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The Interconnectivity of Sports to Commercialization, Labor, and Race John W. Fisher II* S port is a source of excitement, enjoyment, aggravation, frustration, pride, and the frequent topic of conversations. It gives us the opportunity to Monday morning quarterback as we secondguess the coach; to discuss the critical plays of the game; to compare teams, individuals, and programs; to disagree with the experts over the rankings in the polls; or to engage in discussions in which one can be totally subjective and irrational and it harms no one. But there is another side of sports and it involves the business of sports, and it is this side of sports that we examine throughout Reversing Field: Examining Commercialization, Labor, Gender, and Race in 21st Century Sports Law. Like most sports fans, I grew up in a family of fans. In my case, I lived in a small town in which sports brought the community together to watch the high school teams compete or to enjoy our local amateur baseball team play on warm summer Sunday afternoons. These sporting events involved more than the game. They were occasions that brought families and friends together to visit, to discuss local issues, and to watch their sons, and occasionally their daughters, play in an organized sporting event. These events were an important part of the social fabric of the community and provided my family with topics for many dinnertime conversations and much good-natured bantering, but never caused really serious arguments. As I look back on those simple and carefree days of my youth, I have a far better appreciation of the significance of some of the events that were taking place in those bygone days. I can remember when Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play Major League Baseball. I was a student at West Virginia University when Roger Alfred and Dick Leftridge became the first African Americans to play football for West Virginia University, and when Fritz Williams, Eddie Harvard, Jim Lewis, and Norm Holmes became the first African Americans to wear West Virginia University basketball uniforms. The importance of these events was obviously a topic of discussion in the media, but to the sports fan, the discussion was about the players’ abilities and the hopes they would make 9 The Interconnectivity of Sports to Commercialization, Labor, and Race the team more competitive. While I am not a sociologist, I believe that the integration of Major League Baseball, college and professional football, and, in fact, sports at all levels, which began in the 1950s, contributed in a positive way to the much more fundamental changes in our society that followed in the next decade. While sports are primarily a source of entertainment for the fans, it can be an important contributor to local economies and a livelihood for the professional athletes, coaches, and many others who are involved in ancillary ways. Another theme of this book is the commercialization of sports. Again, to illustrate the point, I refer to my youth. In those days, college football was always played on a Saturday afternoon. Pro football games were played on a Sunday, and when the Chicago Cubs played a home game in Wrigley Field, it was always a day game. In the infancy of NFL television broadcasts, kickoff times for football games were not changed to accommodate the television networks , and when the first Super Bowl was televised, there was no halftime extravaganza. To say that much has changed over the last half of the twentieth century is an obvious understatement . Today, when a family goes to a sporting event in the rural communities across this country, it is just as likely that they are there to watch their daughters play as their sons, and it is just as likely that the event will be a soccer game or a lacrosse match as a basketball or football game. Today, the concern about steroids being used by an athlete is not simply a concern at the professional level or the collegiate level but is now a concern with high school sports. In my youth, football and basketball coaches were not paid more than college presidents, and to illustrate, those of us in West Virginia will recall that in 2007 we were following with great concern Alabama’s efforts to hire a new football coach. Alabama’s hiring of Nick Saban at a contract reported to be $4 million per year is an example of the arms race in collegiate sports. Another example...

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