Representing The Professional Athlete Week 1

Peter Carfagna’s “Representing the Professional Athlete” course begins this week. In Week 1, Professor Carfagna will lead the class on a journey through the current landscape of the NCAA and college athletics. This week the course will delve into the NCAA Bylaws, as they relate to amateurism, the current legal challenges facing the NCAA such as the O’Bannon case, and relationships between agents and student-athletes. Students will gain an understanding of how the NCAA Amateurism Bylaws function; gain an understanding of the ongoing legal challenges facing the NCAA: O’Bannon (Image and Publicity Rights), Kessler (Antitrust/Restricted Free Agency), Arrington (Health and Safety) and Northwestern (Unionization); and gain an understanding of the NCAA and judicial reactions to controlling the relationship between agents and student-athletes.

Guest speakers for week 1 include: Tyrone White (Speaker, Author, and Coach), Fred Nance (Partner at Squire Sanders), Chris Harrington (Manager of Legal Services for the Brooklyn Nets), John Parry (Athletic Director of Cleveland State University), and Rick Cryst (Sr. VP and Counsel to Dietz Trott Sports & Entertainment Management). The course currently has over 4,000 students enrolled from 128 countries.

Carfagna was not alone when putting together this course; he’s had assistance from 3L Ricky Volante at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, who also serves as the course’s TA,  Jim Petras and Heather Bolden at Case Western Reserve University and Mike Comstock and Davey Berris at MediaVision. The group has spent the last four months putting this massive open online course (MOOC) together.

Volante says, “we could not be more pleased to bring this MOOC to our global audience, taking a deep dive into the world of Representing the Professional Athlete. By the end of this course, we expect the students to be able to handle any situation that his or her client may face at any of the four stages of his or her Athlete-Client’s professional career.”

I am enrolled in this exciting course and for the next 6 weeks I will highlight the material covered & provide readers with tips & advice from course material & guest speakers.