Roger I. Abrams is the Richardson Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. An honors graduate of Cornell University and the Harvard Law School, Professor Abrams is a recognized authority on Sports Law. He has published three books on the National Pastime, The First World Series and the Baseball Fanatics of 1903; The Money Pitch: Baseball Free Agency and Salary Arbitration; and Legal Bases: Baseball and the Law. His fourth book, The Dark Side of the Diamond: Gambling, Violence, Drugs and Alcoholism in the National Pastime, will be available in February 2008. He has served as a baseball salary arbitrator starting in 1986, and he is regularly asked to comment on legal and economic issues involving the national game by the print and electronic media. In the fall of 2006, Professor Abrams served as Scholar-in-Residence at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

Professor Abrams served as dean of Northeastern University School of Law from 1999-2002, as dean at Rutgers University Law School from 1993-1998, and as dean at Nova University School of Law from 1986-1993. Prior to entering academic life in 1974 as a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University, Professor Abrams practiced law in Boston at Foley Hoag & Eliot and clerked for Judge Frank M Coffin of the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

An elected member of the National Academy of Arbitrators since 1982, Professor Abrams serves as a permanent arbitrator for Walt Disney World, the Internal Revenue Service, Lockheed-Martin and the Customs Service. He has authored over 35 law review articles on labor arbitration, sports law and other legal issues in law journals at Harvard, Michigan, and Duke, among others. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a life member of the American Bar Foundation. In 2004, he was elected a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Blog Entries by Roger I. Abrams

David Stern's Misguided Musing

1 Comments | Posted December 16, 2009 | 08:51 AM (EST)


NBA Commissioner David Stern is generally credited with having led his league out of Egypt to the Promised Land. Faced with a deteriorating business model and by hemorrhaging balance sheets, Stern resurrected an entertainment goldmine. Great stars, led by Michael Jordan, Larry Byrd and Magic Johnson, led the charge, attracting...

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On the Trail of a Tiger

4 Comments | Posted December 9, 2009 | 06:01 PM (EST)


Sometimes our greatest sports heroes have feet of clay. We value their athletic performances, and then we elevate them to iconic status, sometimes against their will. There is no particular reason why a star football or basketball player should also be a model citizen. We, the public, and our designated...

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Football or Education?

Posted November 26, 2009 | 12:28 PM (EST)


For the last ten years, I have begun my Sports Law course at Northeastern University School of Law with an imagined email from the University president. He would ask for my advice as to whether the institution should make the investment to place Northeastern football on a par with Boston...

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Don't Be Late for Q School

1 Comments | Posted November 13, 2009 | 02:23 PM (EST)


Around this time each year, the PGA Tour opens up its doors to any duffer with the price of admission and some good rounds of golf under his belt. This most democratic of professional sports really does provide an answer to those who say: "I can do that!" The PGA...

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Should We Ban Football?

8 Comments | Posted November 11, 2009 | 01:28 PM (EST)


Hold on. This may come as a shock! Recent headlines suggest -- that playing professional football is dangerous. But how could it be otherwise? The game involves vicious, premeditated collisions between large and athletically talented men who have played the sport since they were in the peewee league. These warriors...

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We Could All Use a Bye Week

Posted October 31, 2009 | 06:29 PM (EST)


For twenty years now, the National Football League, in an ever-vigilant effort to find more ways to sell its product to the television networks, has featured 16 games in 17 weeks. From the fourth to the tenth week, each of the 32 teams has one week off. The bye-week system...

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Blame it All on the Umpires

31 Comments | Posted October 24, 2009 | 01:49 PM (EST)


The media is all a-twitter about the sudden inability of baseball umpires to make any correct calls during this postseason. Safe is out and out is safe. The Alice-in-Wonderland performance of the men in blue has increased demands for instant replay. Baseball purists explode in response that, after all, the...

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Rush Blitzed

1 Comments | Posted October 15, 2009 | 02:19 PM (EST)


The visceral reaction to the news that Rush Limbaugh was part of a potential ownership group looking to purchase the St. Louis Rams was quite heartening. Dave Checketts, the owner of the St. Louis Blues hockey team, announced that Limbaugh had "become a complication and a distraction," and he was...

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Don't Squander® That Opportunity

1 Comments | Posted October 8, 2009 | 10:10 AM (EST)


As a fan of the National Game and a card-carrying member of the Society for American Baseball Research, I have long loved the statistics that surround the game. Just ask any young fan for the current batting average of her favorite baseball player, and I bet you will get...

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Where Have All the Steroids Gone?

8 Comments | Posted September 27, 2009 | 10:24 AM (EST)


It has been months now since we have heard the word "steroids" uttered in the sporting news about the allegedly "cheating" baseball players. In early February, even before pitchers and catchers reported for spring training, anonymous sources reported that Alex Rodrigues had used performance enhancing drugs. Months later, an illegal...

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A Dubious Anniversary

1 Comments | Posted September 19, 2009 | 07:47 PM (EST)


Forty years ago on September 21, 1969, Wayne Maki almost killed Ted Green. Ted Green was one of the most feared of the National Hockey League gladiators. Superbly confident in his ability to control and pass the puck, Green made his opponents pay a physical price for entering his space...

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After the Gun Sounds

2 Comments | Posted September 8, 2009 | 04:51 PM (EST)


The season-long suspension of LaGarrette Blount by the University of Oregon football team for sucker-punching Boise State's Byron Hout after last Thursday's game has kept sports mavens busy all weekend. All seem to agree that Blount's misconduct was outrageous and that it warranted serious discipline. They differ on whether...

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Kill the Wave

5 Comments | Posted August 30, 2009 | 05:48 PM (EST)


Readers of this blog know that I am an ardent sports fan. I love the games. Sometimes, however, the people who attend the games just annoy me. Maybe it is because it rained so much this summer or that I am not ready for the academic year to begin once...

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Girl Interrupted on the Track

21 Comments | Posted August 23, 2009 | 09:00 AM (EST)


At Olympic Stadium in Berlin this past week, the young South African runner, Caster Semenya, blew away the field in the women's 800 meters at the International Association of Athletics Federation's track and field world championship. Semenya is an 18-year ingénue from the village of Fairlie in the Limpopo province....

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The Proprietor of the Bad Newz Kennels Returns

8 Comments | Posted August 14, 2009 | 04:05 PM (EST)


The Philadelphia Eagles have signed Michael Vick to a one-year contract with a club option for a second year. While player personnel experts can decide whether this was a good football acquisition for the bridesmaid Eagles - they always seem to get close to the Lombardi Trophy but do not...

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Do You Believe Him?

29 Comments | Posted August 10, 2009 | 12:27 PM (EST)


The most recent chapter in the baseball steroid scandal has produced a rare flat denial. David Ortiz has told us he did not take steroids. Do you believe him?

It is true that Roger Clemens also denied taking injections, but his denial runs up against an accuser and apparently some...

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"I'm Mad as Hell, and I won't Take It Anymore"

3 Comments | Posted July 31, 2009 | 04:03 PM (EST)


With apologies to Peter Finch's screed in Network, I have had it with the steroid controversy in baseball. Yesterday, I received a phone call from a reporter asking me if a ballplayer had any recourse when it is publicly disclosed that six years ago he tested positive for steroids.

...
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StarCaps Anyone?

2 Comments | Posted July 20, 2009 | 08:28 PM (EST)


You have undoubtedly heard about the litigation in Minnesota involving players on the Vikings who took StarCaps which contained the drug bumetanide, a substance said to mask the use of steroids which is banned by the National Football League. One problem (actually one of many problems with the case) is...

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Changing of the Guard

Posted July 5, 2009 | 06:56 PM (EST)


The announcement last week that Donald Fehr would be leaving his post next spring as Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association offers an opportunity to reflect on the role of labor unions in professional sports, in particular in the National Pastime. Fehr said that he would propose...

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The Sound and the Fury

9 Comments | Posted June 23, 2009 | 03:03 PM (EST)


Tennis is all a twitter about the sounds emanating from the five-foot five-inch frame of Michelle Larcher De Brito, the 16-year-old tennis phenom from Portugal. Ms. Larcher De Brito's sounds, variously termed as "shrieks," "wails" and "grunts," have caused a kafuffle in professional tennis of John McEnroe proportions. Ranked 91st...

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