37: College Sports Healthcare and the Historical Basketball League with Tammi Gaw

In this episode, Peter speaks with Tammi Gaw, an attorney, athletic trainer and advocate and the founder and executive director of Advantage Rule, LLC. Peter speaks with Tammi about her unique career path and then they discuss the approach of the Historical Basketball League (HBL) to healthcare of its college athletes. They discuss how the HBL views athletes as employees (in contrast to the NCAA’s approach) and thus will provide worker’s compensation to athletes to cover ongoing physical issues as a result of playing in the league. You can follow Tammi on twitter here.

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25: Working in College Sports with Kyle Brennan

In this episode, Peter speaks with Kyle Brennan, Deputy Athletic Director at the University of Utah, about his career and what it is like to work in a college athletics department. Topics covered include: how to break into working in college sports, issues that arise in the job, and the benefits that come from this work.

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17: NCAA Issues with Joe Nocera

In this episode, Peter Ott discusses current challenges to the NCAA’s structure with Joe Nocera, an award-winning sports-business columnist for the New York Times. Joe’s most recent book, co-authored with Ben Strauss, is entitled Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA. In this interview, we discuss his research and opinions about problems with how the NCAA operates. You can follow Joe on twitter at @NoceraNYT.

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14: Protecting Student Athletes with Jonathan Stahler

In this episode, Peter Ott discusses protections for student athletes with Jonathan Stahler. Jonathan is an associate and certified NBPA agent at iP Agency and has written extensively about sports and entertainment issues in various forums. This discussion is based on his article published in the Spring 2014 issue of the ASU Sports and Entertainment Law Journal, entitled “Creating an Equitable Playing Field: Vital Protections for Male Athletes in Revenue-Generating Sports who are predominantly African-American.” You can follow Jonathan on twitter at @JMStahler3. Additionally, a link to his article is found here, courtesy of the ASU Sports and Entertainment Law Journal.

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6: Collegiate Athletic Conferences with Bernadette McGlade

In this episode, Peter Ott discusses issues involved in running a college athletic conference with Commissioner Bernadette McGlade of the Atlantic 10 Conference. They discuss the respective responsibilities of individual school athletic departments, athletic conferences, and the NCAA. They discuss differences between different athletic conferences across the NCAA. Commissioner McGlade speaks about how conference realignment affects the individual conferences. The discussion ends after analyzing the recent O’Bannon ruling by the 9th Circuit and what this means for the future of college sports. Commissioner McGlade has years of experience working in college sports and she brings an important perspective to this discussion.

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Episode 4: NCAA Issues with Sonny Vaccaro

In this episode (the second of a two part series), Peter Ott speaks with Sports Marketing legend Sonny Vaccaro about his advocacy on behalf of college athletes. Sonny was recently the subject of an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary entitled “Sole Man.” That movie looked at the broad outline of his life, from his start in Trafford, Pennsylvania to his signing of Michael Jordan to his first Nike deal to his recent advocacy on behalf of college athletes. In this podcast, Sonny discusses what he thinks is wrong with the current NCAA system. He outlines how he thinks that college athletes are being exploited by the NCAA and its member schools and he discusses the O’Bannon lawsuit.

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Special Preview of Upcoming Sonny Vaccaro Podcast

I just finished recording a new podcast with legendary sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro. It should be a good one, as we covered a wide variety of topics including his time with Nike, his dealing with Michael Jordan, his innovations in grassroots basketball, and his advocacy on behalf of college athletes. I plan on releasing it next week.

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NLRB Rejects Northwestern Unionization Effort

Today, the National Labor Relations Board made a surprising decision that was actually a bit of a non-decision. The Board unanimously ruled that it could not rule on the issue of college athlete unionization because labor law only allows the Board to look at private-sector workplaces and only 17 of the 125 schools eligible to play in a college football bowl are private universities. The Board says that “asserting jurisdiction over a single team would not promote stability in labor relations across the league.” This decision has the practical effect of preventing Northwestern University football players from being able to unionize.

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