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Registration begins at 8am. Program begins at 9am.

California Continuing Legal Education credit applied for. More details to come.

This year’s symposium will feature several leading voices and commentators on sports and legal and ethical issues. Symposium speakers will address some of the most important issues in sport, including role models and mentors in youth sports competition, the rapidly growing “fantasy sports’ industry and the Aspen Institute’s recent report, “Project Play”, that is re-imagining the entire area of youth sports in America. The 2015 symposium will also intrigue attendees with a “hot topics” panel looking at cutting-edge developments in professional sports, intercollegiate sports, the FIFA scandal, and others.

For information on the 2015 Sports Law and Ethics Symposium, please contact Professor Donald Polden or Tara Schaffner.

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SPEAKER BIOS

Keynote Speaker

Keith Bruce
CEO of the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee

Gold Sponsors:
San Francisco 49ers
Silver Sponsors:

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2015 Sports Law Symposium Speaker Bios

DEREK BELCH

Derek Belch (Co-Founder) laid the foundation for STRIVR during the 2014 season with the Stanford Cardinal football team. Belch was an assistant coach for the team while completing his masters degree. His thesis project was exploring virtual reality applied to sports training and he worked with the Cardinal during the season to build and test the technology that is now STRIVR. Belch was a former kicker for the Cardinal from 2003-2007 and is one of only two Stanford kickers in history to hit two 50-yard+ field goals in a single game. He kicked the winning extra point in Stanford’s historic upset of USC as 42-point underdogs.

JACK BOWEN

Jack graduated from Stanford with Honors in Human Biology and went on to earn a masters in philosophy with an emphasis in Sport Ethics graduating summa cum laude from California State University, Long Beach. He has published three books, his most recent being “If You Can Read This: The Philosophy of Bumper Stickers” (Random House, 2010) as well as a philosophical novel, “The Dream Weaver” (Penguin, 2008) and a college-level philosophy textbook. While at Stanford Jack was a 2-time All-American and NCAA MVP water polo player and was the alternate goalie on the 2006 Olympic Team. He has coached water polo at Menlo School for the past 13 years, winning the league championship 12 years and the section championship 5 times. In 2011 he was named by the Positive Coaching Alliance as a National Award Winner and now serves as the chair of the National Coaches Council for PCA. He teaches philosophy at Menlo School and serves as their College Athletics Councilor.

KEITH BRUCE

Keith Bruce was named CEO and President of the San Francisco Bay Area Super Bowl Host Committee in September 2013. Super Bowl 50 will be played in February 2016 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. In his role as CEO, Bruce will be responsible for the Host Committee organization, including the planning, operations and delivery of the Super Bowl activities and programming leading up to and during Super Bowl week in the Bay Area.

Prior to this appointment, Bruce was President of SportsMark Management Group, an award-winning global sports marketing, event management and corporate hospitality company based in San Rafael, CA.

A veteran of the sports and event industry, Keith has 25 years of sports marketing, event management and advertising experience. Keith is a well known and respected industry figure based on his in depth experience and ‘on the ground’ large scale event management and operational leadership capabilities that are the result of managing client sponsor programs and operations at the largest sporting events in the world, including the Olympic Games, NFL Super Bowl, FIFA World Cup, the NCAA Final Four and others.

Keith began his marketing career in account management at Leo Burnett Advertising in Chicago.

Keith has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 20 years. He and his wife Kimberly live in Marin County and have two daughters, Madeleine and Mason.

MARISA BRUTOCO

Marisa Brutoco is the director of legal and business affairs at GoPro Entertainment, which leads up GoPro’s content and media operations. Prior to joining GoPro, Marisa was an attorney at YouTube/Google, where she was YouTube’s lead attorney for sports and live streaming also worked on government, news, and entertainment partnerships for YouTube/Google Play. She previously was an attorney for Apple/iTunes and was an associate in Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati’s technology transactions group. Marisa is on the Executive Committee and is a member of the Board for Santa Clara University’s Institute of Sports Law & Ethics. Marisa is a graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Law School, serving on Stanford Law School’s Board of Visitors and the Board of Directors for Stanford Athletics.

JAY COAKLEY

Jay Coakley, Professor Emeritus of sociology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, has for forty years done research on connections between sports, culture, and society with much attention given to the play, games, and sport participation of young people. His Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies (11th edition) is the most widely used text in the world. Coakley is an internationally respected scholar, author, and journal editor and has received many professional awards. He continues his work to make sport participation a source of enjoyment and development for young people, and to make sports more democratic and humane for people of all ages.

WOODIE DIXON

Woodie Dixon, Jr. is currently the General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Business Affairs for the Pac-12 Conference. In addition to handling all legal matters and business administration for the Pac-12 and Pac-12 Networks, Dixon’s duties also include oversight of football administration and human resources. Prior to joining the Pac-12, Dixon served as General Counsel for the Kansas City Chiefs from 2004-10. Prior to that time, Dixon has worked for National Football League, Sidley & Austin LLP and Dorsey & Whitney. Throughout his legal career, Dixon has been involved in many different aspects of Sports and Entertainment Law, including player/representative agreements, sponsorship contracts, media rights, intellectual property, litigation, and licensing. Dixon obtained his JD from Harvard Law School, and holds an MS from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Sports Management) and a BA from Amherst College (History).

TOM FARREY
Director

The Sports and Society program is led by director Tom Farrey, an Emmy Award-winning journalist for ESPN and author of the book, Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our Children. Farrey’s work over the years has explored the connections between sport and the largest themes in society – education, globalization, technology, race and ethics, among others.

As a journalist, his reports have appeared on ESPN’s Outside the Lines, SportsCenter and E:60, ABC’s World News Tonight and Good Morning America, and in the Seattle Times, Business Week and Washington Post. He is a contributing writer at ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com, where in 1996 he was one of the website’s first editors. Two of his stories have won television Emmy awards, and his written work has earned top national honors from organizations including the Women’s Sports Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists.

His 2008 book, Game On, a deep exploration of the culture of modern youth sports, is a required text in courses at universities from Florida to Oregon. He was invited by the Aspen Institute to speak about the book at the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival, and oversaw the launch of the Sports & Society Program in May 2011. He can be followed on Twitter at @TomFarrey.

ADONAL FOYLE

Adonal Foyle is a retired NBA player, who was the eighth overall NBA draft pick in 1997. He played a total of 13 NBA seasons, the first ten with the Golden State Warriors and last three with the Orlando Magic. Upon his retirement from playing professional basketball, Adonal served for 2 NBA seasons with the Orlando Magic as their Director ofPlayer Programs. Adonal currently operates two consulting practices – Foyle Consulting and Foyle Sports Performance. He is also the Founder & President of Kerosene Lamp Foundation and Democracy Matters.

Adonal grew up in the tiny nation of St. Vincent & the Grenadines, where he first picked up a basketball at the age of 15. His quest for a college education which ultimately led him to the USA and into the NBA is an amazing and inspirational story of ambition, hard work and a little bit of luck. Growing up in impoverished circumstances in the Caribbean dramatically influenced Adonal’s worldview, and off the court, he is an activist with a deep commitment to the community, especially young people.

Adonal makes numerous community service appearances and founded two non­profit organizations: Democracy Matters (www.democracymatters.org), a non­partisan campus­based project working to get big money out of politics and people in; and Kerosene LampFoundation (www.KLFkids.org) which uses basketball to engage and empower at­risk youth to grow into healthy and well­educated leaders in the Caribbean and USA.

Adonal graduated magna cum laude from Colgate University, and has a Masters in Sport Psychology at John F. Kennedy University.

KIRK O. HANSON
Director, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

Kirk O. Hanson is Executive Director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and John Courtney Murray, S.J. University Professor of Social Ethics. He has held these positions since 2001 when he took early retirement from Stanford University where he taught in the Graduate School of Business for 23 years and holds the rank of faculty emeritus. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics is one of the most active ethics centers in the U.S., working in business, government, health care and K-12 character education. Mr. Hanson is a graduate of Stanford University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He has held graduate fellowships and research appointments at the Yale Divinity School and Harvard Business School.

SHAWN KLEIN

Dr. Shawn E. Klein is a philosopher specializing in ethics, popular culture, and the philosophy of sport. He edited Steve Jobs and Philosophy: For Those Who Think Different (Open Court, 2015) and Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts (Open Court, 2004). He is also the editor of Studies in the Philosophy of Sport, a new book series from Lexington Books. He has presented at numerous conferences on sports ethics, business ethics, pop culture and philosophy, and other topics.

Dr. Klein blogs as The Sports Ethicist at SportsEthicist.com. He also hosts a regular podcast, The Sports Ethics Show. He has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg News, CNN, and other media outlets.

Dr. Klein holds an MA and PhD in philosophy from Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ) and a BA in English from Tufts University (Medford, MA). He has taught at Rockford University, Arizona State University, Mesa Community College, Marist College, and Mount Saint Mary’s College. He is currently a philosophy Instructor at Arizona State University.

Originally from the Boston-area, he lives in Chandler, AZ with his wife, son, and several pets. He is a life-long fan of all Boston sports, especially the Red Sox and Patriots.

KEITH MILLER

Keith C. Miller is the Ellis and Nelle Levitt Distinguished Professor of Law at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Professor Miller teaches the course on Gaming Law at Drake along with courses in the area of Torts. Professor Miller has written and spoken extensively on gaming law topics. In addition to numerous law review articles, he is co-author (along with Anthony Cabot), of The Law of Gambling and Regulated Gaming, the leading casebook on gaming law. The 2d Edition of the casebook will be published in January of 2016.

Professor Miller is the Vice-President of Educator Affiliates of the International Masters of Gaming Law (IMGL), a global gambling law network and educational organization. He serves as the Vice-Chair of the Gaming Law Committee for the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. He has spoken on and moderated panels for the IMGL, the ABA Gaming Law Minefield National Institute, and has conducted symposia and lectured at law schools in the US and France. Professor Miller also consults on gaming law cases, has been an expert witness in gaming law litigation, and is a frequent resource for media on matters involving gaming law.

Professor Miller received his J.D. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the UMKC Law Review. After practicing law in Kansas City, Missouri, Professor Miller obtained his LL.M. degree from the University of Michigan Law School before beginning his career as an academic lawyer. Professor Miller also served as the NCAA Faculty Represntative at Drake University from 1995-2000.

DONALD J. POLDEN, Board Chair
Donald Polden is a well-known scholar in the areas of employment law and legal education. He has practiced law, principally in the areas of federal antitrust law and employment law, in the federal and state courts. He has been instrumental in developing the curriculum for leadership education, a movement that is growing in significance in American legal education. He was one of the co-founders of ISLE and was recently elected to serve as Chair of the ISLE Board of Directors. Don Polden is a graduate of George Washington University and the Indiana University School of Law.

BILL RHODEN

William C. Rhoden has been writing about sports for The New York Times since March 1983. Previously, he was a copy editor in the Sunday Week in Review section since October 1981 when he joined the newspaper.

Before joining The Times, Mr. Rhoden spent more than three years with The Baltimore Sun as a columnist. Before that, he was associate editor of Ebony magazine from 1974 to 1978.

He attended Morgan State University in Baltimore and while there acted as assistant sports information director.

JIM THOMPSON

Jim Thompson is founder and Chief Executive Officer of Positive Coaching Alliance, a non-profit formed at Stanford University with the mission to create a movement to transform the culture of youth sports so that all youth athletes have a positive, character-building experience. For more than 10 years, Jim was director of the Public and Global Management Programs at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he also taught courses in leadership and non-profit issues. US News named Stanford’s Public Management Program the top nonprofit business management program in the nation in 1992. He has a degree in elementary education from the University of North Dakota, a Masters in Public Affairs from the University of Oregon, and an MBA from Stanford.

SETH YOUNG

Seth Young is the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Flower City Gaming LLC, based in Rochester, NY. Flower City Gaming operates its flagship daily, weekly, and season-long fantasy sports brand, Star Fantasy Leagues, at StarFantasyLeagues.com, and is a leading provider of B2B white label fantasy sports technology in the USA and abroad. Seth started his first business at the age of 13 designing and hosting websites in the early days of the modern internet. Throughout his teen years Seth was an athlete and avid video gamer, competing athletically at the highest levels, and on top ranked gaming teams both online and in regional competitions in the USA before attending college. As an athlete and competitive gamer, fantasy sports was a natural fit for Seth, who competed in his first fantasy sports league at the age of 16. Seth has spent his entire adult life in the gaming industry. Prior to working at Flower City Gaming, Seth worked as a consultant in the iGaming and affiliate marketing sector, and as the Strategy Director at TexasHoldem.com. Seth graduated Brandeis University in 2006 with a degree in Politics, Legal Studies, and Internet Studies, and briefly attended St. John’s University School of Law before withdrawing to pursue his passions in business.

Seth was the architect of the Star Fantasy Leagues back office systems, and has been instrumental in the the industry-wide adoption of compliance technologies. Under Seth’s guidance, Star Fantasy Leagues has completed skill gaming studies with Gaming Laboratories International (GLI) to prove with empirical evidence that fantasy sports leagues are correctly classified as games of skill. Seth is a noted industry expert who has been tapped to speak at fantasy sport, iGaming, legal, and educational conferences around the world, including but not limited to ICE, GiGSE, and the IMGL. Seth has represented Star Fantasy Leagues and the fantasy sports industry at the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, The California Gaming Control Board and CA Department of Justice, the AGA, and continues to speak with regulators and policy-makers around the country to further the interests of the fantasy sports industry.

LORI GANO-OVERWAY

Lori Gano-Overway is an associate professor and coaching program coordinator at Bridgewater College. Her research interests lie in understanding how the coaching or teaching climate can be structured to provide positive experiences for young people and foster positive youth development. As an AASP certified sport psychology consultant she works with athletes on performance enhancement issues and offers advice to coaches on creating environments that foster positive experiences for athletes as well as improving performance. Lori serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology and the Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal and is the Associate Editor for the Journal of Sport Psychology in Action. She has served as a board member for the National Council for the Accreditation of Coaching Education (NCACE) and is currently their Folio Review Coordinator and member of the NCACE committee. Lori is also a member of the Virginia High School League coaching education committee.

JERRY SMITH

Jerry Smith serves as Head Coach, Santa Clara University Women’s Soccer. He has coached Santa Clara’s women soccer team for 27 years and compiled winning records in 26 of those years. Having compiled a record of 410-126-52 (.741)–ranked top-5 in NCAA Division I history–Smith is the winningest women’s soccer coach in Santa Clara history and has established a nationally recognized standard of excellence.

Since taking over the head coaching duties at Santa Clara in the spring of 1987, Smith has built the Bronco soccer program into a national power. From 1989 to 2007, the Broncos had a 19-year streak of NCAA tournament appearances and top-10 rankings. In addition, his Bronco teams have won 10 West Coast Conference titles, most recently in 2013. Smith has led SCU to 10 College Cup appearances, the second most of any collegiate program in the 26-year history of the tournament. Smith’s most successful season came in 2001, as he was named the National Coach of the Year after bringing home the University’s first outright NCAA championship.

Smith is also the Founder and Director of the Jerry Smith Coaching for Life Academy at Santa Clara University, an organization dedicated to educating parents, players and coaches about sports, leadership and life skills.

MICHAEL RUBIN

Michael Rubin is a partner at Altshuler Berzon LLP. He is a graduate of Brandeis University and the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was an editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. He served as a law clerk to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. of the United States Supreme Court during the 1980 Supreme Court Term, and previously clerked for Chief Judge James R. Browning of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge Charles B. Renfrew of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Michael is a fellow of The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and is a member of the Board of Directors of the AFL-CIO’s Lawyers’ Coordinating Committee.

Michael has won four “California Lawyer of the Year” (CLAY) awards from California Lawyer Magazine, winning twice in the Employment Law Category. Michael was also a 2003 recipient of a “Trial Lawyer of the Year” Award from the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice for his work on the Saipan litigation, was American Lawyer Magazine’s “Litigator of the Week” in May 2013 for his work on behalf of five professional sports unions in the Hart v. Electronic Arts right-of-publicity case in the Third Circuit, and in 2015 was again named by the Daily Journal as one of California’s Top 75 Labor and Employment Lawyers.

Michael specializes in impact litigation, class actions, and appellate litigation, and has argued in the U.S. Supreme Court and in many federal circuit courts of appeal and state supreme courts. For the past several years, he has been listed in “The Best Lawyers in America” in the categories of appellate law and labor and employment law, and in the Northern California “Super Lawyers” listings in the areas of appellate practice, labor and employment, and class actions. He regularly lectures on developments in California and federal employment law and other topics.

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2015 Sports Law Symposium Schedule

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