Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 06 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

The sports agent performs a critical function as an intermediary between management and athletes by handling contract negotiations, endorsements, financial planning, and other associated activities. This chapter provides a history of athlete representation beginning in the 1920s with the efforts of Christy Walsh and Charles C. Pyle through the increased role of players associations during the final third of last century. In the 1980s, professional associations and state legislatures launched efforts to regulate agent behavior as a reaction to evidence of abuse. In the 2000s, these problems prompted the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws to introduce the Uniform Athlete Agents Act, a legislative initiative ultimately adopted by over 80% of states, and the U.S. Congress passed the Sports Agent Responsibility Trust Act. Both initiatives addressed the tension between the NCAA’s amateurism standards and efforts by agents to attract clients before the completion of their eligibility.

Keywords: agent, athlete representation, college sports, players association, Sports Agent Responsibility Trust Act, Uniform Athlete Agents Act

Ed Edmonds

Ed Edmonds is Professor Emeritus of Law in the Notre Dame Law School at the University of Notre Dame.

Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.