Discretionary Discipline

“They’re both doing roughly the same behavior, and they’re getting very different punishment,” said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a law professor at Florida Coastal School of Law and senior director of advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation. “Gay and lesbian coaches in particular suffer far harsher consequences for having relationships with athletes.”

For Girls, the Constant Variety of Sport Still Lacks a Level Playing Field

“Access to sports in school is especially important for children from low-income communities who can’t afford private sporting clubs, said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a three-time Olympic gold medalist who works as the director of advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation.”

… read the story at Youth Today.

How Parental Responsibility Will Radically Change College Football – Is the Alex Collins National Letter of Intent the Start?

Every year we have certainty about three things: death, taxes, and national signing day. On February 6^th annually, virtually every high school football player dreaming of playing in college on a scholarship signs a national letter of intent (NLI). His intent is to be one of the greatest in the world at this uniquely North American job, and it starts with his choice of a school to hone his craft. This time something was different. Alex Collins decided he wanted to play atArkansas. His mother decided he should be closer to home in Florida. Collins initially verbally committed to Miami.

… read the latest piece from Roger Groves at SportsMoney.

Women’s athletics a battle for respect

“It’s really stunning,” says Nancy Hogshead-Makar, senior director of advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation. “The changes are profound for the rest of [a girl's] life.”

Hogshead-Makar, who won three gold medals as an Olympic swimmer, says playing sports teaches girls about winning and losing, belonging to a team, and postponing short-term gratification for long-term rewards. She says that those skills “translate directly into tangible educational gains, and economic gains.”

… read more at CNN.

The Seau Suit against the NFL is Just the Tip of Icy Implications

“The family of Junior Seau has sued the NFL based on findings by the National Institutes of Health that the linebacker had CTE, a disease from traumatic brain injuries linked to depressions and suicides. Seau, at age 43, committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest. He played 20 seasons in the NFL and allegedly suffered repeated blows to the head. The first reaction seems to be “these guys choose to play a violent game”. So they assume the risk of head injuries like concussions – a natural consequence of playing that violent game. And therefore there is no basis for the lawsuits against the NFL.”

…read the rest at SportsMoney.

Bryce Miller: Bubu Palo belongs with Cyclones unless case changes again

Peter Goplerud, a sports law expert at the Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, Fla., worked as the law school dean at Oklahoma, Drake and Southern Illinois. The co-author of a sports law textbook was part of asked by the state’s Board of Regents to evaluate the policies and procedures at the University of Iowa in the sex-related case involving former Hawkeye football players Cedric Everson and Abe Satterfield.

During a news conference Monday night in which Boles and Palo worked to shape their public message, Palo was asked whether he wanted the opportunity to outline what happened the night of May 18 and replied, “Um, not really.”

Would that clipped response create a public perception that other truths are being hidden?

“There certainly will be people who think that,” Goplerud said. “But it’s pretty much standard advice in a situation like that to really not comment on it. That dismissal does not preclude, in any way, the victim filing a civil action. Anything he could say that could be used against him at a later time. That’s the advice I would give him.

… read the rest here.

Who’s Been Duped? The Manti Te’o Hoax

“It is hard to know what to believe anymore. We watch movies and cannot tell what is animated through computer aided design and what is real. We used to believe baseball players were not cheating the sport but found out that many of our heroes lied about using performance enhancing drugs. Some people over the decade believed Lance Armstrong’s adamant representations that he was not doping.”

… read the latest from Roger Groves at SportsMoney.

UNF football could impact women’s sports

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — If anyone knows the impact sports can have on women, it’s three-time Olympic gold medalist and one-time silver medalist, Nancy Hogshead-Makar.

“I would say swimming made me who I am,” said the former Olympian.

Hogshead-Makar is now a professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law. She is also the Senior Director of Advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation.

… read the rest of the story at Action News Jax.

BCS and Alabama Make History on Many Levels

“Most of us had a choice at 8 pm Monday night: Watch The Antique Road Show, Miss America Secrets Revealed, or the BCS Championship Game between Alabama and Notre Dame. By halftime, the score was 28-0 and little prospect of a changed circumstance so some of you may have regretted the BCS choice. Not me. Not because of any particular affinity with the school. It’s that we don’t always know then history is being made. When we recognize it, it is wiser to embrace it than ignore it.”

Read the full Roger Groves piece on SportsMoney.

Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett will sue NCAA over ‘unprecedented and aggressive’ sanctions for Penn State

Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a professor of law at Florida Coastal School of Law and a senior director of advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation, told the Daily News she was struck how the Corbett press conference “focused on the amount of money and business lost,” and that there was no mention of how the sanctions “hurt the type of football or educational experience that football players were allowed to receive.

“What got Penn State into this problem in the first place was the overemphasis on its reputation, and the commercial aspect of athletics,” Hogshead-Makar said. “It’s exactly what this lawsuit is further highlighting. This lawsuit is more evidence that the business side of athletics is out of control.”