From Chattel to Employee: The Athlete's Quest for Freedom and Dignity

Abstract

Sports owners in America have always played by different rules than other corporate entities. Team owners are given tax breaks that are the envy of other businessmen; baseball owners have divided up the country among them selves, giving exclusive franchises to each other, and yet the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that such practices are exempt from federal antitrust laws. Football, hockey, basketball, baseball, and soccer owners operated a reserve system that divided up player talent in the same way they divided the country into exclusive franchises. When the NFL asked for an exemption from antitrust laws which would allow the clubs to pool their television rights, the Congress gave it to them. That exemption allowed the club owners to bargain collectively with the networks, control the announcers, and kill off future competitors. In 1966, Congress acted again to help the NFL, providing another exemption from the antitrust laws for the merger of the American Football League and the NFL. The professional athlete has had no choice but to accept the system imposed by management. However, the courts have started to change and athletes now have unions to help them gain dig nity and freedom from the reserve system. Whether the ath letes will continue to make progress in the 1980s is the pri mary question posed in this article.