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: The Sports Law Professor

Getaway Day

By Jeffrey Standen

I am an occasional speaker at academic conferences, and know that the timing of the panel on which I am invited to speak is crucial. When the conference organizer asks me to present my thoughts at a Saturday morning panel, the only self-respecting response is to hang up the phone (and wait for the conciliatory call). Everyone knows Saturday is Getaway Day, with attendees parking their luggage in the corner of the ballroom, constantly checking their watches, and leaving abruptly (and noisily) at inopportune times during the presentation. A Saturday assignment is a sign of disrespect; accordingly, the slots are typically assigned to young professors looking to make their mark. (TSLP, no longer young and having made no mark, still puts up a fuss over the smallest slights, having been raised wrong.)

Not so here at the annual meeting of the Sports Lawyers Association. The Saturday panels feature the conference's high-flyers, the in-house lawyers from the major sports leagues and their respective player associations. But it's still getaway day for everyone else, so amidst the applause and happy feelings for the big fish in this small pond are the usual luggage piles and noisy departures. (TSLP, whose lifestyle is hemmed in by the financial need to fly commercial, can't get back to the west coast until tomorrow, so I'll be braving it alone in the hotel for one last night.)

First panel up this morning (in all senses) is the management side, featuring a number of league in-house general counsel types. It's an outrage, along many fronts:

1. The NHL lawyer couldn't be here, as he has to be in Buffalo to present a conference trophy, if it's won tonight. I can't believe the league uses its lawyer for such a function. As much as practicing lawyers make in salary (their lifestyle is not hemmed in), lawyers should charge more, if only to remind our clients to employ us for those tasks that only we can do.

2. The baseball lawyer just said that he wouldn't answer any questions on Barry Bonds or baseball's steroids problem. What is this, a news conference? I can't imagine a law professor in giving a paper state that he refuses to speak or take questions about certain aspects of his comments. The fact that the baseball lawyer felt comfortable in setting the parameters of the discussion (if we ever get to one) shows me that this conference, although it has its moments, fundamentally does not aspire to be a "real" conference, where topics are thoughtfully considered and debated among like-minded colleagues. I realize that an MLB insider has certain duties not to spoil the pitch for his sport, but if his comments must be filtered then to me that's a strong reason not to include such a person on a panel. Do you realize we've now had several very high-level baseball officials on the podium and yet we've yet to have one serious discussion of what MLB should do, if anything, about Barry Bonds and the whole steroids issue, even though one could make a pretty strong case that that's the most pressing issue confronting baseball in this entire era? Don't you think baseball's lawyers might like to give their thinking on the permissible and appropriate legal response to performance enhancement and then open the floor to questions and comments, if only to hear what a roomful of very bright people might come up with that would add to baseball's collective thinking? Might we have something to offer?

3. Instead, what we get are "updates" and reports on the latest business successes of the sports leagues. (For example, right now the NHL person is reporting to us on "how very excited" her league is to issue new team uniforms next season. Glad I came 3000 miles to hear that.) I find this fundamentally disdainful, as it presumes that there is nothing I nor anyone else here could offer by way of useful commentary on issues of somewhat greater importance. Even thoughtful questions can often lead to valuable reconsideration of difficult subjects. Yet throughout the conference seldom is time left for audience comments, and even where it is, the nature of the presentations ("here's the news") doesn't invite contemplative rejoinder. One wouldn't ask a witness to a train wreck if some other method of railroad safety would work better; the witness is just reporting on the facts. Admittedly, the news has value. But I think the SLA is selling itself and its conference participants short. The best thing about the SLA and sports law is that its a small enough backwater of the legal world that most of its major people (and many of its minor ones, including TSLP) can be easily gathered in a single mid-sized hotel and put into what is more or less a single conversation. We could all learn a lot from each other. The lack of a meaningful conversation, and indeed its replacement with the guarded commentary of the press conference, not only fails the advancement of sports law, it's presumptuous, implying that some have nothing to learn from their colleagues.

4. Up next is the union side. Maybe these wild men of the modern sports era will open things up. TSLP, now fully re-caffeinated after a late night out with an old friend, is ready to go.

Full post as published by The Sports Law Professor on May 19, 2007 (boomark / email).