Weekend Plans With Arizona State SLB Program Exec Dir Glenn Wong
Arizona State Sports Law & Business Program Exec Dir GLENN WONG joined the school in '15 as a Distinguished Professor of Practice before being named to his current role in January '17. Wong is also a past-president of the Sports Lawyers Association, has served as outside counsel to the Orioles and Red Sox in salary arbitration matters and also has worked or consulted for a number of sports entities including the PGA of America, SI, the NCAA and the USOPC. In other words, Wong wears many different hats -- so it's no surprise that his weekends tend to fall on the more relaxing side. Wong recently caught up with THE DAILY to break down what a typical weekend looks like.
GETTING OFF ON THE RIGHT FOOT: This Friday is a little bit different than normal because we have one of the major events at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at ASU called "Gold 'N Gavel," which is a big fundraising event. It is one of the key dates for the law school. Usually on some Fridays, I'll feel like going out and doing something depending on what the week looks like, what friends are in town, what my wife would like to do. We might go out to dinner or cook at home. Once a weekend though, sometimes twice, we like to go out to eat at a new restaurant. The good fortune of being new in Arizona is that there are a lot of new places to eat. Recently, we've tried Tutti Santi by Nina, the Roaring Fork, The Mission and Persian Room.
ALL IN A DAY'S WORK: What I love to do on the weekends is play golf, so I'll play a round at some point. On the other day of the weekend, I like to either hike or play tennis. Fortunately, in Arizona, there are a lot of great hiking opportunities. I also try to build in some time for creative work, whether it's a writing project or thinking of ways to improve the ASU Sports Law & Business Program. Within that, one of the things that helps me in terms of creativity and growth is to do some reading. I have a few former students and colleagues who have sent me several different books, which I'm in the process of going through. Those include MLB Commissioner Emeritus BUD SELIG's recent book, "FOR THE GOOD OF THE GAME," Grizzlies F ANDRE IGUODALA's memoir "THE SIXTH MAN" and MARK FROST's "THE MATCH."
PREPARING FOR THE WEEK: I try to prep the whole week on Sunday. I even sometimes will write up all my emails so I can just send them out in the morning. What I've found is that I'm able to get more done earlier in the week, so I really want to hit the ground running. The other thing I try to do on the weekends is take a couple blocks of time to try to do what I call "focus work" on things that are easier to get done in big chunks of time that I usually don't have during the week. For this weekend, I'm going back and reading some cases and court of arbitration decisions involving ALBERTO SALAZAR and DR. JEFFREY BROWN. I think those are really significant cases -- I know they're not covered as much as the NCAA cases -- but I think they are going to be really impactful. I'm also going to take a look back at some of the older NCAA cases involving the situation with Univ. of Memphis C JAMES WISEMAN. In the early days, the institutions would challenge the NCAA and not rule their players ineligible, so there was actually some litigation and I wanted to look back at those.
ON THE ROAD: My favorite getaway weekend is when I have a chance to go and visit one of my two boys. This past weekend, I had a board meeting in Florida, but then spent two days in Oklahoma City where my son, GLENN, works for the Thunder and had a chance to go to a couple of the games. My other son, GARY, works for the PGA in Dallas, so if I can get down there for an event, that would be great. Fortunately for me, they both like to play golf, so whenever we can get on the course, we'll do that.
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