Panelists

Mike McCann

Legal Analyst, Sports Illustrated

Michael McCann is an Associate Professor of Law at Vermont Law School, where he teaches sports law, antitrust, sales, and torts.

He is also a Legal Analyst for Sports Illustrated and the “Sports and the Law” Columnist on SI.com.   He has received recognition from The American Lawyer and the Newhouse School of Public Communications for excellence in journalism.

In the spring of 2010, Professor McCann will teach a sports law reading group at Yale Law School.

Professor McCann is also Co-Founder of the Harvard Law School Project on Law and Mind Sciences and the Distinguished Visiting Hall of Fame Professor of Law at Mississippi College School of Law, where he was an Assistant Professor of Law between 2005 and 2008 and where he now teaches a sports law class every summer. During his three-year tenure at Mississippi, Professor McCann received the school's most prestigious awards for teaching.

In 2008, Professor McCann was a Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Boston College Law School, where he taught sports law and administrative law, and served as Chair of the AALS Section on Sports and the Law.

Professor McCann has placed scholarly pieces in the Yale Law Journal, Wisconsin Law Review, and Case Western Reserve Law Review, among other publications. His published work has included empirical and antitrust research on the NBA’s age eligibility rule, which he concludes is irrational both in terms of on-court performance and off-court data (such as in terms of arrest propensity among NBA players).   Professor McCann’s most recent article is American Needle v. NFL: An Opportunity to Reshape Sports Law, 119 Yale Law Journal 101 (2009).

Prior to becoming a law professor, Professor McCann served as counsel to college football star Maurice Clarett in his lawsuit against the National Football League and its age eligibility rule. He also served as a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School and Legal Counsel to U.S. Congressman Marty Meehan.

Professor McCann he has been frequently interviewed on television programs, including HBO's Bob Costas Now, CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, American Morning, Headline News, and Glenn Beck Show, Fox News' Fox Live Desk, and CNBC's Morning Call and Power Lunch.

Mark Verstegen

Founder and Chairman, Athletes' Performance

An internationally-recognized leader and innovator in the world of athletic and human performance, Mark Verstegen is Founder and Chairman of Athletes' Performance, which has set the standard for providing athletes with cutting-edge training based on the latest sports science.  Mark and Athletes' Performance support nearly 1000 professional athletes globally and in their World Class facilities (CA, AZ, TX, FL), where Mark and his team have implemented many of his unique and breakthrough concepts in athletic performance.

 

Mark began his coaching career at his alma mater, Washington State University, before completing his Masters degree in Sport Sciences at the University of Idaho.  He became Assistant Director of Player Development at Georgia Tech where he implemented innovative and successful performance programs for football, men's basketball and golf.  In 1995, Mark ventured to Bradenton, Florida to create the International Performance Institute, which became recognized worldwide under Mark's direction.  Mark's continual pursuit of quality and his vision of creating a facility completely dedicated to helping athletes achieve their goals led to the development of Athletes' Performance in Tempe, Arizona in 1999.  Athletes' Performance opened APLA in 2003 at the Home Depot National Training Center in Los Angeles, California and has since added APFL in Gulf Breeze, Florida with the Dr. James Andrews Institute, and most recently APTX in Frisco, Texas. (www.AthletesPerformance.com)

 

In 2004, Mark authored his first book, titled Core Performance, which reached the top 25 on Amazon within 6 weeks of its release and has sold well over 100,000 copies.  Mark has subsequently launched four additional books: CP Essentials (2006), CP Endurance (2007), CP Golf (2008), and CP Women (2010). Mark's widely acclaimed Core Performance system is also available online through interactive, progressive programs and other world-class performance lifestyle content at www.CorePerformance.com. Mark and his team launched the acclaimed Core Performance Center in Santa Monica, California in 2009, and additional sites and services within leading corporations such as Intel, Google, IBM and other industry leaders. (www.CorePerformanceCenters.com)

 

Mark and Athletes' Performance consult for high performance companies including adidas, Intel, EAS, Gatorade, Keiser, Power Plate, Sheraton, GoFit, and TIGNUM, helping them from innovation, testing, consumer marketing, and sustainable performance.

 

Mark serves as the Director of Performance for the NFL Players' Association, where he focuses on player safety and welfare.  He is a regular contributor to and many leading health and fitness publications, as well as a sought after industry speaker who regularly presents at the leading conferences in the field.

Dr. Kim Blair

Founding Director, MIT Center for Sports Innovation; Director of the Sports Engineering Practice at Cooper Perkins, Inc.

Kim is the director of Cooper Perkins’ sports engineering practice group and the founder of the Sports Innovation Program @ MIT. Enabling innovation at the intersection of technology and sports, Kim has extensive experience utilizing advanced technologies to enhance all aspects of the sporting experience, leading the development of new products as well as technologies for sport performance analyses from early formulation of product concepts to final prototype design and testing. Many projects are award winning, including MIT departmental awards, conference best paper awards, and international ispo Academic Challenge design awards. 

Dr. Thomas Murray

President & CEO, The Hastings Center

Thomas H. Murray is President and CEO of The Hastings Center.  Dr. Murray was formerly the Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, where he was also the Susan E. Watson Professor of Bioethics.  He serves on many editorial boards, has been president of the Society for Health and Human Values and of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and among other current posts serves as Chair of the Ethical Issues Review Panel for the World Anti-Doping Agency and as International Expert Advisor to Singapore's Bioethics Advisory Committee. Dr. Murray has testified before many Congressional committees and is the author of more than 200 publications including The Worth of a Child, The Cultures of Caregiving: Conflict and Common Ground among Families, Health Professionals and Policy Makers, edited with Carol Levine, and Genetic Ties and the Family: The Impact of Paternity Testing on Parents and Children, edited with Mark A. Rothstein, Gregory E. Kaebnick and Mary Anderlik Majumder. He is also editor, with Maxwell J. Mehlman, of the Encyclopedia of Ethical, Legal and Policy Issues in Biotechnology.  In January 2004 he received an honorary Doctor of Medicine degree from Uppsala University. 

Steve Kerr

General Manager, Phoenix Suns

Moderator

Gary Belsky

Editor in Chief, ESPN The Magazine

Gary Belsky is editor in chief of ESPN The Magazine, where he has worked since 1998. The author of several books, he lectures frequently on the psychology of decision-making to business and consumer groups around the world. From 1994 through 1998, Belsky was a regular commentator on CNN’s Your Money and a frequent contributor to Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Crossfire and Oprah; he continues to appear on local and national radio and TV, commenting on sports, economics, business and personal finance. A St. Louis native, Belsky graduated from the University of Missouri in that city in 1983 with a BA in speech communication and political science. Before joining ESPN he was a writer at Money magazine and a reporter for Crain’s New York Business and the St. Louis Business Journal. In 1990, Belsky won the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. Belsky, who lives in Manhattan, serves on the board of directors of Urban Pathways, one of New York City’s largest providers of services to the homeless and mentally ill; as well as the New York Neo-Futurists, an East Village theater company.