Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Garvey, E. R.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

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

Edward R. Garvey

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.

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 445, No. 1, 91-101 (1979)
DOI: 10.1177/000271627944500111
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?