“His life was very much at stake,” Drew said, describing the tense situation with 20-year-old Soviet hockey phenom Alexander Mogilny. As her bosses drove around Stockholm trying to avoid the Russian secret police, Drew began drafting Mogilny’s asylum application. Fortunately, her efforts succeeded, likely saving Mogilny from a life sentence in a Soviet labor camp—and changing the trajectory of Sabres hockey and the entire NHL.

A native Western New Yorker, Drew has been a Sabres fan all her life. While an undergrad at Harvard, she realized she wanted to be in-house counsel for the Sabres and came back to enroll in UB law school. “The classes were phenomenal,” recalled Drew, who met “some of the best friends of my life” at UB. As a scholarship recipient and youngest of six siblings, she paid for school by clerking for various law firms. “I know you’re not supposed to do that,” Drew said, “but literally every day I would leave UB around lunch hour, drive downtown, and work the entire afternoon. And on Fridays I’d work the whole day.”

Her connections and work ethic paid off when she met Gerry Meehan, JD ’82, who was then general manager for the Sabres. Meehan agreed to supervise Drew’s independent project on dispute resolution in the NHL, which led to a job with the team. There, she helped negotiate contracts for some of the biggest names in team history (think Hasek and LaFontaine, among others), and saved team owners “a boatload of money” by drawing on the tax law she learned in Professor Louis Del Cotto’s class.

Drew left the Sabres to teach at UB after one of her children faced a serious illness and she needed more flexibility. “It turned out I absolutely love it.”

Today, as professor of Practice in Sports Law and director of the UB Center for the Advancement of Sport, one of Drew’s biggest challenges is finding reliable sources in a fast-changing field. “By the time the textbook has been written,” she said, “you can use it as a doorstop,” which is one reason Drew and her students write the online UB Law Sports & Entertainment Forum.

One of the topics they cover is name, image and likeness—NIL, for short—which allows college athletes to profit from their personal brands. From a legal standpoint, Drew is concerned about student athletes who typically don’t have access to an attorney, yet are asked to sign contracts that “may or may not be enforceable.”

Sports betting on college games is another focus for Drew, especially given that it’s legal in most states, including New York, and brings in billions of dollars in annual revenue. But how are companies protecting the integrity of the outcomes? If a quarterback breaks up with his girlfriend, what are his roommates allowed to do with this inside knowledge?

As an advocate for women’s sports, Drew also promotes research and policies that help female athletes overcome obstacles, including finding and paying for a good sports bra. “As a mother of five daughters, I can tell you they’re expensive as hell and they never fit.” Drew has spent years tracking the impact of Title IX, which prevents discrimination based on sex. However, it can also have unintended consequences, such as reducing opportunities for women coaches. “It's always been a creature of political navigation, with the pendulum swinging back and forth with the administration,” Drew said.

Ultimately, Drew views the law as a tool that can promote better outcomes for athletes, teams and society. As an example, she cites a policy paper by her students proposing a liability incentive that would allow athletic venues to avoid lawsuits by improving their concussion protocols. 

Whether she’s meeting with a law student in her sports-memorabilia-filled office, sharing research to help negotiate a deal for the new Buffalo Bills stadium, or cheering on the UB Bulls from the stands, it’s clear that Drew loves what she does.

“I get paid for talking about sports. It doesn’t get any better than that.”