Friedenthal, who served as dean of the GW Law School for 10 years before returning to teaching in 1998, is an authority on legal matters involving both the National Collegiate Athletic Association and National Football League. He works as chair of the NCAA Division I Infractions Committee and as a special master for the NFL.

As a special master, Friedenthal presides over disputes between the Players Association and the NFL. Declining to discuss specific cases, Friedenthal said he settles disagreements over team payments and player salary caps. Friedenthal said his work on NFL cases is limited.

As both a lawyer and an educator, Friedenthal said his work in sports law mainly involves the NCAA. During nine years on the Infractions Committee, Friedenthal and other NCAA officials have ruled on hundreds of cases involving NCAA rules violations. The independent committee, whose members are not paid, enforces its regulations on recruitment, academic dishonesty and other areas in all Division I sports.

“I like to think that I am helping to maintain and improve the quality of intercollegiate athletic play,” Friedenthal said. “I am a teacher, a professor. I care about students. If the rules aren’t obeyed we short change a lot of students and give the wrong impression of what athletics is all about.”

Friedenthal holds high praise for the GW Athletic Department, which he said has not been charged with any NCAA violations.

“We have an excellent athletic department and faculty dedicated to a clean program,” Friedenthal said. “We have had some scandals about the character of recruits, but that is different. It is a question about policy for the institution.”

But this is not the case for all NCAA Division I universities. The Infractions Committee, which functions like a court, heard more than 30 cases last year – mostly involving advantages given to recruits, Friedenthal said.

The NCAA regulates when and how universities can recruit students athletes, forbidding schools from offering players money other than scholarships.

Friedenthal said boosters commit a large portion of rules violations. He describes a booster as “a crazy alum who thinks he owns the basketball or football team.” Boosters often try to recruit athletes themselves, paying little or no regard to NCAA regulations, Friedenthal said.

“The boosters can act with or without the coaches knowledge, but the school has an obligation to control them because they represent the interests of the university,” Friedenthal said.

Other infractions involve the falsification of academic credentials, Friedenthal said. This is when the school aids in furnishing the students with phony grades and test scores.

In a recent University of Minnesota case two athletic office secretaries tutored student-athletes for four years, writing more than 400 papers for 10 basketball players, Friedenthal said. Coaches have also recruited students to take the SATs for the athletes in order for them to meet admission requirements, Friedenthal said.

The NCAA Enforcement Staff, which leads preliminary investigations into allegations of wrongdoing, presents cases to the Infractions Committee. The Enforcement Staff discovers violations in different ways including tips and newspapers accounts, but most are reported by the university that committed the violation, Friedenthal said.

“(Universities) have a duty to self-report (violations), and most do,” Friedenthal said.

After an official inquiry by the Enforcement Staff, the case goes before Friedenthal’s committee.

“The enforcement is like a prosecutor and the school is like the defense,” he said. “In most cases the two side agree, but every now and again we have to make a choice. We then assess the penalties.”

According to Friedenthal, the most common penalty is loss of scholarships. Schools have a limited number of scholarships for each sport. Other penalties include loss of postseason eligibility and probation, for which schools must report how they comply with the rules.

“Most schools really want to comply,” Friedenthal said. “Yes you have wayward coaches, wayward boosters and students, but most want to comply.”

The greatest punishment the committee can give is “the death penalty,” in which an offending university loses its athletic program in the sport it violated for one year. In 1987, before Friedenthal was on the committee, Southern Methodist University’s football team received this sanction, the only time it was used.

“We only use the death penalty if it is a repeat offense in the past five years and a very serious offense at that,” Friedenthal said.

The biggest infractions occur in football and men’s basketball because they generate the most revenue and media attention, Friedenthal said. But the committee has dealt with violations in all sports.

Friedenthal’s term as chair of the committee ends in September, the culmination 24 years of service for the NCAA. Before serving on the Infractions Committee, Friedenthal worked for the Student Eligibility Committee and served as Stanford University’s faculty advisor to the NCAA.

Friedenthal taught at Stanford for 20 years before coming to GW in 1988. At Stanford, Friedenthal was introduced to mediating athletic regulations when he settled a dispute on whether women should be allowed to play intramural sports. He decided they should play.

Friedenthal said he always acted as the “academic conscience.”

“I made sure the student athletes were real students,” he said.

Friedenthal said he will continue to work with the NCAA if the organization asks. As for being an athlete himself, Friedenthal said he is only a fan.