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In 1982 and 1983, the Indiana Court of Appeals and the Indiana Supreme Court, respective ly, reached opposite answers to the question: Is an athletic scholarship an employment contract which entitles an injured athlete to workers' compensation? Both decisions, in Rensing v. Indiana State University, highlight the inability of narrowly drawn judicial rulings to recognize and remedy the most egregious manifestations of professionalism in college athletics. The following article draws two lessons from the limitations of the Rensing decisions. First, judicial involvement is necessary when due process or procedural fairness are implicated, but when the athlete's "conditions of participation" (based upon the scholarship agreement) are at issue, judges must permit educators to make necessary policy choices. Second, the existing system of college athletics is beset by a host of problems which derive from the "employment- like" conditions under which the scholarship athlete lives. Several means of diminishing the resemblance between athletic participation and employment are suggested.

Disputes involving athletic scholarship recipients, their universities, and the N.C.A.A. are increasingly being brought to court for resolution. One such case is Hall v University of Minnesota wherein petitioner Mark Hall successfully sought to have his declaration of academic ineligibility overturned on the grounds that he had been denied due process of law. The real significance of the Hall case though, and the heart of this article, lies in its implications for future relations between athletes, universities, and professional sports leagues. Most notably, could a university recruit a student with an unimpressive high school transcript and subsequently suspend the student for subpar grades and have this reasonably be construed as a denial of a property right, i.e. the pursuit of a professional contract?The article concludes that the question is likely to remain open and a potential subject for judicial scrutiny as long as: 1) athletes and coaches view intercollegiate athletics as a training ground for professional sports careers and 2) educators shirk their responsibility to clearly define the role of athletes in an academic community.It is not unusual, given the tendencies of judges to favor incremental policymaking, for a judicial decision in an emerging area of public law to raise more and tougher questions than it answers. Hence, the decision itself frequently pales in significance when compared to its potential progeny, thereby retaining importance largely as a point of departure for examinations of related, but more sweeping and consequential matters. The January, 1982 decision by federal district Judge Miles W. Lord of Minneapolis in the case of Hall v University of Minnesota is a prime example.The Hall case was concerned ostensibly with the efforts of one studentathlete at the University of Minnesota to recover his right to matriculate at the University and to participate in intercollegiate varsity basketball competition. Those rights had been forfeited by virtue of Hall's inability to gain admission to any degree-granting program at Minnesota That forfeiture resulted from the requirement of the Big Ten Athletic Conference, of which Minnesota is a member, that student-athletes at its member institutions must be enrolled as candidates for degrees in order to remain eligible for intercollegiate competition.2In the course of seeking admittance to a degree-granting program, Mark Hall had twice applied to Minnesota's &dquo;University Without Walls.&dquo; On both occasions, he was accepted by the admissions committee, but subsequently rejected when the directorof the program intervened. On the basis of allegations of misconduct made against Hall in a confidential memo from the Dean of the Universitys &dquo;General College,&dquo; the director reversed the decision of the Admissions Committee, unbeknownst to Hall. The plaintiff claimed that his two applications to the University Without Walls were evaluated in an arbitrary and capricious manner which denied him the due process of law to which he was entitled un...

Youth and high school sports are subject to regulation by private and public entities, resulting in numerous legal issues. Generally, private organizations regulate youth sports, and the rules primarily address the conduct of coaches and parents. Still, some states have extended to youth leagues statutory concussion protocols originally created for middle and high school sports. Governmental regulation is more prominent in high school sports, including state concussion laws and laws against hazing. Three federal laws are particularly important: Title IX, regarding the inclusion of female and, potentially, transgender athletes, and the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, concerning athletes with disabilities. This chapter addresses an unresolved issue on each of those subjects before discussing high school athletes’ free-speech rights under the federal Constitution.

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