ESLS Culture Week: Woodie Dixon

This week is ESLS's culture week, and we have three phenomenal speakers lined up at lunch, so if you missed today, be sure to come Tuesday and Wednesday.

Our first speaker was Woodie Dixon, the General Counsel for the Pac-12 Conference. Mr. Dixon spoke at our culture week in the Fall of 2011, which was just after the Pac-10 added Colorado and Utah and became the Pac-12. It was also the year the Pac-12 launched their network. As you can imagine, it was a great event and incredibly topical. Mr. Dixon is an amazing speaker, and this year is no exception.

After giving us a brief biography of how he came to become a lawyer in sports and entertainment (hint: work out at a gym with potential future athletes/models/actors), he spoke about three topics of current relevance to NCAA football.

<Disclaimer-- Mr. Dixon was clear before beginning his discussion, that his talk reflected solely his own personal views and opinions, not the views or opinions of the Pac-12 conference, nor the NCAA>

 

First, he discussed the ramifications of Warren Buffet's offer of a 1 billion dollar prize for a perfect March Madness bracket. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/01/21/warren-buffett-offers-1-billion-for-perfect-march-madness-bracket/) Aside from the potential issue with student athletes partaking in this contest through family members, friends, or significant others, and potential sponsorship issues for the NCAA, the main problem with this prize is the risk of fixing games. Mr. Dixon discussed how this prize, being $1 billion, presents a huge incentive to insure you get a perfect bracket. Essentially, with a prize that huge, it is very easy to pay people large sums of money to ensure the contest is won. This problem is amplified after the first round of games are played, as there will only be a handful of people left with perfect brackets. As one can imagine, at that point there is significant temptation to make sure the bracket plays out the way it was picked.

Second, Mr. Dixon spoke about pay-for-play for college student athletes. He mentioned the EA class action lawsuit involving using student athlete likenesses in video games. EA ultimately settled paying each athlete roughly $135. He questioned whether the student athletes really wanted this, or whether they'd prefer to be in a video game.  Mr. Dixon also spoke about O'Bannon v. NCAA and Northwestern unionization case. (Here's a link to an update on the O'Bannon suit http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2014/02/ed_obannon_lawsuit_update_ncaa.html) He questioned whether pay for play is really what the athletes want, and also how Title 9 may be affected if student athletes were paid.

Lastly, he spoke about the issues concerning concussions primarily as they occur in football. In discussing this, he spoke about how the burden in an assumption of risk determination may be changing, as evidenced by the recent NFL payout. In a nice review for all of us who are well-removed from torts, he discussed the elements of assumption of risk, focusing on whether certain risks are inherent to the sport, and whether a participant must be as informed as the D in what exactly are the potential risks.

Ultimately, it was a great way to start off our culture week. We wanted to thank Mr. Dixon for coming to speak to us again, and we hope to have him back in the future.