Sport Slavery: The NCAA and CHL exploitation of teenagers.

My name is Susan MacDonald.  I am the researcher and author of this treatise work.

I am a Master of Human Kinetics in the area of High Performance Coaching Science (1999).  I am also the recipient of the Petro Canada Canadian Olympic Coaching Award of Excellence in Canada (1997-1998), for my development of high performance athletes in Men’s Ice Hockey.  I am the founder and director of a high performance development program for athletes called IcePower High Performance, where I have developed athletes, male and female, from Canada and US from 1996 to 2019.   

I am also a Juris Doctor (2004) and a Master of Laws (2019).  The treatise available here is the scholarly work of the Master of Laws released for publication by the University of British Columbia on January 29, 2025, which is a delayed release due to an author imposed Embargo from 2019 to present.

I thank the University of British Columbia and my excellent mentoring world-class professors of law, Professor Joseph Weiler, and Associate Dean, Dr. Graham Reynolds for their gifted guidance on this very large project. 

I have seen hundreds of my athletes, including family members, enjoy playing for the NCAA and/or the CHL, and the lower Junior A Tier II men’s ice hockey, but with a rock in my gut for them, I’ve watched others profit off their labor, name-image-likeness, their super talent and toughness, with nothing to each young man in return.  I’ve watched their contract terms dissolve in the pressures of living life on the vapor of a rainbow of their dreams.  While everyone around them, from event ticket-taker to arena cleaning people all made a wage for the event, the performing stars were guaranteed zero.  To me, the law seemed to miss a beat, and I wanted to find out why this relationship between sport cartels and thousands of youth was not cut short and the kids paid at least minimum wage if the owners were operating cartel franchises worth millions of dollars.

I wanted to do this five year work in the form of treatise for the benefit of those who do not know the life of the child worker, and the life of a youth that is gifted, and controlled by a powerful cartel.  I wanted to know the failures in the law, in economics, in the courts, media, and society.  I wanted to open the eyes of the judges, commissioners, lawyers, lawmakers and scholars.   I wanted to get the athletes paid if they were part of a billion dollar sport cartel, but to do it in a way that the NCAA and CHL continue to prosper.  I believe I have done that, i have found the problems, and discovered solutions.

Sport Slavery treatise is a demand for a PLAY ME–PAY ME reality that is intended not only to  benefit young gifted athletes, but also benefit all child labor in the many industries throughout the US and Canada that are exploiting children. 

Yours, in the development of fine young men and women through sport, and to those who cannot quit their dreams,

Susan D. MacDonald, BHK, MHK, JD, LLM.