For more than three decades, I served major insurance companies, public entities, and private clients as a civil trial attorney. I tried a wide variety of cases from antitrust to personal injury in state and federal court in New Jersey and New York. Sports has always been a passion and I reported sports and sports law for CNN, WNBC, WFAN, WFLA, KMOX, and others. My career is now exclusively in teaching and writing.
Teaching is a rewarding endeavor, and I have been fortunate to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in Business Law, Hospitality Law, and the Law of Sports as an adjunct professor at Montclair State University and two other colleges since 2008. I also present national seminars for attorneys as part of their continuing legal education requirements. I am privileged to write for the Sports Litigation Alert as a senior contributor, and for Health Union, an authoritative source of health-related websites. I am an unabashed fan of the University of Wisconsin, where I earned an undergraduate degree in journalism, and the University of Miami, where I attended law school.
Blog post. Your thoughts on NIL and the transfer portal in college football. Should colleges or other parties be signing contracts with players. Legality and feasibility. How could it work.
Thanks for the question, Bob. The NCAA is drafting a proposal that would set standards for the colleges themselves to directly negotiate NIL deals for student-athletes. The entire issue has two tiers. There are non-revenue sports where student-athletes wrote blogs unrelated to sports but could not accept any money from sponsors, which was ridiculous. Now it has changed so that a high-profile swimmer can be paid for endorsing and teaching at a summer swim program for kids. That puts the swimmer on a par with other students who take summer jobs. The higher money tier in football, basketball, and volleyball is much different because boosters offer lucrative endorsement opportunities (e.g., ads for car dealers) for high school recruits. The value of the endorsements can reach $1 million for a prized football recruit. So, many student-athletes are professional athletes–the NCAA simply has a different pay structure than the professional leagues.