Big Business.

Sports in the 1970s was very big business. Television had reshaped the sports industry in the decade before, and now the businessmen went to work to exploit their market. Football, baseball, basketball, boxing, auto racing, golf, and tennis were where the sports entertainment money was, and by the end of the 1970s top athletes demanded as much as a million dollars a year to perform. But their earning capacity did not come without a fight.

Free Agency.

Traditionally in team sports athletes had been considered property whose value lay with a team owner or manager who could market their skills. Baseball, football, and basketball players belonged to the teams that drafted them, and players could be traded at the owners' discretion. As the stakes increased in the 1960s players began to agitate for some freedom. They realized they were not property, they were commodities, and they...