Associate Professor David Weber played basketball and ran track and cross country in high school, then played intramural sports in college. Though he wasn't destined to go pro, he's parlayed a fascination with sports into a successful career practicing and teaching law.
At the University of Oregon School of Law he helped get the ball rolling on a new sports law program, which launched fall 2025. The program unites many of the school's strengths, enabling students to pursue a concentration in sports law.
Weber, the program's faculty director, is leveraging his expertise in sports law and helping shape a legal specialization that's increasingly popular. He came to the UO in 2025 after 17 years at Creighton University, where he founded the school's sports law concentration.
His areas of expertise include name, image and likeness law, or NIL, which governs how college athletes get paid, and legal issues for international athletes. When he's not teaching and mentoring aspiring sports attorneys, Weber offers insights to reporters and organizations shedding light on legal questions involving the sports industry.
Weber took a time-out to talk with OregonNews on Oregon Law's popular new program and the latest developments in sports law.
Q: What brought you to the University of Oregon?
It's one of the premier sports universities in the country and the law school's reputation is stellar. I also relished the opportunity to help start a new program. Athletics and academics collaborate across this university, and I'm excited about the ways Oregon Law faculty members and students can get in the game.
Q: What's happening with sports law at the UO?
The new program is incredibly popular and we have big plans for the future. This year, we took classes to Nike headquarters in Beaverton, where law students met UO alumni working as legal counsel and learned about the ins and outs of the profession. We're growing the number of people in the Oregon Law alumni network who have experience in sports law and forming a new sports law advisory board. Up next, the game plan includes a new Master of Laws degree, a specialized postgraduate degree.
Q: What changed for college sports last June?
Everything. Following a landmark legal settlement in a lawsuit titled House v. NCAA, this year marked the start of a whole new ball game for Division I sports. Student-athletes can now be paid directly by athletic departments. That revenue sharing was capped at approximately $20.5 million for each school this year, and that number will grow. There are no longer limits on scholarships, but there are limits on the number of players on the rosters for each sport. A new College Sports Commission manages the entire process.
Q: Where do athletic departments get the money to pay student-athletes?
It depends on the school, but primarily through their revenue from tickets, merchandise and television rights. Student-athletes can now receive funding from three sources: revenue sharing, scholarships and NIL deals.
Q: We've heard a lot about NIL lately. What's the deal?
Any business can pay to use your name, image and likeness. However, movie stars and popular athletes are in higher demand than the rest of us. College athletes were not allowed to profit from NIL deals until 2021. Subsequent limits on those deals led to three antitrust lawsuits, all of which ended with the June 2025 settlement. Now there's no hard cap on how much NIL money student-athletes can receive, but deals over $600 must go through a new system called NIL Go for approval.
Q: Why did the White House host a "Saving College Sports" roundtable in March?
There's some chaos as players and universities navigate the new rule book. For example, that new platform for NIL deals has created bottlenecks, and there's still confusion around what kinds of NIL payments are allowed. Some universities have engaged in tampering, making lucrative offers using impermissible incentives to tempt players from other teams to jump ship.
Q: What was one of the best outcomes from the June settlement?
Student-athletes are now able to share in the revenue they help create and, because scholarship limits are eliminated, more athletes are now eligible to receive scholarships.
Q: What's one recommendation you have as we begin this new era in college sports?
Involve the athletes. Typically, in the U.S. at the professional level we see bargaining between the people who run the teams and the players. That formula has worked, but it has not yet been tried in college sports. Bring the athletes to the table, reach an agreement everyone can live with and then enforce those rules.
Q: Looking to professional sports - why did the WNBA come so close to a strike this spring?
Salaries were low for professional women's basketball players, to the point that many played abroad during the offseason for additional income. The challenge is how to fairly compensate players when the profits aren't quite there yet. I think those profits will come, especially with a new generation of superstars like Caitlin Clark. But there have been, and will continue to be, growing pains. Both sides had to give to get a deal done, but I think the new collective bargaining agreement is potentially seismic for the league, for the growth of players' salaries and the economic impact it will have.
Q: What are some key legal issues for the FIFA World Cup in June?
Intellectual property comes to mind, for example "ambush marketing" where brands try to ride the coattails of the world's biggest soccer event and take advantage of all the hullabaloo without paying to be an official sponsor. There will likely be a lot of knockoff gear for sale and possibly pirated streaming of the games. FIFA, which organizes the tournament, plays hardball when enforcing its rights because sponsorship deals and broadcasting generate most of its revenue. FIFA strongly polices its branding and its sponsors' rights.
Q: Will the Summer Olympics face similar challenges?
Yes. That's also an elite global event, so intellectual property will be a big issue in Los Angeles. The involvement of national federations might make the Olympics feel less commercial than the World Cup, but the organizers still enforce the rules. The five Olympic rings compose one of the best-protected trademarks in the world.
Q: What's with all those sports betting ads on websites, podcasts and social media?
Since the 2018 Supreme Court decision to leave the legality of sports betting up to the states, online gambling has grown into one of the largest segments of the sports industry. That astronomical growth poses vexing questions about the integrity of athletic contests. Unfortunately, I think we'll be seeing headlines about sports betting and related scandals for some time.
