Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Media & Entertainment Law Blogs -> Sports Law Blog

Media & Entertainment Law

: Sports Law Blog

Long-Term Contracts and the Coaching Carousel

By Rick Karcher, Michael McCann, Geoffrey Rapp, Greg Skidmore, and Howard Wasserman

Rick is right that the college coaching carousel flies in the face of everything we think we know about contract law. On the other hand, job mobility is an element of many white-collar professions, including within a university setting. If another law school needs someone to teach civil procedure, the administration might contact me about moving or visiting there and I might at least consider leaving my current school and making that move. See here for a sense of how much law faculty move around, including out own Michael McCann. There is an expectation that a faculty member will leave School A for School B and that School A will replace her with someone recruited from School Z. This is how job markets work.

The difference, it seems to me, is that coaches sign long-term contracts and the carousel renders these contracts farcical. As Rick notes, Travis Ford signed a seven-year contract extension, then left for a new school one week later--in other words, he performed one week of a 364-week contract. This movement arguably would be less troubling, at a visceral level, if we drop the pretense that either coach or school truly is making a long-term commitment and put coaches on one-year renewable contracts. Bring the legal landscape in line with reality--Coach Smith will be the coach at Enormous State University this year; whether he will be the coach at ESU next year depends on how the team does on the court and whether a better coaching offer comes along.

Full post as published by Sports Law Blog on April 19, 2008 (boomark / email).