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CSBN Columnists
Travis Feezell - CSBN College Sports Academic Columnist
Dr. Travis Feezell currently serves as an associate professor of sport management at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, North Carolina. He received his doctoral degree in education from the University of Idaho in 2005. In addition, he received his master’s degree in British medieval studies from the University of Wales-Cardiff in 1992 and his undergraduate degree in English from the University of Wyoming in 1990.
Dr. Feezell has served in a variety of positions in higher education and athletics over the last 20 years. He has worked as both an assistant and head baseball coach at the college level. In addition, he served as an athletics administrator at the Division I level but worked more recently as the athletics director at two different Division III institutions. During the 2009-10 academic year Dr. Feezell served as the interim athletics director at Belmont Abbey, a Division II school.
During his work as athletics director, Dr. Feezell held membership on a number of NCAA committees including the Division III Management Council, the Division III Financial Aid Committee, and the Strategic Planning Committee. In addition, Dr. Feezell served as president of the National Association of Athletics Compliance Coordinators (NAACC) from 2005 to 2008; NAACC is the primary professional association for those working in intercollegiate athletics compliance.
Prior to his appointment at Belmont Abbey College, Feezell served as the athletics director at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota from 2005-2008. While there Feezell oversaw all facets of the athletics department including varsity, club and intramural sports. He was athletics director at a time when Macalester made over $50 million in investments in athletics facilities including a new baseball/softball complex, new synthetic surface for the football/soccer stadium, and the new $45 million Leonard Athletics and Recreation Center.
Prior to his tenure at Macalester, Feezell headed the Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA) athletics department for five years, overseeing 18 varsity programs, intramurals and teaching classes on sports culture and great books. He was the baseball coach for six years as well. Before working at Whitman, he was an academic adviser in the athletics department at Northwestern University.
In addition to his extensive work in athletics, Dr. Feezell has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses at a number of institutions including Whitman College, the University of Minnesota, the University of St. Thomas (MN) and Winthrop University. His areas of research and publication/presentation include administration, governance, policy and leadership in intercollegiate athletics. He can be reached at TravisFeezell@bac.edu.
B. David Ridpath, Ed.D., CSBN College Sports Governance Columnist
Dr. B. David Ridpath, Ed.D. is an Assistant Professor of Sport Administration at Ohio University in the School of Recreation and Sport Sciences. He began his current position in 2006. Dr. Ridpath has several years of practical experience in the sports industry and teaches classes in marketing, sponsorship, risk management, sports law, issues in intercollegiate athletics, and other areas to include serving as faculty advisor and Associate General Manager of the Southern Ohio Copperheads, a summer collegiate wooden bat baseball team headquartered in Athens. The Copperheads are a main experiential learning laboratory for graduate and undergraduate sports administration and sports management students and is entirely student run. He also serves as Associate Director of the Ralph and Lucy Schey Sales Center and is the director of the undergraduate sport management sales certificate program, currently one of the only specific sports management sales certification programs in the world. This is Ridpath's second stint at Ohio. He previously served as assistant wrestling coach at Ohio from 1994-95. While on legendary head coach Harry Houska's staff, the Bobcat wrestling team won the Mid American Conference wrestling championship in 1995 and finished 19th in the country. He also earned a Masters of Sports Administration and Facility Management degree from Ohio in 1995.
Prior to returning to Ohio University, Ridpath spent two years directing the graduate sports administration program at Mississippi State University placing graduates in positions within the MSU athletic department, the Southeastern Conference (SEC), NASCAR, and minor league baseball. Prior to MSU, he spent over a decade working in intercollegiate athletic administration and higher education including seven years at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, where he served as an Adjunct Professor of Sport Management and Marketing, Director of Judicial Programs and Assistant Athletic Director for Compliance and Student Services.
Ridpath received a Doctor of Education in Higher Education Administration from West Virginia University in May 2002. His primary research line is issues and problems in intercollegiate athletics with a focus on academic integrity and governance reform. An accomplished scholar, he has over 30 national and international refereed presentations and eight peer reviewed academic articles in print, two published academic book chapters, and has had writings and editorials featured in the NCAA News, Sports Business Journal, Legal Issues in College Athletics, and will be releasing a book entitled Tainted Glory: Marshall University, The NCAA, and One Man’s Fight for Justice. Dr. Ridpath has been retained several times as an expert in litigation involving college sports issues and is regularly interviewed on relevant issues in college sports within the media to include ESPN Outside the Lines, The Paul Finebaum Radio Show, and WATH Sports Radio. Dr Ridpath has also been quoted and featured in several publications discussing issues in college athletics including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Toronto Globe and Mail, USA Today, Indianapolis Star, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Birmingham News, to name a few. Dr. Ridpath can be reached at ridpath@ohio.edu
Ellen J. Staurowsky, Ed.D., CSBN College Sports Gender Equity Columnist
Dr. Ellen Staurowsky is Professor, Sport Management at Drexel University. Dr. Staurowsky is internationally recognized as an expert on social justice issues in sport which include gender equity and Title IX, pay equity and equal employment opportunity, the exploitation of athletes, the faculty role in reforming college sport, representation of women in sport media, and the misappropriation of American Indian imagery in sport. She is co-author of the book, College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA Amateur Myth and is currently working on her second book entitled Women in Sport: From Liberation to Celebration. In addition to publications in scholarly journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Sociology of Sport Journal, Quest, Journal of Sport Management, the International Journal of Sport Sociology, the Marquette Sports Law Review, the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, and the International Journal of Sport History, her critiques and analyses on a variety of issues have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal, The NCAA News, The New York Times, Athletic Management Magazine, and News From Indian Country. Dr. Staurowsky is frequently sought after for interviews to discuss contemporary sport issues. She has served as president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport and the AAHPERD Research Consortium. She is an executive board member of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the NCAA Scholarly Colloquium, where she also serves as secretary-treasurer. She has made several appearances on ESPN Outside the Lines, ESPN Classic, ESPN Cold Pizza, and Public Broadcasting’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. Dr. Staurowsky served as a director of athletics at the college level for nine years before moving to Ithaca College, and then on to Drexel University. Previous to that was a college coach in the sports of field hockey, men’s soccer, and women’s lacrosse. She can be reached at ejs95@drexel.edu
Tony Weaver - CSBN Sports Business Columnist
Tony Weaver is an Assistant Professor for Sport and Event Management at Elon University in Elon, North Carolina. He currently serves on numerous advisory boards for local, regional and national organizations within the sport and event industry, and is an active member of the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators (NACMA), North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM) and the College Sports Research Institute (CSRI). Tony’s writings related to college athletics have been featured in the Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, the Knowledge Collaborative and Ultimate Sports Insider.com. Tony served almost 10 years in Division I college athletics administration at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Siena College, Iona College and the University of Connecticut. He coached college and high school basketball and gained practical experience in financial organizations before moving into administration. Tony holds a B.S. from Siena College; an M.A. from the University of Connecticut; and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He became an assistant professor at Elon in 2007. He can be reached at tweaver@elon.edu
Joshua D. Winneker, Esq., CSBN Sports Law Columnist
Josh Winneker, Esq. is an Assistant Dean at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California. He is a faculty member in the Center for Sports Law and Policy where he teaches Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining in Professional Sports and the Law of Professional Sports. He has taught Sports and the Law and the Business of Sports at Rider University. Josh has also taught at Widener University School of Law, Charleston School of Law and Seton Hall University School of Law. He is also an Associate with the O'Brien Sports Group, which specializes in college sports consulting matters.
Josh graduated magna cum laude from Seton Hall University School of Law where he was a member of the Seton Hall Law Review. He was a summer associate, law clerk and associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in New York City in the Antitrust/Sports Law group. He also served for two years as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Garrett E. Brown, Jr., Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Josh was also a litigation associate at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP and Winston & Strawn LLP.
Additionally, Josh graduated cum laude from Muhlenberg College, where he was a member of the Varsity Soccer team and Centennial Conference Champion.
Josh has published in the Seton Hall Law Review and is admitted to practice law in New York, New Jersey and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Josh can be reached at jwinneker@tjsl.edu
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