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Leveling the Playing Field
How the Law Can Make Sports Better for Fans
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2000
About this book
The ideal of evenly balanced sporting contests is continually challenged by economic, social, and technological forces. Consequently, Weiler argues, the law is essential to level the playing field for players, owners, fans, and taxpayers. Weiler analyzes a wide array of moral and economic issues that arise in all American competitive sports.
Reviews
Paul Weiler has always been a name and an opinion you can trust in the sports industry. His advice is sought out by all. He has created a standard that will be hard to duplicate.
-- Gene Upshaw, Executive Director of the NFL Players Association
-- Gene Upshaw, Executive Director of the NFL Players Association
An insightful and penetrating book about the problems of professional sports leagues in the United States...Although most of Leveling the Playing Field deals with economic and legal issues affecting pro sports...most interesting...are Weiler's ideas about how to balance the field, improve equitable treatment of athletes and avoid labor unrest...Leveling the Playing Field is a levelheaded, sophisticated and important look into what ails professional sports in the United States and what can be done about it.
-- Andrew Zimbalist Washington Post
-- Andrew Zimbalist Washington Post
[A] keen-edged dissection of modern professional sports in America.
-- Mike Leary Baltimore Sun
-- Mike Leary Baltimore Sun
[Leveling the Playing Field] may be the best work in the field...[It] offers an accessible, comprehensive analysis of the nature of the professional sports enterprise, and presents the author's vision for how it should be reordered. To my knowledge, no one has done this before. Rich and provocative...[Weiler's] book is chock-full of inventive, provocative, even audacious, proposals for reforming the four major professional team sports [baseball, basketball, football and hockey]...This is a book that cannot be ignored. Leveling the Playing Field likely will become the starting point for any discussion of the state of the North American sports enterprise at the turn of the new century.
-- Roger I. Abrams Jurist: Books-on-Law
-- Roger I. Abrams Jurist: Books-on-Law
This provocative book combines the broad knowledge of an all-seasons sports fan with the clarity of an anti-trust lawyer. Weiler...approaches major league sports as a special study in cartel theory...[He] writes lucidly and persuasively; rarely has the surface of professional sports been so revealingly pared away.
-- Allen D. Boyer New York Times Book Review
-- Allen D. Boyer New York Times Book Review
Leave it to a professor from Harvard Law School to untangle the dizzying realities of contemporary sports, then offer valid proposals for dealing with escalating salaries, antisocial off-field player behavior, revenue sharing and stadium quandaries.
-- USA Today Baseball Weekly
-- USA Today Baseball Weekly
Making sense of the business of professional sports demands advanced degrees in law and commerce. Who but the experts can fathom the complexities of hard and soft salary caps, Group Two free agencies, revenue-sharing and the intricacies of collective-bargaining agreements? Happily, Paul Weiler has arrived to answer the literate...fan's many questions while providing a road map for players, owners, and governments about how to put professional sports on a better financial footing while retaining fan loyalty...Weiler has delivered a wonderfully balanced, nuanced, and richly detailed look at professional sports.
-- Jeffrey Simpson Globe and Mail
-- Jeffrey Simpson Globe and Mail
Paul Weiler has been at the forefront for a long time as an expert in sports and labor. He has been consulted in many of the cases that helped shape the way sports changed in the 70s and 80s on the way to the collective bargaining agreements that all leagues are now working with. He has a better grasp of this subject than anyone I know. When it comes to sports law, Paul Weiler knows the answer before you ask the question.
-- Will McDonough Boston Globe
-- Will McDonough Boston Globe
Leveling the Playing Field is likely to become a starting point for any discussion of the American sports enterprise. It is a history book, filled with storytelling and inside sports gossip of interest to the fans, with some very telling conclusions bound to create a fair amount of controversy. Weiler approaches the sports enterprise with confidence, leaving nothing sacred and untouchable.
-- Roger I. Abrams, Dean, Northeastern University School of Law, author of Legal Bases: Baseball and the Law
-- Roger I. Abrams, Dean, Northeastern University School of Law, author of Legal Bases: Baseball and the Law
The idea that the American legal system can improve something for the public benefit is indeed novel, and many potential readers may be intrigued by such an unusual, first-time-for-everything prospect
The discussion finally reveals major league sport for what it really is: a vast funneling operation by which public money is transferred into the pockets of a few playing partners.
-- John Barnes ISUMA
-- John Barnes ISUMA
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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PREFACE
vii -
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CONTENTS
xi -
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Prologue: Sports on Trial
1 - I THE INTEGRITY OF SPORTS
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1 Misconduct on the Field
9 -
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2 Honoring Civil Rights in Sports
17 -
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3 The Deadliest Sin in Sports
31 -
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4 The Sports War on Drugs
56 -
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5 Athletes as Role Models
73 -
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6 The Moral Ideal for American Sports
97 - II OWNERS VERSUS PLAYERS
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7 Show Us the Money
103 -
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8 Sports Joins the Union
118 -
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9 Opening the Flood-Gates
134 -
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10 What Antitrust Did for Players
150 -
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11 How to Level the Player Field
170 -
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12 Salary Sharing among Players
198 - III OWNERS VERSUS OWNERS—AND FANS
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13 The Brave New World of Franchise Free Agency
223 -
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14 How Far Have We Traveled?
234 -
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15 What the Law Should Do with Raiders
246 -
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16 Stadium Socialism or a Stadium Cap?
263 -
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17 Sports in Intellectual Space
278 -
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18 What Should Leagues Be Like?
297 -
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19 Expand or Break Up the Big Leagues?
314 -
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20 A Better World for Fans
334 -
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Epilogue: A Performance-Enhancing Law for Sports
341 -
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Acknowledgments
349 -
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Index
353
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
July 1, 2009
eBook ISBN:
9780674045026
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
381
eBook ISBN:
9780674045026
Audience(s) for this book
Professional and scholarly;