Speaker Profile

Professor of Law, University of New Hampshire School of Law Michael McCann is a professor of law and director of the UNH Law Sports and Entertainment Law Institute (SELI). SELI, which is part of the top-ranked Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property, offers students hands-on training & experiential opportunities in this cutting-edge area of law. McCann is one of the nation's leading experts in sports law, a seasoned sports attorney, and an award-winning teacher, scholar and journalist. He is Sports Illustrated 's legal analyst, a writer for both Sports Illustrated and SI. com, and the on-air Legal Analyst for NBA TV. McCann has authored more than 300 legal columns and investigative articles for Sports Illustrated and SI. com. He has covered the Boston Marathon bombings, the Washington Redskins trademark dispute, Donald Sterling's legal battles with both the NBA and his wife Shelly Sterling, the Aaron Hernandez murder trials, NBA, NFL & NHL lockouts, the Jerry Sandusky scandal, Ed O'Bannon v. NCAA , Lance Armstrong's doping scandal and many other stories. McCann was the first member of the media to interview Lance Armstrong after Armstrong's interview with Oprah Winfrey. He interviewed Armstrong at his home in Austin, TX and authored "My Dance With Lance" ( Sports Illustrated , March 11, 2013 issue, pages 14-15). During the summer of 2014, McCann wrote a record-breaking 50 legal columns for Sports Illustrated and SI. com. McCann has also broken several national news stories, including that University of Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino hired his mistress over 150 more qualified candidates and that Donald Sterling informed the NBA of his refusal to comply with the NBA's sanction and that he hired a legal team with a threat to sue the NBA. Professor McCann is the author of 20 law review articles, with placements in the Yale Law Journal , Wisconsin Law Review , and Boston College Law Review , among other prominent law reviews. One notable law review article is American Needle v. NFL: An Opportunity to Reshape Sports Law, 119 YALE L. J. 726 (2010). In addition to his sports law expertise, Professor McCann is an established expert in media and broadcasting law, law and journalism, antitrust law, contract law, law and technology, food and drug law, disability law, and law and analytics. Along with Jon Hanson, the Alfred Smart Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Professor McCann is co-founder of The Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School. He is also the Distinguished Visiting Hall of Fame Professor of Law at Mississippi College School of Law. Professor McCann has also taught a sports law and analytics reading group at Yale Law School - the first such course to be offered at any law school - and sports law and administrative law courses at Boston College Law School. He was chair of the Association of American Law School's Section on Law and Sports in 2008. 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 ( Clarett v. NFL , 369 F. 3d 124 (2nd Cir. 2004); cert. denied, 125 S. Ct. 1728 (2005)). He also served as a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School, legal counsel to U. S. Congressman Marty Meehan, an antitrust and intellectual property law litigator at two Boston firms and a communications aide to Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly. Professor McCann is a regular panelist at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conferences. He provides daily sports law commentary on Twitter @McCannSportsLaw . In 2013, Boston Magazine honored McCann as one of the "Best Boston Sports Personalities" on Twitter. In 2012, The Huffington Post ranked McCnnn #23 on "Top 40 Must-Follow Twitter Accounts for NBA Fanatics" & The Sporting Chart named him a "Top 50 NBA Mind on Twitter. "