Personal Injury Law

Should College Football Players at State Funded Universities Lose Their First Amendment Rights?

By Rod Heggy

Texas Tech University football head coach Mike Leach ?suspended indefinitely? an offensive lineman ?for violating team rules.? In the copyrighted AP story published by the Daily Oklahoman, the unattributed AP story seemed to imply that the lineman was suspended because he posted to his Twitter account a complaint that he was at a Sunday meeting and the head coach was late. This allegedly occurred the day after the team lost 29-28 to the Houston Cougars. (I am a graduate of the University of Houston college of law but I never saw a Cougars game while there and have never seen one since. I have never seen a Texas Tech football game either. In both disclosures, I include TV as well as live attendance.)

It once again amazes me that a college football player, a college kid, not an NFL player, can be treated this way. It also amazes me that it is news flashed across the planet rather than merely a line item in a campus newspaper.

I wonder if the football coach, an employee of a state institution, realizes he is a state actor and may have violated the civil rights to free speech of a citizen commenting on the way in which this government employee, the football coach, attended to his duties? While a high school football coach might be able to squash the free speech rights of a minor in a public high school under the rubric of preserving the peace at the school, that should not be available to a college football coach employed by a taxpayer funded state institution.

Nobody can reign in a sitting head football coach at a division 1 NCAA school in the Big Twelve with no worse than a 50% record and so much television revenue yet to collect for the year, so this is all academic.

Full post as published by Terra Extraneus on September 28, 2009 (boomark / email).