Tulane Law School’s Professor Gabe Feldman and Sports Law Program Manager Eric Blevins are drawing nationwide consideration to the quickly evolving panorama of faculty athletics with a brand new scholarly article printed in the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law.
In their article, “Preserving a Tradition or Creating a New One? The Legal Benefits of an Enhanced Educational Model for College Sports,” Feldman and Blevins discover what they describe as a “seismic shift” in intercollegiate athletics, one that’s essentially reshaping the connection between faculty sports activities and better schooling.
The authors argue that the historic mannequin of faculty athletics, lengthy grounded in amateurism and academic values, is more and more below pressure. A rising inflow of economic pursuits and income has widened the hole between athletics and teachers, elevating important authorized and institutional questions on the way forward for the NCAA and its member establishments.
The authors argue that the historic mannequin of faculty athletics, lengthy grounded in amateurism and academic values, is more and more below pressure.
“This is a moment of profound transformation,” the authors counsel, noting that the construction of faculty sports activities could change extra in the present decade than at another time in NCAA historical past.
Feldman, the Sher Garner Professor of Sports Law, Director of Tulane’s nationally-recognized Sports Law Program, and co-Director of the Tulane Center for Sport; and Blevins, Sports Law Program Manager with the Center for Sport and Adjunct Lecturer with Tulane’s A.B. Freeman School of Business, are main voices in sports activities legislation and coverage. Their newest work builds on years of scholarship and engagement with the authorized challenges dealing with collegiate athletics.
Central to their argument is that the rising disconnect between athletics and schooling has eroded the authorized protections traditionally afforded to school sports activities. Courts, they observe, have develop into more and more skeptical of the NCAA’s claims to amateurism, exposing the system to heightened scrutiny below antitrust and labor legal guidelines.
To handle these challenges, Feldman and Blevins suggest an “Enhanced Educational Model” that might extra totally combine athletics into the educational mission of universities by offering tutorial credit score for athletic participation alongside rigorous classroom instruction making use of conventional topic issues, like math, sciences, and psychology, to sports activities.
The mannequin seeks to acknowledge the academic worth of athletic participation and reposition some faculty sports activities as a legit element of upper schooling, moderately than a industrial enterprise working alongside it. Additionally, this new mannequin provides improved authorized safety as a result of the flip in the direction of schooling addresses right this moment’s strongest authorized criticisms of faculty sports activities. Notably, the proposal doesn’t essentially require that colleges abandon “major” revenue-producing sports activities, however that the brand new instructional mannequin might function in parallel to them and embody Olympic and different non-revenue sports activities.”
The authors further explore these ideas in a recent podcast conversation, where they describe college athletics as “at a crossroads” and outline how reimagining sports as a form of experiential learning could help institutions navigate mounting legal and financial pressures.
Their proposal arrives at a pivotal time for college athletics, as universities, policymakers, and courts grapple with issues ranging from athlete compensation to governance reforms. Across the country, observers have noted that the traditional focus on education and amateur competition is increasingly giving way to financial incentives and commercialization, further blurring the line between college and professional sports.
By offering a framework that merges athletics and education, Feldman and Blevins aim to provide both a legal and philosophical path forward—one that preserves the core values of higher education while adapting to the realities of a changing sports landscape.
The full article is available through the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law, and the accompanying podcast offers extra perception into the authors’ imaginative and prescient for the way forward for faculty athletics.