REVERSING FIELD: EXAMINING COMMERCIALIZATION, LABOR, GENDER, AND RACE IN 21ST CENTURY SPORTS LAW

Preface

Preface T he West Virginia University College of Law is home to a robust, active, and progressive Sports and Entertainment Law Society. WVU Law is also home to an incredible faculty that cares deeply about social justice and issues of equality, an active Women’s Law Caucus, and a Black Law Student Association that is dynamic, present, and committed. West Virginia remains a state where issues of labor and employment, including union and management conflict, continue to be important, relevant, and personal. And West Virginia University is home to a proud athletic tradition where college football is king and college basketball is royalty. These various constituencies provided an ideal platform, a perfect storm, for a searching inquiry into the important issues, both legal and practical, that confront modern athletes as we enter the twenty-first century. When WVU Law students Stacey Evans, Brandon Shumaker, Bethany Swaton, and Rob Dixon approached me about hosting a cutting-edge event that would bring light to current sports law issues in connection with discrimination and racism in collegiate and professional sports, I was intrigued by the possibilities. We met often and brainstormed about the best way to present a progressive dialogue about the challenges facing modern athletes, professional sports leagues, and collegiate athletic teams. After consultation with then-Dean John Fisher and then-West Virginia University President David Hardesty, we decided that we would present debate on three of the most vexing issues facing modern sports including the commercialization of collegiate athletics, the continuing racism that plagues college sports, and the discrimination that continues in the professional leagues, though we were determined to recognize the heartening progress realized in light of the Rooney Rule. Thus, “Reversing Field” was conceptualized as a symposium that would confront the difficult topics that many in America are more comfortable leaving closeted. During the symposium’s early planning stages, I asked my extremely talented colleague, Professor Anne Marie Lofaso, to suggest some ideas for a second symposium day that would focus on sports and the important modern issues in connection with labor law. And so, the economic weapons, drug testing, and gender panels were born. We were fortunate thereafter to bring together the nation’s leading academics, scholars, practitioners, and professionals to discuss, debate, analyze, and dialogue over our chosen topics. On October 4–5, 2007, our vision was realized as our symposium unfolded with discussion and debate that was provocative, intellectual, progressive, heated, and fascinating. x ...