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(Note: The following column by League of Fans’ sports policy director Ken Reed recently appeared in the Boulder (CO) Daily Camera)

The University of Miami might eventually receive the NCAA’s “death penalty” following the recently revealed major scandal involving the school’s athletic program but that’s not going to change anything in big-time college sports.

A poll done by the Fan Freedom Project found that fans are becoming fed up with the growing amount […]

Sports Fans Coalition unveiled a “Just Playoff” campaign last week by announcing a national fan petition calling on President Obama to live up to his promise to help bring about a college football playoff to replace the current Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system. The petition drive will soon evolve into individual college campus petitions […]

The recent deaths of NHL enforcers, Wade Belak, Rick Rypien, and Derek Boogaard have raised a lot of questions and concerns. See “Questions Linger Over Recent Deaths of Three NHL Enforcers,” San Jose Mercury News.

What role did concussions, if any, have in their deaths?

Did blows to the head from years of fighting […]

Nobody can dispute that girls and women have made tremendous strides in the sports world since the implementation of Title IX in 1972. Title IX requires schools at all levels across the country to offer girls and women equal access to any educational program or activity that receives federal funding, including athletics. Most schools have […]

Recent high profile incidents of fan violence have raised concerns about fan safety at major sporting events in the United States. (See USA Today article.) Teams and leagues are scurrying to beef up their “crowd management” and “crowd control” plans. The focus of those plans needs to be on alcohol.

Fans ultimately must be […]

League of Fan’s sports policy director Ken Reed, was a guest panelist on ESPN’s Outside the Lines show on August 24th. (See the show here.) The episode focused on the recent college football scandal involving the University of Miami and whether or not they should receive the NCAA’s “death penalty.”

Reed argued that the […]

Voters in Nassau County, New York shot down a ballot initiative to build a new hockey arena for the New York Islanders by a whopping margin, 57 percent to 43 percent. See “Voters Nix $400 Million Hockey Tix.” Publicly-financed stadiums and arenas are rarely a good deal for local taxpayers. The proposed new arena […]

Jonathan Mahler’s article “Student-Athlete Equation Could Be a Win-Win,” was a good overview of what Mahler aptly called a “dysfunctional system” – intercollegiate athletics. There is little doubt the current system is broken. Today’s commercialized college sports programs — primarily football and men’s basketball — have little to do with education. There are three […]

USA Today ran a feature article on League of Fans in its sports section today (See Ralph Nader’s Sports Group Seeks Changes, Targets BCS, USA TODAY). The article focused on League of Fans’ sports reform agenda in general, and a couple specific initiatives in particular, including the promotion of the community ownership model in […]