an appreciation of its dynamism, examining topics from cutting edge issues in athlete representation to the uncertain future of big-time intercollegiate athletics.

Sports Law: Governance and Regulation (Fourth Edition) is a must for undergraduate and graduate students interested in the sports industry.

Understanding Sports Law

(Carolina Academic Press)

Understanding Sports Law provides a comprehensive overview of the legal issues and concepts that emerge from relationships existing within American sport. It captures the legal doctrine and rules arising from judicial decisions, state and federal legislation, and the private law created by associations and other sport entities. In doing so, Understanding Sports Law examines a vast array of different substantive areas of law as applied in the sports context. These include contracts, torts, intellectual property, antitrust, labor law and constitutional law.

While this treatise’s primary focus is on articulating the current legal principles governing relationships in sport, it often discusses the historical evolution of such rules in order to contextualize and foster an understanding of today’s controlling principles. It also guides the reader through legal and regulatory developments shaping the future of the sports industry, such as name, image, and likeness marketing opportunities for collegiate athletes and race and gender equity movements across the sports landscape.

This treatise can serve as a helpful companion to a casebook or as a stand-alone resource and will prove useful for law students, law professors, and practitioners alike.