Michael McCann Taking Situationist Sports to UNH
Posted by The Situationist Staff on January 11, 2013
Congratulations are in order to Michael McCann (who, among other things, is the co-founder of this blog). The University of New Hampshire Law School just announced that they are launching the Sports & Entertainment Law Institute under the direction of Michael McCann, who will be moving from Vermont Law School where he directed the Sports Law Institute. Here’s the announcement from UNH.
Noted sports law expert Michael McCann will join the University of New Hampshire School of Law this fall to launch a new Sports and Entertainment Law Institute. McCann has been a visiting professor at UNH Law during the 2012-13 academic year.
The Sports and Entertainment Law Institute will provide opportunities for students who demonstrate a talent and passion for sports and entertainment law with core skills in these practice areas and opportunities for thoughtful discussion of contemporary legal issues in the field. The Institute will help students gain real-world skills to obtain, and succeed in, careers in sports and entertainment law. Students will have the opportunity to enroll in a wide-range of core and supporting courses.
The Sports and Entertainment Law Institute will be a great pairing with our historic strengths in trademark and copyright law. And we are very fortunate to have Michael McCann, one of the most exciting legal scholars in the country, leading the way.
The Sports & Entertainment Law Institute will be part of UNH Law’s Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property, which is consistently ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the nation’s best intellectual property law programs.
I’m thrilled to join a school which is deservedly renowned for its intellectual property law program. To launch a sports and entertainment law institute as part of this program is a fantastic opportunity. I can’t wait to work with students in developing hands-on skills in sports and entertainment law, and helping them enter those fields.
McCann is a leading expert in sports law, a seasoned sports attorney, and an award-winning teacher, scholar and journalist. He founded and directed the sports law institute at Vermont Law School, where he created the groundbreaking Blue Chips Program, which provides students with the core skills and hands-on experience needed to succeed in the sports world.
McCann is also an accomplished journalist and legal commentator. He is a legal analyst and writer for Sports Illustrated and SI.com and the on-air legal analyst for NBA TV. He also appears regularly on CNN and The Dan Patrick Show to provide sports law commentary. In the past year alone, McCann has covered such issues as: the NFL, NBA and NHL lockouts; the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State and the resulting NCAA penalties and litigation; Ed O’Bannon’s antitrust and intellectual property class action lawsuit against the NCAA; NFL concussion litigation; and Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds’ perjury trials, among many other topics.
McCann has authored 18 law review articles, including articles in the Yale Law Journal and Boston College Law Review, and more than 180 articles for Sports Illustrated and SI.com. McCann is also the editor-in-chief and publisher of Sports Law Blog, which has been honored by Fast Company as one of Three Best Sports Business Blogs and by the American Bar Association Journal as a Top 100 Law Blog. He also provides timely sports law commentary on Twitter @McCannSportsLaw, which has attracted more than 7,200 followers.
In 2004, McCann served as counsel to college football star Maurice Clarett in his lawsuit against the National Football League and its age eligibility rule. McCann was retained by Clarett’s legal team after a paper he wrote in law school – “Illegal Defense: The Irrational Economics of Banning High School Players from the NBA” – was published in the Virginia Sports and Entertainment Law Journal and read by Clarett’s attorneys. Clarett v. NFL is considered one of the most important cases in U.S. sports law history.
McCann has also taught at Mississippi College School of Law, where he received the Professor of the Year Award in 2007 and 2008 and where he now teaches an intensive sports law course as the Distinguished Visiting Hall of Fame Professor of Law. In 2010, McCann also taught a sports law and analytics reading group at Yale Law School – the first such course to be offered at any law school. Along with Jon Hanson, the Alfred Smart Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, McCann is co-founder of the Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School.
McCann holds an LLM degree from Harvard Law School, a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law and a BA from Georgetown University.
Review dozens of posts on “situationist sports” here.
Review Michael McCann’s SSRN page (including downloadable pdfs to his pathbreaking scholarship) here.
The Situationist 
Leave a comment