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: 25 February 2021

Abstract and Keywords

It has often been said that there is no such thing as sports law. The time has come to rethink that position. In recent years, an impressive canon of sports law scholarship and accompanying principles has come to light. The Oxford Handbook of American Sports Law navigates this canon and the sports controversies that enliven it. Perhaps the most instructive of these controversies is Deflategate, which centers on eleven slightly underinflated footballs and their unexpectedly riveting fallout. As a legal controversy, Deflategate is sports law in action. This chapter explores Deflategate and the key principles of sports law that it orbits.

Keywords: Deflategate, NFL, collective bargaining agreement, arbitration, professional sports leagues, breach of contract, antitrust law, labor law, powers of the league commissioner, science and law

Michael A. McCann

Michael A. McCann is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Professor of Law and Director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

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.