Mark Conrad – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu The official news site for Fordham University. Thu, 08 Aug 2024 14:45:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://now.fordham.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/favicon.png Mark Conrad – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu 32 32 232360065 The Associated Press: Simone Biles Backstory Adds to Star Power, Says Sports Business Expert https://now.fordham.edu/in-the-media/the-associated-press-simone-biles-backstory-adds-to-star-power-says-sports-business-expert/ Thu, 08 Aug 2024 14:45:24 +0000 https://now.fordham.edu/?p=193481 Mark Conrad, director of the Sports Business Initiative at the Gabelli School, told the AP it’s not just Biles’ talent that keeps people talking. Read the full story here.

“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.”

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CNN: Olympic Games Organizers Unlikely to Start Paying Athletes, Says Fordham Sports Law Expert https://now.fordham.edu/in-the-media/cnn-olympic-games-organizers-unlikely-to-start-paying-athletes-says-fordham-sports-law-expert/ Tue, 16 Jul 2024 20:49:54 +0000 https://now.fordham.edu/?p=192593 Mark Conrad, director of the Gabelli School Sports Business Initiative, told CNN that while some Olympic athletes are able to earn money or equipment for their success through endorsements, big payouts are usually reserved for the superstars.

[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.”

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Gabelli School Launches ‘DEI and Sports’ Speaker Series https://now.fordham.edu/colleges-and-schools/gabelli-school-of-business/gabelli-school-launches-dei-and-sports-speaker-series/ Wed, 02 Nov 2022 13:36:18 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=165754 With LGBTQ+ athletes in the news, at the center of state legislation, and in the heart of political debates, the Gabelli School Sports Business Initiative launched a Diversity Equity, and Inclusion and Sports Speaker Series that kicked off with a conversation around transgender and nonbinary athletes.

“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.”

Carla Varriale-Barker, an attorney with the firm Segal McCambridge in New York City.

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.

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Sports Law, Marketing, and Analytics Discussed at Symposium https://now.fordham.edu/colleges-and-schools/gabelli-school-of-business/sports-law-marketing-and-analytics-discussed-at-symposium/ Mon, 11 Apr 2022 20:17:17 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=159336 When it comes to sports marketing, analytics, and legal matters–what does the future look like? That was the theme of the 10th annual Sports Business Symposium, hosted by the Business of Sports Society and the Gabelli School of Business.

“We’re celebrating this anniversary with a dynamic and timely program,” said Mark Conrad, associate professor of law and ethics at the Gabelli School. “We began 10 years ago in a very small room, and now we’ve been on Zoom the last two years and we draw present students, alumni, and guest speakers from all over the country.”

The event featured several Fordham graduates working in sports business fields. Conrad also announced the launch of a new Gabelli Sports Business Initiative, which aims to bring sports professionals together to discuss these cutting-edge topics.

Darren Heitner served as the keynote speaker.

Name, Image, and Likeness for College Athletes

After California and Florida passed laws allowing college athletes to sign sponsorship deals and earn money for the use of their name, image, and likeness—and after the Supreme Court issued a 9-0 ruling in a related case—the NCAA began allowing students across the country to do the same thing.

Keynote speaker attorney Darren Heitner, the founder of Heitner Legal, P.L.L.C., and adjunct professor of Sports Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, helped write the name, image, and likeness law that passed in Florida. While Heitner often works on deals with high-profile college athletes, this year, he noted that other athletes have been able to take advantage of their moments.

St. Peter’s Doug Edert: A Win-Win Deal

“When St. Peter’s had its amazing run, and everyone was talking about Doug Edert, Buffalo Wild Wings did a deal with him,” Heitner said. “It’s funny that he could not have received it prior to July 1 and I don’t think we’re gonna be talking about Doug for the foreseeable future—I don’t think he’s going to have a career in the NBA, yet it was a win-win for both sides.”

Conrad asked Heitner if in the future he thought student-athletes would try to take this a step further and work to get a contract with their university, essentially becoming employees of the institution. Heitner said he wasn’t sure if that was the best thing for them.

“I wonder whether it opens up a can of worms for athletes,” he said, noting that this could lead to questions, such as whether they were considered at-will employees. “I do think we are getting closer to an ecosystem where athletes are sharing in the revenues of their universities or perhaps the conferences.”

Diving Deeper into Analytics for ‘Smarter’ Fans

Sanjay Pothula, a research and innovation analyst with the Milwaukee Bucks who graduated from the Gabelli School of Business in 2015, said that he tries to stay on top of the latest in analytics by looking at sports other than basketball.

“I’ll try to see—are there ways that people are thinking about things differently? Because a lot of times, when you’re looking at your analysis in your own sport, sometimes … everyone has the same ideas about a similar topic,” he said. “And sometimes you just want to kind of get out of that and see ‘is there a new way to think about things?’”

Pothula said that Fordham helped connect him to internships in sports that gave him experience for his career.

“The great thing about Fordham was that there were a lot of people in different sports,” he said. “There especially were a lot of connections in baseball—(being) part of the Business of Sports Society at that time…it kind of gave me a realization of what I can do and what opportunities were out there.”

Pothula was on a panel with Caleb Shreve, the head of analytics for Orlando Soccer Club, and Eric Eager, vice president of research and development at Pro Football Focus, a sports analytics company that focuses on the NFL and NCAA football. Eager said that his company has had to adapt to a changing market of not just serving the teams and media, but also serving the fans who want detailed data analytics.

“It’s undeniable to me that the average sports fan and the average person who works in sports is just a lot smarter than they were 10 years ago,” he said. “You have fantasy football, sports betting, which is exploding—the average consumer of the game just has skin in the game more often than they did before, and they’re getting smarter.”

Using Influencer Content on Social Media

Emily Martin, manager of paid social marketing for the NBA and a 2018 graduate of the Gabelli School of Business, said that in her role she has to stay on top of the latest trends and ways people connect on the different social media platforms. For example, TikTok in particular, has a different style than previous social platforms.

“You really have to be more native in the platform because the users are highly sensitive to any sponsored content or anything that looks fake or inorganic,” she said in a panel discussion that also included Douglas Bennett, a senior manager of partnership marketing for NYCFC who and received his master’s in strategic marketing communications from the Gabelli School in 2020.

“So a strategy that we’re trying to utilize there is rather than using our paid content, which is huge, the best way is to try to get some influencers involved and boost stuff that has already been posted organically.”

Martin said that Fordham helped her take what she learned and put it into practice.

“I think that Fordham does a great job of really giving that hands-on experience,” she said. “To be able to really take in other sports marketing classes and business it helps you really develop that interest. And then, of course, the club and the concentrations really encourage you to get out there, get a sports internship.”

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Sports Business Initiative Launched at Gabelli School of Business https://now.fordham.edu/colleges-and-schools/gabelli-school-of-business/sports-business-initiative-launched-at-gabelli-school-of-business/ Mon, 11 Apr 2022 20:15:07 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=159343 The Gabelli School of Business announced the launch of the Gabelli Sports Business Initiative, “a new way to dissect sports” and to “examine the tough issues involving the sports business,” said founder Mark Conrad, J.D.

“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.”

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Pro Runner Mary Cain Describes Abusive Training Culture, Shares Message of Resilience at Sports Business Symposium https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/magazine-features/pro-runner-mary-cain-describes-abusive-training-culture-shares-message-of-resilience-at-sports-business-symposium/ Tue, 30 Mar 2021 13:45:36 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=147643 In 2013, at age 17, Mary Cain was one of the top runners in the world, the youngest U.S. athlete ever to compete on a World Championships team. But soon after joining Nike’s elite Oregon Project to train with Alberto Salazar, her health and her promising pro career deteriorated.

Cain said that her coaches forced her to lose weight, which led to the loss of her period for three years and stress-related injuries, including five broken bones.

“You don’t go from losing weight to breaking bones in two days, right? There’s usually this long period of time where there’s this physical deterioration,” said Cain, GABELLI ’19, at Fordham’s ninth annual Sports Business Symposium, held virtually on March 25. “Throughout the day, I just was more prone to having silly things, like headaches, to just being more hungry, to being a little bit more irritated as a result, and to just being visibly fatigued.”

She began to dread the sport she had loved since she was in fifth grade, when she surprised her gym teacher by running a mile in 6:10. Her physical, emotional, and mental health began to spiral—she developed an eating disorder and began to cut herself and have suicidal thoughts.

“What once had been something that came naturally [to me], this beautiful experience … suddenly became a slog,” Cain said. “So often, I think, as people, we like to separate our physical, emotional, and mental well-being into separate categories, but they’re so symbiotic, and the longer that I was in this really circular system, the more my body broke down.”

The Nike Project

Before she joined the Nike Project, a team of the fastest athletes in the world, Cain had a decision to make—compete in college or go pro right away. She said she felt going pro through the Nike Project would allow her to attend college and get a strong academic foundation while pursuing running. She moved from Bronxville, New York, to Oregon and completed one year at the University of Portland before transferring to Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in 2019. After she moved back to New York, Cain kept training with the Nike Project until she left for good in 2016.

In a November 2019 video piece for The New York Times, Cain said the all-male coaching staff led by Salazar did not include a certified sports psychologist or certified nutritionist, and that Salazar had tried to put her on birth control pills to lose weight, and harmed her mental health by berating her and humiliating her in front of her fellow athletes.

“Women in sports are treated harsher when it comes to body image,” she said during the Fordham symposium. “And I believe the reason is mostly societal—the expectation to be a lighter weight is more attached to [women’s] looks [and]their meaning. And it’s this really toxic culture that I think permeates professional sports in a way where weight still matters for men, but the dialogue is different.”

Pro runner Mary Cain, GABELLI ’19, spoke with Fordham’s Mark Conrad and Gabelli senior Nicholas Lehman at the Sports Business Symposium.

Starting a Conversation, Advocating for Reform

After Cain’s story came out, many other female athletes spoke up and supported her claims, including Kara Goucher, an Olympic distance runner who had trained under the same Nike program. Salazar denied the allegations of abuse, but several weeks before Cain’s story was published, he had received a four-year ban from the sport for doping violations, and Nike had already shut down the Oregon Project.

In January 2020, Nike completed an internal investigation of Cain’s allegations of abuse, and her story helped Nike identify initiatives to “do better in supporting female athletes,” including increasing the number of women coaches in sports and investing in scientific research into the impact of elite training on women and girls.

That same month, the U.S. Center for SafeSport, a nonprofit organization focused on ending all forms of abuse in sport, placed Salazar on its “temporarily banned list, a disciplinary action that could result in a lifetime ban,” according to The New York Times.

Cain said her goal in sharing her story is to make sure that no other athletes, particularly female athletes, have to go through the suffering she did.

“I hadn’t known that the situation was bad until somebody [came out and told me], ‘That is bad. That shouldn’t happen to you.’ It’s normalized,” she said. “I realized I didn’t want any other person out there to … be self-loathing, beat themselves up, and have this just incredibly negative experience, because they were under an emotionally abusive coach, and almost didn’t know it.”

Cain has called for reforms to the sport. In addition to hiring more women coaches, which Nike has pledged to do, she would like to see teams provide more support for young athletes, such as mental health counselors and trained sports psychologists who are separate from the coaching staff. She also thinks coaches should undergo more training to be certified to work with young athletes.

“I think [U.S. Center for SafeSport] programming is trying to change that and really show how somebody who’s going into coaching is going to be working with traditionally very vulnerable, younger people who are in need of a mentor and a leader,” she said. “And so the more education that you can give yourself to be that for a young athlete is important.”

Moving Forward

Cain has also called for changes in how athletes make a living in the sports world. Right now, many pro runners and other athletes competing in Olympic sports are paid as independent contractors.

“We make our money through sponsorship … and as a result, we’re really just singular athletes floating in the sea, trying to advocate for ourselves. And I believe what would be most beneficial is if there was one organization, that if we are going to be representing Team USA, we are all employees of [that organization].”

Cain currently works full time for Tracksmith, a running apparel company, as an employee and an athlete. In her role as the company’s New York City community manager, she’s in charge of developing relationships with teams and organizations in the city. She also still runs professionally as a member of USA Track & Field, and works part time for the nonprofit New York Road Runners.

Cain said that her working relationship with Tracksmith allows her to be an athlete and a full-time employee, which makes her eligible for benefits, such as health insurance and maternity leave, that she wouldn’t have had as an independent contractor.

“Our athletic dreams and careers are fully supported,” she said. “We’re encouraged to train hard. We’re encouraged to travel. We’re encouraged to do everything that is within our means to be the best athletes that we can be.”

Cain said this experience has been “incredibly rewarding” because it allows her to not only develop as an athlete but also as a sports business professional.

A Look Across the Sports Business Industry

The event also featured a talk from Tim Hinchey, the president and CEO of USA Swimming and the USA Swimming Foundation, and a panel on disruptors in sports media.

Other panels focused on some of the latest trends in sports business in partnerships, communications, and community relations, as well as how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their organizations.

A panel at the Sports Business Symposium on community relations featured two Fordham alumni—Joe Favorito, FCRH ’85 and DJ Sixsmith, FCRH ’15.

The communications and community relations panel featured Fordham alumni Joe Favorito, FCRH ’85, who works as an independent sports, entertainment, and branding consultant, and DJ Sixsmith, FCRH ’15, the social media manager and host at CBS Local Digital Media, along with Heather Hall, a senior director of community relations at BSE Global, which operates the Barclays Center, and Rachel Walsh, vice president of communications at Excel Sports Management.

The partnerships panel featured Fordham alumni Mary Beth Gambke, GABELLI ’13, director of partnership marketing at Barstool Sports; Terry Tsouratakis, FCRH ’11, director of corporate partnerships for the Los Angeles Football Club; and Mark Gennarelli, GABELLI ’2002, director of corporate partnerships for the New York Giants; as well as Stephanie Maes, director of sports partnerships for MGM Resorts International, and Steve Olwell, director of corporate partnerships for the New York Racing Association.

For Nicholas Lehman, a Gabelli School of Business senior majoring in marketing and serving as president of the Sports Business Society, this year’s symposium took extra planning, but it was an opportunity to reach a broader audience.

“We had prepared for months on last year’s symposium, which was canceled just three days before we were due to host it” on campus, Lehman said. “This year, we [hosted]the symposium virtually for the first time in our history. We were excited to make this year’s event the largest and most wide-reaching event we have ever hosted, making it a truly national event with speakers and attendees from around the country.”

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Fordham’s Gina Vergel Named a ‘Top Woman in PR’ https://now.fordham.edu/university-news/fordhams-gina-vergel-named-a-top-woman-in-pr/ Thu, 21 Jan 2021 16:39:22 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=144580 Gina Vergel, senior director of communications at Fordham, was named one of the country’s “Top Women in PR” for 2020.

The class of honorees chosen by PRNews last month represent women trailblazers in the field who think outside the box and who demonstrated significant passion for their work.

Bob Howe, assistant vice president for communications and special adviser to the president who has worked with Vergel since she started at Fordham in 2007, said the honor was extremely well deserved.

“She’s just stellar,” he said. “She sets the kind of tone that I like for collegiality and for inclusiveness in the department. And I trust her implicitly. Any boss would be lucky to have somebody like Gina as their right hand.”

Vergel oversees a shop of eight people, including the Fordham News team and the University’s social media director. She started at Fordham as a staff writer; around 2010, she began her work in media relations, pitching Fordham’s stories and faculty expertise to local and national outlets.

Under her direction, the University averages more than 10,000 global media mentions per quarter, with faculty appearing in national and local publications such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and CNN.com, and on television and radio stations including NY1, MSNBC, and WNYC.

Vergel credits her time as a staff writer with helping her develop relationships with professors whom she would later pitch to the media.

“That is the best way to get to know faculty, administrators, and even some students,” she said, noting that she’s grateful she covered so many topics and departments as a News staffer. “One day, you could be interviewing a mathematics professor, the next day, a biology professor. That’s how you build connections.”

Many of the faculty members are just as grateful to her—both for the media placements and her guidance.

“I think she’s fabulous. First of all, she’s an incredible powerhouse with making connections,” said Paul Levinson, Ph.D., professor of communication and media studies. “I really consider myself lucky that Fordham has someone with Gina’s level of commitment and professionalism, because it’s helped me a lot.”

Mark Conrad, an associate professor of law and ethics, said that Vergel’s success with media placements has improved Fordham’s profile.

“She added a degree of urgency, pizzazz, and I think, a really good working strategy with faculty who want to get to be noticed in the media,” he said. “[Fordham is] in the same city as Columbia and NYU, and chances are most media tended to go to them, because of the name recognition.” But thanks to Vergel’s know-how and connections, he said, reporters regularly seek out Fordham experts.

Vergel attributes her success, in part, to finding the right angles and the right reporters.

“With the media landscape, reporters are so overworked right now, having to be on 24/7,” she said. “So trying to get their attention can be difficult, and so I try to be very mindful of that, because I was a reporter. So I’m not sending blanket pitches to just a huge list.”

Before Fordham, Vergel was an award-winning reporter for Home News Tribune and Ridgewood News in New Jersey, her home state, where she also reported for radio stations WRNJ and WGHT. She earned a B.A. from William Patterson University and a master’s in organizational leadership from Fordham’s Graduate School of Education.

Christina Greer, Ph.D., associate professor of political science, said that Vergel brings both an easygoing attitude and a professional skillset to the job.

“She’s fun. I’ve got 1,000 different things going on, and so to work with someone who has an easygoing temperament is great but also, she knows her job really well,” said Greer, who regularly appears on stations such as MSNBC and WNYC. “All of our interactions have just been clear communication, positive energy, high energy.”

Greer said that Vergel’s work not only benefits the University community, it also brings academic expertise to people who might not have gone to college.

“It’s great for alumni because they like to see their university represented in national and international outlets,” Greer said. “It’s great for recruiting because I get lots of people on Twitter who say, ‘I can’t wait to apply to Fordham because if I can get you as a professor, this is awesome.’ And also, not everyone is fortunate enough to go to college …. So whenever I do outward facing stuff, I view it as regular people getting to spend five or 10 minutes with a professor.”

While Vergel still does a lot of pitching in her current role, she’s also very involved with communications strategy decisions.

“For a lot of the news, even a lot of marketing-type decisions, I’m brought in to consult on different strategies that we’ll take, how we put word out there via social media,” she said. “You have your hands in everything that has to do with telling Fordham’s story.”

Howe said Vergel’s a natural storyteller who is gifted in finding stories that appeal to different populations. She’s also been essential, he said, to the University’s efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“She has been good at helping me and [the Department of Alumni and University Relations], in thinking through how we approach issues of race, especially from a Latina perspective,” he said.

Vergel said she’s incredibly grateful for the recognition from PRNews as she’s used to being “behind the scenes.” And as the daughter of immigrants, she’s especially proud of what she’s achieved.

“I feel it was in my parents’ wildest dreams. When they came to this country from Colombia in 1970, they had to do menial labor. My father was a custodian and my mother worked in a factory. They wanted to have their children here for us to have opportunities. They’ve just been incredibly proud of us,” she said.

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Coronavirus Could Have Lasting Impact on Sports World, Professor Says https://now.fordham.edu/colleges-and-schools/gabelli-school-of-business/coronavirus-could-have-lasting-impact-on-sports-world-professor-says/ Tue, 15 Sep 2020 18:16:56 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=140475 For many, March 11 was the day the coronavirus pandemic hit home. That was the day the NBA announced it was suspending its season after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, just minutes before the team’s game.

Over the next several months, the entire sporting world was thrown into flux. March Madness was canceled. The MLB season was pushed back. The NFL draft was conducted remotely. NBA and NHL players went into “bubbles” to finish their seasons. Even as games and matches returned, no fans were allowed in the stadiums.

According to an ESPN analysis, an estimated $12 billion in sports revenue and hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost due to the COVID-19 shutdowns. While some of those revenues have started to come back with sports resuming, it could take a while for things to return to normal, said Mark Conrad, director of the Gabelli School sports business concentration and associate professor of law and ethics.All of this will have significant impact, both short-term and long-term, on franchises, colleges, and communities that rely on sports, he said.,

“The question is when and how will (sports with fans) come back, and that may take time,” Conrad said. “It’s still going to take months and months to get back to any semblance of a pre-COVID state. I think 2021 could easily also be rocky, and I think realistically for sports, 2022.”

Professional Revenue Fallout

Conrad said that he believed MLB and the NHL would be the most affected by the lack of fans in the stadiums.

“In the NHL’s case, estimated revenues will be down probably at least 40%, if not more, because of the lack of gate receipts,” he said. “It’s a very [ticket]-dependent league. I think baseball’s fairly similar. The NFL is probably the best equipped to survive [limited or no fans]… because of their very, very lucrative television contract.”

The loss of revenue this season could impact future seasons and players’ contracts due to its effect on the salary cap, Conrad said. He projected that salary caps would either stay the same or go down, which could impact salaries for players who are free agents. The NHL’s players union tried to mitigate these losses by signing to a new collective bargaining agreement that limited how much the salary cap could go down, Conrad said.

“On the owners’ side, I think for the first time that I can remember, franchise values could go down,” he said.

Outside of the teams themselves, sports also provide jobs and economic impact to the surrounding communities. Without fans, many neighborhood businesses, such as those around Yankee Stadium, are taking a hit, Conrad said.

“There are establishments around Yankee Stadium that are very dependent on the games,” he said. “They would be hurt as well as the employees in the stadium—those who sell the popcorn, the drinks, and do the concessions.”

Larger-scale events, such as tennis tournaments or marathons, usually serve as a tourism boom for the cities they’re located in. But without fans this year, that’s another loss, Conrad said.

“Without fans going to the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament, that’s a huge hit,” he said. “I think you can say the same thing about the New York City Marathon, because that’s a very big event in terms of people coming to the city and that’s not happening this year.”

Effect on College Sports

For colleges and universities that rely on athletics as a large revenue source, this year will be particularly tough, Conrad said, as some leagues have canceled the fall season and others have barred fans or reduced capacity. The Atlantic 10 and Patriot League, the two conferences Fordham competes in, both canceled their fall seasons, with the hopes of playing those sports in the spring.

While some conferences, have postponed their lucrative college football season, others, including the SEC, ACC, and Big 12, are adapting their schedules, including limiting out-of-conference play. The Big 10 had previously announced it would not play in 2020, but after facing pressure from coaches, players, fans, and even President Trump, the conference announced on Wednesday it would try to restart the college football season in late October.

Still, some schools are already cutting “less lucrative” athletic programs in response to revenue losses from the pandemic, he said. Stanford University announced in July that it would cut 11 of its varsity sports programs.

Looking Ahead

Despite the challenges, Conrad said he believes fans will “be running back” so long as the teams can help make them feel safe.

“I think we’re going to have to think about how we produce the events, the safety measures for the future,” he said. “I think you will have temperature checks done more. I think there will be other types of screening, whether it’s going to be for COVID or any other kind of viruses.”

Conrad said that some things will be altered, such as how food is distributed and mask usage.

“This idea of grabbing into food, touching, the smorgasbord idea, I think that’s going to be out,” he said. “Masks could still be with us, and that’s not a bad thing. In the winter, I think it would be very effective.”

The way fans watch games will also be likely to change, now that producers and directors have been able to experiment without people in the stands.

“We’re seeing many more camera angles now coming in to make up for the loss for fans, [and]there’s also more room in the arenas,” he said. “Artificial intelligence or virtual reality situations—I think you’re going to see those growing as ways to watch sports.”

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Prompted by a Global Pandemic, Fordham Moves to Distance Learning https://now.fordham.edu/university-news/prompted-by-a-global-pandemic-fordham-moves-to-distance-learning/ Wed, 18 Mar 2020 13:59:52 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=134086 Cura personalis, or the idea of caring for the whole person, is a key part of a Fordham education. In the last three weeks, it has become more urgent than ever before.

So when Fordham ceased face-to-face instruction at 1 p.m. on Monday, March 9, due to the threat posed by the COVID-19 outbreak, faculty were faced with the challenge of providing quality instruction that was true to their mission of supporting students and continuing to foster their potential. On March 13, the decision to suspend face-to-face classes was extended through the end of the semester.

As they begin to deliver instruction remotely, faculty have turned to online tools such as Zoom, WebEx, Blackboard, and Google Hangouts to continue students’ education. And they have turned to each other for support, guidance, and tips.

Planning for the transition began in earnest during the last week of February, when Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, and Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, briefed members of the Faculty Senate at its monthly meeting on February 28. Administration officials had been monitoring the spread of the virus in China, and once a case had been reported in Washington state in January, they thought it might spread throughout the United States.

Jacobs said that at that time the University was already making plans to offer online instruction to students who’d been recalled from study abroad programs and who would need instruction while self-quarantining.

“That was the call to action, to say, ‘Let’s begin preparations,’” he said.

“No one would have chosen this as a normal transition path, but these are extraordinary times, and our options were limited,” he said.

“Everyone was committed to serving our students and allowing them to progress towards their academic degrees. It was not just an option to shut down the campus, we had to come up with a continuity plan.”

Technology and Pedagogy

Making the transition required overcoming challenges both technical and pedagogical. Steven D’Agustino, Ph.D., Fordham’s director of online learning, is helping faculty figure out how to best use that technology to deliver their coursework. He’s offered videos and documentation on the University’s Official Online Learning Page and his blog, Learning at a Distance.

D’Agustino said he was impressed at how seriously faculty have put students’ well-being and peace of mind first and foremost. Many are using this week, which happens to be spring break, to explain to their students how they plan to move forward with the rest of the semester and taking steps like telling them exactly what times of the day they’ll be checking their emails. Faculty are establishing virtual office hours when they’ll be available for in-person consultation, and giving serious thought to whether future classes should be held synchronously, when everyone meets together, or asynchronously, which enables students to access material on their own schedules.

D’Agustino encouraged faculty to evaluate their methods as they go, and to draw on the experiences of peers across the country who face the same situation.

“I would say reflective practice is really valuable. This about what you’re doing, and reflect upon it after you’ve done it, and try to include your students and your colleagues in those reflective spaces. Because I think there are a lot of good ideas and support out there, and we’re not alone.”

A Quick Turnaround

Eve Keller, Ph.D., professor of English and president of the Faculty Senate, said she was astonished at how quickly faculty, who teach nearly 2,000 courses a semester, were able to work together to make the transition.

“Faculty had 36 hours to convert their classes online. Some people have done this, and some people had never heard of Zoom, but from what I’ve seen, it’s been an unequivocally congenial, collegial effort to make it happen,” she said.

The transition has not been without occasional hiccups. Anne Fernald, Ph.D., a professor of English and special adviser to the provost for faculty development, emailed fellow arts and science faculty for thoughts on pedagogy on March 11, and after receiving 20 replies, she felt prepared.

Still, when she attempted to teach her first class on Thursday with WebX, she didn’t realize the program’s default volume setting for the program is mute. She ended up recording a podcast for it with the information she planned to share, and is confident she’ll be able to make it work next week, when spring break ends and classes resume.

“I felt like the University did everything it could in this emergency to support us. And I think that the decision to be closed on Tuesday and give people time to prepare was huge. I had colleagues all around the country who didn’t have anything like that. Fordham did it in a way that was as compassionate as it could be,” she said.

Striking the Right Balance

On March 12, Mark Conrad, an associate professor of law and ethics at the Gabelli School of Business, taught three courses—Legal Framework of Business, Sports Law, and Law and the Arts—using the Zoom platform, and was happy with how it came together.

“I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how easy and accessible it has been. I had a number of questions from students. I wasn’t just talking to a computer,” he said, noting the ease in which he was able to share power point slides with students.

We’re seeing future possibilities. It deals with something I’ve been thinking about which is, let’s say the professor is ill or has a sprained ankle. One could do classes like this, and it could actually minimize absences.”

Nicholas Tampio, Ph.D., a professor of political science, taught two classes on March 11 using WebX seminar after department chair Robert Hume, Ph.D., arranged practice sessions for the department. While they went off without a hitch, he said it was hard to read the mood of a room, as many nonverbal communication cues were lost in translation.

“When you teach online, you can’t see feet shifting, or if they have another browser open where they’re checking email. Their parents could be in the room, there could be a car going by. It’s not a controlled environment in which students are only there for the experience,” he said.

“I think I’m going to get better over time at being able to call on people, and I think I’m going to get better at organizing my slide show to make it more entertaining,” he said. But he acknowledged that face-to-face learning will always be preferable.

Edward Cahill, Ph.D., a professor of English, had never used Google Hangouts before and turned to it to teach Shakespeare’s sonnets and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. He found it to be similar to the normal classroom experience, although he said he plans to try different approaches to keep things interesting when the semester resumes, including splitting the class into both synchronous and asynchronous sessions.

Cahill’s new familiarity with online learning comes not only from his work as a professor, but also a student. His experience as a student in an entry-level Spanish class taught by Guillermo Severiche has given him hope that success is possible in the online realm, he said. Severiche, an instructor in the department of modern languages, moved their class to Zoom as well.

“We share documents, we used the e-textbooks. He managed the whole thing flawlessly. So that inspired me to think maybe I can do more.”

Cahill noted that he’s trying to be mindful of the challenges inherent in asking students to complete studies in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.

“There are so many balances to strike between rigor and flexibility, generosity and intensity. I don’t know that anyone has figured it out, and I guess as long as we can stay alert to all of those tensions, we’ll probably find our way through it,” he said.

Doing Lab Work Without the Lab

In some fields, resuming instruction is trickier than just establishing online connections. Stefanie Bubnis, interim managing director of the Fordham Theatre Program, said that while mainstage productions have halted, faculty have bolstered instruction on Google Hangouts and Zoom with old fashioned phone calls and FaceTime.

Professors such as Ann Hamilton, an adjunct professor of theater, are learning on the fly as well. For her first online Acting for the Camera class, she asked students to upload the scenes they recorded of themselves to Hightail and Google Drive. She watched the videos during the designated class time and wrote feedback in a group email to the 17 students in the class. Ultimately it proved to be too time-consuming.

“For my next class I intend to use Zoom, so we are all conferencing together, but they will have sent me the recorded auditions first, so I can have them up on my desktop and we can all watch them together at the same time and actively participate in the feedback. I think the students felt as if they learned a lot today, so that’s a win, given the circumstances,” she said.

Stephen Holler, Ph.D., an associate professor of physics, was able to move the lecture for his General Physics 2 class exclusively to Blackboard, but that wasn’t an option for Experimental Techniques for Physics, a course where teams of students had been working on a single project all semester.

“Some of the work, they’re in the machine shop, they’re doing 3D printing, they’re doing electronics,” he said, noting that this work will have to be completed in a different way than planned.

“Since they’ve done half the project, and they’ve already written up progress reports, I’ll have them turn those progress reports into a paper. Normally I’d also have them do a presentation on a research project they’re interested in; instead I’ll have them write a short paper on that and we’ll do Zoom presentations.

A Big Shift for Information Technology

For Fordham IT, the switch required an unusually speedy response.

Alan Cafferkey, director of faculty technology services, noted that his team—which includes experienced technicians, a fine arts and digital humanities professional, instructional designers, a former math teacher, a librarian, adjunct professors, a media and accessibility expert, and an Ed.D. candidate—normally prefers to work with six months lead time to develop an online course.

“This, however, was everyone already two months into the semester with only a couple of weeks of realizing that something might happen, prepping, and then a sudden shift, with hundreds of people making the change,” he said.

He was especially proud that his team was so on top of responding to the multitude of individual faculty requests. In addition, in collaboration with the provost’s office, they created a Course Continuity site before the University shifted to online learning—as preparation for what might happen.

When the switch was made, IT as a whole simultaneously shifted its entire operation to function remotely—including the IT Customer Care help desk—while helping other offices do the same.

IT also rolled out an entirely new enterprise-wide system in Zoom, reinforced numerous systems, and conducted a multitude of workshops on topics such as teaching synchronously and asynchronously, setting up remote offices, and best practices for many popular web tools. Additional workshops will continue through the spring and can be found on the department’s blog.

Going forward, Cafferkey said the department will continue to field faculty questions and requests, work closely with vendors such as Blackboard, and support other University initiatives as needed. He credited the efforts of colleagues across IT, the provost’s office, the IT departments in the Gabelli School of Business and Fordham Law, the online learning teams at the Graduate School of Social Service and the Graduate School of Education, and the staff at Fordham’s library.

“I’ve been really touched at how kind most of the faculty have been about the support provided. I’ve gotten so many thoughtful notes and comments, it’s been really heart-warming. It’s helped that there are so many offices working collaboratively,” he said.

Looking at the Big Picture

Lisa Holsberg, a Ph.D. candidate in theology, found herself transitioning Great Christian Hymns, which she is teaching for the School of Continuing and Professional Studies (PCS), entirely online. But she was in some ways already prepared to do so, as she is also currently teaching an online course, Christian Mystical Texts, for PCS. She was already accustomed to using Blackboard extensively, as well as Screencast-O-Matic and Voicethread, which lets students listen to each other talk, in their own words, about a specific problem. But ultimately, technology is just one little piece of the story, she said.

“It’s really, what is your commitment to students and to learning and going forward in the midst of change? How do you rethink what it means to teach, what it means to learn in conditions you’re not used to? You have to really dig deep into what your fundamental commitments are to your teaching, your students, to yourself, to your topic, and then just use whatever tools you have in order to meet those goals,” she said.

The Path Forward

Going forward, D’Agustino said he thinks faculty will settle into a hybrid approach for the rest of the semester, making tweaks as they get feedback from students.

“They may say, ‘We’re going to do a synchronous session, so here are the slides in advance, here is the reading material, here’s the study guide, there are some questions you should be able to answer during the session,’” he said.

“So even if a student can’t attend or log in, they still have the notes, the readings, the study guides, and they can say, ‘Professor I couldn’t log in; its 4 a.m. for me. But here are the answers to those questions. And the faculty member can, if it’s part of their protocol, share those answers with the class so that student is part of it.”

Jacobs said that he’s hopeful that faculty will rise to the challenge in what is an extraordinary time of upheaval. He noted that online instruction will always have a place in graduate level and professional-oriented instruction, especially for students who are working or have family obligations. As such, the University will continue to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis. But face-to-face teaching and learning is at the heart of Fordham’s mission, he said.

“Jesuit education is really one of formation in context of community. We treasure that at Fordham, and we always will. It’s the reason why during the academic year, we have not, by intention, moved our undergraduate academic offerings into an online format. We’ve offered them face-to-face, and will return to that when it safe to do, when the virus has passed,” he said.

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Pro Football’s Biggest Issues Are Labor Issues, Expert Says https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/pro-footballs-biggest-issues-are-labor-issues-expert-says/ Thu, 29 Nov 2018 17:30:12 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=109542 The NFL in recent years has faced a string of high-profile controversies, from the handling of Ray Rice’s domestic violence case to the New England Patriots’ “deflategate” ordeal to the league’s since-retracted edict that players must either stand for the national anthem or remain in the locker room.

Each has involved a very different set of circumstances, but as Mark Conrad, associate professor of law and ethics and the director of the sports business concentration at the Gabelli School of Business, explained at a Fordham at the Forefront event at the University’s Lincoln Center campus on November 19, many of the tensions in the league today are ultimately labor issues.

Pro sports commissioners, Conrad explained, were once all-powerful within their given leagues, but in the age of collective bargaining, that doesn’t have to be the case. “The only check on the power of sports leagues, regarding labor, are unions,” Conrad said. Indeed, pro sports unions “are one of the few private employee unions that have thrived” during a time when the percentage of the American labor force in a union is around 10 percent—and dropping.

But Conrad explained that members of the NFL Players Association, which last negotiated a contract in 2011, are “probably kicking themselves” for allowing NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to retain so much power. “They allowed the commissioner to be the judge, jury, and appeals court on various disciplinary matters,” said Conrad. “They allowed it in their last contract negotiation. You know that they don’t want to have that happen again.”

In other words, with the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement expiring in 2020: stay tuned.

The Biggest Issues Off the Field

Over the course of the evening, Conrad led a discussion on some of the most pressing issues in the world of sports business today. Along with the talk on governance in the NFL, he covered four other big topics: the professionalization of college sports, ethics and international sports, legalized sports gambling, and the recent NHL concussion settlement, mixing in talk of current trends, relevant court cases, and a dialogue with students and alumni in the audience.

Audience members at Mark Conrad's November 2018 Fordham at the Forefront lecture on sports businessThe conversation about the changing state of collegiate sports was a particularly lively one.

“The old model has been breaking down in what I’d call the big money sports,” said Conrad, whose book The Business of Sports, initially published by Routledge in 2006, was released in a third edition last year. He paid special attention to one of the most hotly debated NCAA rules: the one that prohibits student-athletes from receiving compensation beyond cost of attendance at a school. “I think what’s happening is the economics, the business, the pressure, and the law are slowly going against the NCAA’s attempt to do this.”

Conrad gave the example of students at a school like Indiana University, which has both a storied basketball program and a renowned music conservatory. “A music student can do a gig on the weekend with a local orchestra and be paid a hundred bucks. And they do,” said Conrad. “But a student-athlete [who]even gives lessons in what he wants do … that would affect eligibility. That’s gotta go. That really is something that smacks of economic oppression.”

Audience members at Mark Conrad's November 2018 Fordham at the Forefront lecture on sports business

Keeping Up with Industry Trends

Phil Acocella, FCRH ’11, an attendee who worked at WFUV as a student, says he remembers Conrad from his time at the radio station. “He was a frequent guest on WFUV, and he always brought a sense of expertise and knowledge to the broadcast,” said Acocella.

Acocella, who now works at SportsNet New York, said he attended the event because he’s a big sports fan looking to hear about industry trends, and because he was interested in connecting with fellow alumni.

“It’s a great opportunity to not only network but to see what Fordham’s offering in the world of sports,” he said. “Events like this are one of the best things that Fordham offers postgraduation.”

—Joe DeLessio, FCLC ’06

The Office of Alumni relations established the Fordham at the Forefront lecture series in 2012 to demonstrate “Fordham’s leadership in areas of universal relevance and concern,” and to deliver “a measure of lifelong learning to alumni, parents, and friends in cities throughout the world.”

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Gabelli School of Business’ Mark Conrad Speaks Out on the Legalization of Sports Betting https://now.fordham.edu/business-and-economics/gabelli-school-of-business-mark-conrad-speaks-out-on-the-legalization-of-sports-betting/ Tue, 15 May 2018 19:15:35 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=89617 CBS‘s Ryan Mayer recently spoke with Mark Conrad, Ph.D., associate professor of law and ethics, on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Murphy vs. NCAA, which gives states the ability to allow sports betting within their borders.

“Well, we’re going to have some legalized sports gambling in a number of states. Clearly a number of states have had bills on the table awaiting this ruling, and, given that the court pretty much emasculated the federal law that effectively banned states from legalizing sports gambling, that’s off the table. Now, legalized sports gambling will be a factor in the sports scene in the United States starting very shortly,” said Conrad.

“There’s bills also in West Virginia and I believe in the New York state legislature right now that can be passed very quickly because they’ve drafted those potential laws waiting for the ruling so the process is there. I think it’s a pretty good bet that you’re going to have ten states with legalized sports gambling by the end of this year.”

However, Conrad warned that this change won’t happen overnight:

“Pun intended, hold your horses. Because we have to go through a process, a legislative and regulatory process in a lot of states and we’re waiting to see what the contours are going to be. It may be a little bit trickier than just opening up a number of gambling casinos tomorrow. Even when these laws are going to be enacted even in two or three weeks, I suspect you’re going to have some sort of administrative apparatus set up to regulate it within the state.”

Read the entire article on CBS Local Sports. Conrad was also asked to weigh in on this topic for stories in Boston Globe and Deseret News.

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