A region’s second-place franchise can emerge from shadows if an owner is willing to shell out cash, Fordham University professor Mark Conrad said, citing the NBA’s Steve Ballmer, who has remarkably made L.A. Clippers games fashionable events.

“The focus of New York baseball could be shifting now,” said Conrad, who teaches sports law at Fordham’s business school.

“The Mets were run like a minor league team for years under [former owner Fred]Wilpon. And now you have [Cohen] coming with a Steve Ballmer mentality: ‘This is my thing, and I will do what it takes.’ It’s a new incarnation of a George Steinbrenner.” 

“Part of it is indeed the talent. But part of it is the story,” said Mark Conrad, a Fordham University professor of law and ethics and director of the Sports Business Initiative, Gabelli School of Business. 

“She was taken from a foster care situation and adopted by her grandparents, she didn’t come from privilege,” Conrad continued. “I think people really admire her personality, her toughness and ability. And, more than anything, how she came back from what happened in Tokyo was extremely inspirational.”

[A]ccording to Mark Conrad, a professor of law and ethics at Fordham University Gabelli School of Business, that model isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

“I don’t see the day that all Olympic athletes will be paid by the IOC, because the IOC has never thought of them as a labor force – which in some ways they are, because they’re providing entertainment for a mass audience as well as wanting to compete and win medals,” Conrad told CNN.

But, according to Conrad, the process of receiving money through sponsorships is weighted heavily in favor of the superstar athletes, with many of the lesser-known Olympic participants forced to spend their own money to fund their way.

“Getting those endorsements is not easy. I mean, you really have to be Simone Biles level or Sha’Carri Richardson level to get significant endorsement money,” Conrad explained.

For example, Biles earns $7 million from endorsements, according to Forbes.

“What sometimes companies will do, and it really depends on the level one is in, their endorsement deal will be free equipment and a few promotional events, but not a lot of money. And chances are it’s going to be the Olympic champions who will then get an endorsement for a lot of money.”

“Sports, like society, has to deal with difficult issues, especially now,” said Mark Conrad, J.D., founder and director of the initiative and associate professor of law and ethics at the Gabelli School. “In the past, there was this notion that sports should be separate from politics. But athletes and other stakeholders are human beings and they are affected by events that have occurred.”

The first discussion, “Inclusion and Belonging: Moving Beyond the Binary,” was held on Zoom on Oct. 24 and featured Carla Varriale-Barker, an attorney with the firm Segal McCambridge in New York City. She serves as the firm’s chair of the sports, recreation, and entertainment group, where she has represented transgender and non-binary athletes, as well as an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

Questions on Fairness, Eligibility

More than 50 members of the Fordham community the public attended the webinar and asked a variety of questions about the regulations, policies, and challenges surrounding transgender and nonbinary athletes in sports—particularly around transgender women competing in cisgender women’s sports.

“If you start off with the proposition—trans women, they’re women. They’re competing as women because they are women,” Varriale-Barker said. “Athletes are a spectrum of abilities and advantages. Some of them might be biological, some of them might be training advantages. So that’s how I approach this question.”

She gave the example of Michael Phelps, as someone who had advantages over other swimmers, not because of his sex or gender, but because of his physical and training abilities.

When an attendee asked Varriale-Barker how she would respond to concerns that somebody might say they are a transgender woman just to get a college scholarship, she noted that the “gender imposters” are not as big a threat as some make them out to be.

“Is there a genuine concern about gender imposters? I would say no,” she said. “In my experience, for example, with Kye Allums [the first openly transgender player in NCAA Division 1 basketball]—the change in hormones is dramatic and devastating and significant. I do not believe that people are trifling with their medical condition in order to gain an advantage in sports.”

She noted that she would like more data and science around how hormone levels influenced sports performances.

“I feel like we’re just scratching the surface of how important the hormone component is to all of this in order to understand the unfair advantage argument,” she said. “But I don’t think that there is a genuine good faith concern that people are gender imposters in order to get a scholarship.”

Examining Regulations and Policies

Varriale-Barker also explained how various sports organizations have different policies around transgender athletes. For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) regulations have moved away from testing testosterone levels to what Varriale-Barker described as a “more inclusive way of incorporating participation.”

A statement from the IOC said, “the framework is aimed at ensuring that competition in each of these categories is fair and safe, and that athletes are not excluded solely on the basis of their transgender identity or sex variations.”

In Jan. 2022, the NCAA updated its policy to require transgender student-athletes to “document sport-specific testosterone levels” at the start of the season and then a second one, six months after, as well as documented levels four weeks before championship selections. The NCCA stated that these policies help with the “support of transgender student-athletes and the fostering of fairness across college sports.”

Varriale-Barker said that she was concerned by recent state legislation that bans transgender participation in sports, especially laws that to try and stop gender affirming care. She said that she would like people to think of the role that sports can play in people’s lives, like Allums, who used it as an outlet.

“Sports are a training ground for leadership,” she said. “Sports provide a vehicle for positive body image, teamwork, confidence. Sports are really important, and everyone should have access to sports.”

At the Heart of the Series

Conrad said that the first event was exactly what he was hoping the series would be.

“That’s really the goal—to foster discussion, foster analysis, foster debate,” he said. He credited the attendees for asking tough, but thought-provoking questions.

“It’s not sports-talk radio,” Conrad said, adding that he would love this series and initiative as a whole to become “the NPR of these topics.”

The series dovetails with a new course Conrad is teaching this fall, also called DEI and Sports. It focuses on business and ethical issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in professional, amateur, and international sports from the point of view of athletes, teams, leagues, sports organizations, and fans.

While the class focuses on textbook theories and classroom discussion, Conrad said pairing it with the speaker series will help his students understand these issues in a new way.

“When you hear people who have been at the frontlines of many of these issues, it adds a different dimension, it adds depth to the learning experience,” he said.

Keeping History in Mind

Varriale-Barker also works to do this in the class she teaches at Columbia University. For example, she invited Allums to share his experience with her class. He talked about how he “transitioned to become a man, what that was like in terms of sports participation, the freedom that came about having transitioned to a persona, a gender, a sex that mirrored who [he]was on the inside.”

What was most powerful for Varriale-Barker and her students was to hear Allums describe how “sports was a vehicle to help Kye cope with anxiety and psychological issues.”

Varriale-Barker said athletes like Allums are why she works on these issues.

“The legal issues to me are intertwined with the ethical and the big questions in life—what is my higher self? How do I live authentically? How do I support other people living authentically?” she said.

What’s Next

The next speaker event will focus on issues related to doping and deception surrounding the Nike Elite Running Team. Kara Goucher, an Olympic long-distance runner, will speak on Monday, November 14 at 4 p.m. about her book The Longest Race, which will debut in March 2023 and dive into the “secret world of abuse, doping, and deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team.”

Registration is open to all members of the Fordham community and to the public.

“We’re going to take a deep dive in the sports industry over the coming months and years, bringing together stakeholders and the professional, collegiate, amateur, and international sports arenas for a series of symposia, podcasts, lectures, and possibly more,” said Conrad, associate professor of law and ethics at the Gabelli School.

Speaking at the online 10th annual Sports Business Symposium on April 7, Conrad said the initiative will be a “mini center” that will tackle cutting-edge issues that impact the sports business landscape, both now and in the future.

Tackling Timely Issues in Sports

Conrad said the initiative plans to host at least one symposium on one of these topics: sports at a time of war; diversity, equity, and inclusion in sports; the professionalization of college sports; and a deep dive into sports betting, particularly the public health aspect.

The Sports Business Initiative will officially launch this summer with podcasts, a website, and a newsletter before moving into hosting symposia, lectures, and other programming in the fall.

“There will be lectures by Fordham faculty, professional and amateur athletes, league and Olympic officials, government representatives, grassroots groups—we’re looking for a broad group of stakeholders to participate in this initiative,” he said.

“We want to make this a real go-to place—and not just for New York City, not just for Fordham—but really for the nation and the world,,” Conrad said, adding that events will be hosted on Zoom to draw people from around the globe.

Conrad said the initiative will not only draw top sports professionals, but also Gabelli School students who are interested in sports business. Students in Fordham’s business school as well as the liberal arts colleges will have a chance to participate.

Conrad serves as the faculty adviser for the Business of Sports Society, which hosted the April 7 event. The society is one part of Fordham’s many sports business offerings, which include a sports business concentration; courses such as sports marketing, communications, law, and a new course on sports business and diversity; and internship opportunities.

A Hub for Forward-Thinking Ideas and Solutions

Conrad said that he’s currently gathering ideas for what topics should be examined in sports business, what issues need to be addressed, what solutions are available, and how can sports business become more diverse, accountable and transparent.

The idea has been in the works for about a year, Conrad said, and was supported by Gabelli School of Business Dean Donna Rapaccioli; associate deans Francis Petit, N.K. Chidambaran, and Elizabeth Cosenza; professors John Fortunato, Brent Horton, and Amy Aronson; and Athletic Director Ed Kull.

In addition to growing awareness about the initiative, Conrad said they’ll be working to grow their social media presence and work on fundraising for their efforts.

Mackenzie Cranna, a senior at the Gabelli School of Business and current co-president of the Business of Sports Society, told Conrad she knows the initiative will be great for Fordham..

“I think you’re providing the University with some really awesome sports business opportunities,” she said. “Everyone in this club has a lot to look forward to next year.”