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NASCAR Continues to Go its own Way

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

Just as the NHL and the other big 3 professional sports leagues continue to crack down on athlete misconduct on and off the field, NASCAR seems to be headed in the opposite direction. The NHL now forbids blindside hits to the head, and the NFL forbids almost any hit to the quarterback, but NASCAR has decided that it is permissible for one driver to intentionally crash his car into another driver during a race. I have a new column up on the Huffington Post that compares NASCAR's new (or reborn) "have it and have a good time" policy with the safety/image-first policies of the big 4 pro sports leagues.

Here's an excerpt:

Of course, not everything is off limits. While it may soon be a fineable offense to cough on or near a quarterback in the NFL (we don't want Tom Brady getting a cold, do we?) the NHL still tolerates (if not embraces) fighting. We can quibble with the NHL's decision to allow the fights, but we can understood why they made it--hockey fans love to see fights, and it's not so bad if the players beat on each other every now and then....But, it is a little hard to understand the latest ruling by NASCAR.

You can find the full column here. You can also follow me on twitter here.

Full post as published by Sports Law Blog on March 31, 2010 (boomark / email).