Santa Clara University

SANTA CLARA, Calif.,  July 23, 2012 —  Top officials at Penn State face a $60 million fine for protecting child sex-abuser Jerry Sandusky to preserve hundreds of millions of dollars in football revenues.  San Diego State football, in a burst of geographic dementia, joined the Big East Conference seeking better TV payouts.  And ongoing questions around student-athletes’ amateur status and graduation rates continue to plague schools at the highest echelons of sports.

So, what is the proper role of sports in higher education? An all-day symposium presented by Santa Clara University’s Institute of Sports Law and Ethics will address that question Sept. 6.  The event  will take place  at SCU’s Paul L. Locatelli, S.J., Student Activities Center, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Critics say that college sports, once a wholesome avenue for educating talented amateurs, has become hopelessly corrupted by money. Defenders say the money raised by college sports is a boon to education overall.

Conference speakers will include Joe Nocera, the New York Times columnist who has written a series of articles lambasting the NCAA and proposing paying college athletes; vice president and chief policy adviser at the NCAA, Wallace Renfro; West Coast Conference Commissioner Jamie Zaninovich; and Amy Perko, executive director of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which is charged with aligning college athletics with educational missions. 

Symposium speakers will also tackle topics including discipline, use of player images, and paying student athletes.

Among the other speakers:

* Ronnie Lott, NFL Hall-of-Famer
* Brent Jones, three-time NFL All-Pro
*David Drummond, Google
* Ted Leland, University of the Pacific
*Sonny Vaccaro, Vaccaro Sports Partnerships
*Andy Schwarz, OSKR
*Ramogi Huma, National College Players Association
*Linda Robertson,  Miami Herald
*Kevin Satterlee, Boise State University
*Libba Galloway, formerly with LPGA
*Terry Fahn, Sitrick & Co.
* Jonathan Orszag, Compass Lexecon
*Bomani Jones, sports journalist
*Professors and practitioners involved with ongoing and recent litigation

The event is the signature program of the newly formed Institute of Sports Law and Ethics at Santa Clara University.  More on the Institute can be found at http://law.scu.edu/sportslaw/.

Cost:  Students registered at an institute of higher education will be admitted free of charge. Others pay $175, including lunch, with a deadline of August 26. Registration available through the website: http://law.scu.edu/sportslaw/2012-symposium.cfm

About Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located 40 miles south of San Francisco in California’s Silicon Valley, offers its more than 8,800 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, theology, and engineering, plus master’s and law degrees and engineering Ph.D.s. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. master’s universities, California’s oldest operating higher-education institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see http://www.scu.edu.

Media Contact
Deborah Lohse | SCU Media Relations |  dlohse@scu.edu | 408-554-5121