Amateur Hour: The Commercialization of College Athletics
ADS, as part of its Sports Talk Series, will be hosting a panelist event examining the business of college sports and its effect on the “Student-Athlete.” Through engaging debate and discourse, we hope to touch on many polarizing topics concerning the current collegiate sports landscape.
The business of college athletics is more lucrative than ever before, but with that comes an intense scrutiny around the culture that surrounds it. Due to the amount of attention on the subject, we believe it is the optimal time to host a critical analysis of the amateur sports industry in America.
The business of college athletics is more lucrative than ever before, but with that comes an intense scrutiny around the culture that surrounds it. Due to the amount of attention on the subject, we believe it is the optimal time to host a critical analysis of the amateur sports industry in America.
When: Wednesday, April 18, 2012, 5pm
Where: Student Union Ballroom, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Where: Student Union Ballroom, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Moderator

Wong is a professor in the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has also served as Interim Director of Athletics. Since 1993, he has been the Faculty Athletics Representative for UMass to the NCAA. Wong has authored several books and over 100 sport law articles and books. He is the author of Essentials of Sports Law, 4th Edition (2010) and The Comprehensive Guide to Careers in Sports, 2nd Edition (2012). His articles have appeared in various law review journals, including a recent article in the UCLA Entertainment Law Review, All Four Quarters: A Retrospective and Analysis of the 2011 Collective Bargaining Process and Agreement in the National Football League. Wong is a frequent speaker on sport law, sport management and negotiation topics. He has been a speaker at the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and others. Wong is a member the board of directors for the Sports Lawyers Association and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and is on the United States Tennis Association’s Constitution and Rules Committee. He has been a member of the Arbitration Panel of the International Council of Arbitration for Sport, an arbitrator for Major League Baseball and the USOC, and outside counsel for the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles for salary arbitration cases. Wong was inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2007, he was named as one of “The 100 Most Influential Sports Educators in America” by the Institute for International Sport at the University of Rhode Island. He has received the Distinguished Teaching Award and been selected for the Distinguished Lecture Series at UMass. He has received the Distinguished Faculty Award from the UMass Alumni Association. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree at Brandeis University, where he co-captained the basketball team, and a Juris Doctorate degree from Boston College Law School.
Panelists:
Andrew Zimbalist

Andrew Zimbalist is the Robert. A. Woods Professor of Economics at Smith College, a renowned sport economist, author, consultant. He is the author and publisher of numerous works such as: Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime, which was listed as one of the top eight business books in 1992, Unpaid Professionals: Commercialization and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports,The Economics of Sports I & II, and Equal Play: Title IX and Social Change to name a few. From 2002-2004, he did a bi-weekly commentary on the business of sports. He is a contributing journalist for the Sports Business Journal and was chosen as the 1998 sports journalist of the year by the Village Voice. PBS' Wall Street Week with Fortune introduced him as the country's leading sport economist. He currently serves as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Sports Economics, as well as the Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, Sport Technology and Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. He received his B.A from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and his M.A. and Ph.D from Harvard University.
Kevin Blackistone

Kevin Blackistone is a professor at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, a national sports columnist, a regular panelist on ESPN’s Around the Horn, an occasional contributor to National Public Radio and The Daily, the first iPad newspaper. He is the co-author of A Gift for Ron. In the past, he has been a reporter for The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, and The Dallas Morning News newspaper, where he was an award-winning sport columnist. From 2007 to 2011, he wrote sports column for AOL Fanhouse. Blackistone is a recipient of numerous awards, including awards for sports column writing from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors, for investigative reporting from the Chicago Newspaper Guild, and for enterprise reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists. Blackistone was a Davenport Fellow at the University of Missouri and a Wharton Business Journalism Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a Martin Luther King Fellow at Boston University as a graduate student.
Jacqueline Campbell

Jackie Campbell currently serves as the NCAA director of Division I, where she is responsible for coordinating Division I initiatives through the NCAA governance structure, as well as helping to manage the Division I agenda. Her duties include providing leadership for the Division I Board of Directors, Presidential Advisory Group, Leadership Council and Administration Cabinet. Campbell moved into the governance position following a year with the NCAA women’s basketball staff, where she was responsible for administering the preliminary round and Women’s Final Four ticket and transportation programs, coordinating various matters relating to the Division I women’s basketball officiating program and assisting with other aspects of basketball championship operations. Prior to her return to the NCAA national office, Campbell held an associate commissioner’s position at the Atlantic 10 Conference and also served on a number of NCAA governance and sport committees, including the NCAA Division I Management Council and the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee. Campbell also spent time on campus, serving as an associate director of athletics at the University of Maryland and the University of Connecticut. Campbell began her athletics career at the NCAA where she served as a legislative assistant and then moved into the role of assistant chief of staff for Division I. She also had a previous term at the Atlantic 10 Conference as an assistant commissioner. Campbell received her M.S in sport management from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her B.S in commerce (marketing) from the University of Virginia. A former student-athlete, she played field hockey and basketball for Virginia.