Ethics Article Review

Introduction

‘The Regulatory Scheme for Player Representatives in the National Football League’ is a research article by Lock Ethan on the ethics revolving around the representation of players by agents. He sites that the athlete representation has become a well-known and publicized field. As the revenues earned through sport activities continue to increase, so does the earnings of the player (Lock, 2001). Additionally, as the players earn more, so does representation become more profitable; thus, attracting many agents. This has consequently led to many unethical issues revolving around the representation business due to intensified competition amongst the agents.

Unethical Behavior Involved

The unethical behaviors involved around representation of the players include the way the agents go about attracting prospective player. Lack of reinforcing the regulations has led to improper conduct of the agents such as giving money to young players still in college, whose eligibilities have not yet expired to lure them. Student athletes are not supposed to be receive money from agents, while still eligible. This is usually in an effort to attract them in future once their eligibility has expired. This is unethical, as no one should be inducing college students with monetary rewards (Lock, 2001).

Another unethical behavior has been the misappropriation of a player’s money. Agents should to represent the interests of the players zealously and ensure their informed consent. However, the major ethical issue harming the players is lack of a strong regulatory body to ensure all regulations are followed. In addition, considering most of the gents are attorneys, they are regulated by the American Bar Association, to which they are licensed to operate (Lock, 2001). The problem exists where there is no rule as to whether the attorneys are bound by the same ethics while they act as agents to players. Therefore, some attorneys will act as agents who are not bound by the attorneys rules, which is wring. This has not been reinforced.

Injured Parties

The injured parties to the unethical conducts carried out are the player. In many cases, the players will be affected by the unethical issues or representation considering they are at the center of the industry. The agents will be earning from the players. Thus, in their quest to earn more, they will try to exploit all possible means of representing talented players who might earn them more money. In the first unethical behavior, when the agents induce the college students with money, the student player might stand to loose more especially in terms of reputation. When such ethical issues are involved, the players stand to be injured.

The other problem happens when the agent misappropriates the client’s money. This is illegal as they are supposed to represent the clients with due diligence and with their interest in mind. Any act that tends to misappropriates a player’s funds will leave the player injured considering he stands to loose. On the regulation of the agents who are attorneys by the American Bar Association fails to establish reinforcement for the connection between the attorneys acting as agents and being attorneys under the regulations of the bar leaves the players unprotected to some of the unethical conducts that could arise out of such.

Effects of the Unethical Behavior

With such unethical behavior, the sports industry is affected since it has tremendous effects on the players. The sports industry is heavily reliant on the players, who need the representation to ensure they can bargain a better deal. The unethical behaviors in most cases end up in court with players suing the agents of inappropriate conduct. Many cases end up in court concerning unethical behavior of the agents, which is only realized by the clients or players after damage has already been caused. The unethical behavior concerned with recruitment of prospective players also has their effects to the industry. Due to the profits realized by agents, they use monetary rewards, which raise a lot of competition (Lock, 2001). Without proper regulation of such agency where strict measures are put in place to ensure players are protected, many have continued to be exploited by the agents. The most affected are the players, who find themselves in unfavorable circumstances, which they probably never had anything to do.

Solving the Unethical Behavior

From the article, it is clear that the unethical behaviors discussed has resulted form lack of devotion to regulations by the institutions served with this responsibility. The regulations have not been reinforced to ensure protection of the players, which allows the agents to enter into unethical conducts for their own interests. One main question raised by the article is whether attorneys representing players should be regulated under the ethical rules of attorneys. It seems that the attorneys’ ethical rules or the American Bar Association has addressed the issues of sports agency, but have not been active in regulating the sports agency (Lock, 2001). This has led to very unethical behavior since the attorneys take advantage of lack of reinforcement of the regulations. Thus, during soliciting, the attorneys could use misleading terms to get the prospective players.

Reference

Lock, E. (2001). Regulatory Scheme for Player Representatives in the National Football League: Real Power of Jerry Maguire. American Business Journal, 35: 320-347.