{"id":3647,"date":"2024-09-03T20:47:37","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T20:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/?p=3647"},"modified":"2024-09-10T15:35:08","modified_gmt":"2024-09-10T15:35:08","slug":"dionne-koller-and-sports-law-a-perfect-fit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/dionne-koller-and-sports-law-a-perfect-fit\/","title":{"rendered":"Dionne Koller and Sports Law: A Perfect Fit"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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By Adam Stone<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\"Dion<\/p>

A gymnast in he<\/span>r youth, Dionne Koller knew intuitively what her career in the legal-academic world would look like.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cSports was a very important part of my life experience. When I got into academia, that led me to have an interest in sports law, to see what sports law was all about,\u201d she says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

But is there even such a thing as \u201csports law\u201d? When Koller joined the UBalt Law faculty in 2006, the answer was a definite maybe. Since then, she has helped to put sports law on the map, and earned a reputation as one of the leading scholars in the field.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

An emerging discipline<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>

In the early 2000s, sports law wasn\u2019t fully recognized within the legal academy as a separate academic discipline. \u201cPeople would say: Certainly, there\u2019s a lot of law that applies to sports \u2014 antitrust law, labor law, contract law. We apply a lot of law to sports, but there\u2019s not a lot of law <\/span>about<\/span><\/i> sports,\u201d Koller says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Others took a different view. There were legal scholars who felt there was important work to be done to make sports law a field. Koller saw a professional window open up in that transitional moment. \u201cMy personal love for sports intersected with an opportunity to really take on important issues,\u201d she says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cWhen the University of Baltimore hired me, I made clear that I would want to go up for tenure with a sports law portfolio, that my scholarly record would be built on sports law and not some other recognized area,\u201d she says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

She\u2019s gone on to do just that, addressing urgent issues, especially around youth participation in sports. She was quoted widely when Larry Nassar, the former U.S. Women\u2019s Gymnastics team doctor, was convicted of abusing hundreds of athletes. She recently co-chaired the Congressional Commission on the State of United States Olympics and Paralympics, and she was a member of the Aspen Institute Sport and Society\u2019s Children\u2019s Rights in Sports Work Group.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

When it comes to youth sports, she says, there is much that needs fixing, and colleagues say Koller is uniquely qualified to drive those changes.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cShe has been a pioneer in her teaching and her scholarship,\u201d says Prof. Margaret Johnson, co-director of UBalt Law\u2019s Center on Applied Feminism and director of the Bronfein Family Law Clinic.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Johnson notes that Koller has won the UBalt President\u2019s Award for her teaching, scholarship and service, and has been recognized with the Association of American Law Schools\u2019 2024 award for significant contributions to the field of sports law.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cShe models professionalism, hard work and commitment,\u201d Johnson says. In her work at the law school, \u201cShe sees everyone for who they are, in a way that makes everyone feel good about being together in this shared enterprise.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span><\/p>

\"\"
Koller leads a hearing in Congress in September 2023 as chair of the Commission on the State of U.S. Olympic and Paralympics.<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Focus on Youth <\/span><\/h4>

Koller\u2019s first book, <\/span>More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport<\/span><\/i>, is due out in 2025.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThe book mirrors my approach to sports law generally, which is to take something that we take for granted and illuminate areas that we maybe haven\u2019t been paying attention to,\u201d she says. The book challenges the unspoken assumption \u201cthat youth sport is good, it\u2019s healthy, every kid should participate.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The truth is somewhat more nuanced, she argues.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

From a legal standpoint, there\u2019s an operating assumption that sports should not be regulated. That has real-world impact. \u201cWe\u2019re over-training kids, overworking them, burning them out. It has physical consequences, and it has mental consequences,\u201d she says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

While Koller doesn\u2019t lay out a program for fixing all this, she has some strong thoughts on the subject, guided in part by her understanding of how sports in other countries are regulated.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThere are countries like Norway that do things very, very differently,\u201d she says. \u201cThey give children some rights, meaning children can decide how much time they\u2019re going to spend on their sport. They\u2019re going to decide if they want to travel to compete. Children have some say.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

A better system would also reflect the fact that \u201cparents can\u2019t always be neutral judges or arbiters of their children\u2019s youth sport experience,\u201d she says. \u201cParents get swept away in their children\u2019s performances and youth sport experiences. They lose that healthy mental distance they might be able to use in other contexts.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

That\u2019s an argument for more government regulation. Koller would like to see a national standard, with \u201cbaseline levels for safety, including regulations for those who coach, making sure that there are background checks, that there are minimum competencies that coaches have to possess,\u201d she says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

That\u2019s easier said than done.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

There\u2019s a general mindset that government has no place regulating the creative and competitive world of athletics. \u201cThat might make sense when you\u2019re talking about professional football, where athletes are protected by their union. But to take that mentality and apply it to youth sports is problematic,\u201d she says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

At the same time, parents\u2019 rights advocates are for the most part in knee-jerk opposition to government involvement in youth sports. But the idea here isn\u2019t to rob parents of their decision-making authority, Koller says: It\u2019s to protect the kids.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI regularly hear from parents who are shocked that nobody\u2019s regulating this or making sure the coach has any ability to coach,\u201d she says. \u201cThe government doesn\u2019t need to run Little League in order to set some minimum safety standards for the people who <\/span>do<\/span><\/i> run Little League.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

As Koller looks to elevate these issues within the legal community, and with the public at large, she expresses gratitude to UBalt Law for giving her the freedom to pursue this once-unrecognized field.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI have been able to do this scholarship because of the University of Baltimore law school\u2019s support,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause the University of Baltimore believed in me, I\u2019ve really been able to develop as a scholar, and to contribute to the field. All of that is a result of the University of Baltimore\u2019s standing behind me and encouraging me. I have the career that I have because of this institution.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Adam Stone <\/strong>is a writer based in Annapolis.
Photo by Larry Canner<\/strong>.
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By Adam Stone\u00a0 A gymnast in her youth, Dionne Koller knew intuitively what her career in the legal-academic world would look like.\u00a0 \u201cSports was a very important part of my life experience. When I got into academia, that led me to have an interest in sports law, to see what sports law was all about,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3596,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3647"}],"version-history":[{"count":71,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4816,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647\/revisions\/4816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}