Jodi BALSAM is a Professor of Clinical Law and Director of Externship Programs at Brooklyn Law School. She is a recognized authority on sports law and teaches the Sports Law course at both BLS and NYU School of Law. She writes and speaks on sports law topics, including as co-author of Weiler Sports and the Law, the leading law school casebook in the field. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport and the international sports law blog LawInSport, and is the on-air legal analyst for NBC Sports/The Golf Channel.
The Super Bowl has been the biggest sport event in the United States for many decades. For today it is a national festival. What roles do big sport events play in the American life? Are they part of the American way of life and how do they represent it?
Americans share with many other nationalities a passion for sports as an entertainment product, but also as a metaphor and proxy for values and aspirations that transcend borders. Sports events like the Super Bowl, the World Cup, or the Olympic Games enable vicarious participation in athletic achievement and human excellence. They serve a basic human need for camaraderie and community, and for identifying with and taking pride in something greater than oneself. Sports are associated with a host of positive values, including determination, teamwork, self-discipline, and fair play. By demonstrating those values, sports have exceptional power to promote change, and inspire and unite people.
Authentic
athletic competition, free of any fraud or corrupt influence, aligns with quintessential American ideals of equality of opportunity, meritocracy, and hard work.
At the same time, the commercialization and professionalization of sport tracks Americans’ continuing preference for free market capitalism—empowering competitors on and off the field to maximize financial rewards for individual and enterprises. What fascinates is how American sport struggles to reconcile these two forces. Professionalism has delivered to top-class athletes the financial rewards they so deserve, but can lead to fan ambivalence. While fans still throng to the great athletic rivalries and performances, they lament a perceived loss of innocence. An example is college sports, so uniquely American, which are at a critical juncture as those athletes have only recently been permitted to monetize their celebrity. The ensuing market frenzy has raised concerns that creeping professionalism will negatively impact fan allegiance to the college brand of athletic competition.
In its last term, the Supreme Court decided an interesting religious freedom case that involved a high school football coach. Why is this case so important and how often does sport become the center of attention of constitutional debates?