Media & Entertainment Law

Two (Resold) Tickets to Paradise

Posted on August 27, 2008
As a NY Jets fan, the start of a new NFL season brings new hope. Hope that this might be the first time that the Jets make it to a Super Bowl in my lifetime, and hope that someone I know (let?s call him, ?Fabe Geldman?) does not buy counterfeit tickets outside the stadium...

The NCAA's "No Agent" Rule Discriminates Against Baseball Players

Posted on August 27, 2008
Aaron Fitt of Baseball America wrote an excellent article this week that really delves into the issue of the impracticality of the NCAA's "no agent" rule in the sport of baseball (Secret Agent Deals: NCAA Has Rules on Agents, But They're Rarely Enforced, subscription only)...

When young players are "too good"

Posted on August 26, 2008
No time to analyze this, but I wanted to call attention to this story about a youth baseball league in New Haven that has prohibited a 9-year-old on one team from pitching because he is "too good" (he throws 40 MPH, apparently with control) and now has taken steps to disband the team...

NFL Seeking Congressional Support to Exempt Top Exec Salaries from Public View

Posted on August 25, 2008
As Howard and TaxProf Paul Caron noted last week, the NFL is fighting public disclosure of top league executive salaries (other than that of the commissioner). According to an article published on BNA today, the NFL will continue this effort. The article features comments by attorney Martin Gold (Covington & Burling), who explained:"Discussions are ongoing to see if there is a consensus among parties in Congress who have taken an interest in this matter...

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Separate marathons

Posted on August 23, 2008
Why don't they run the men's and women's Olympic marathons together? They run every other world-class marathon together. And this is the one sport (or event) in which space, rules, and logistics allow the separate competitions to be played simultaneously...

Tom Crean Better be "Mr. Clean"

Posted on August 20, 2008
Tropical storm Fay is getting closer and has caused us to shut down school today and tomorrow. So it's a good time to blog about IU's new contract with head basketball coach Tom Crean signed last week and announced yesterday -- a 10-year deal that could be worth up to $23...

The Return of The Single Entity Defense for Sports Leagues

Posted on August 19, 2008
The Seventh Circuit ruled yesterday in American Needle v. NFL (No. 07-4006) that NFL teams act as a single entity ?when promoting NFL football through licensing teams? intellectual property? and are therefore not subject to scrutiny under Section 1 of the Sherman Act...

Two Olympic thoughts . . .

Posted on August 15, 2008
sort of related to law and public policy.1) This week, I watched the women's beach volleyball (a sport I actually have enjoyed watching) match between USA's Misty May-Treanor and Kerry Walsh (they of the frolicking with W while Russia invaded Georgia) and a team from Cuba...

The NCAA is at it again

Posted on August 15, 2008
The NCAA is at it again, committing what a parent to a 20 year old college athlete calls ?Gestapo tactics? by interviewing his son without an attorney late into the night prior to his getting ready to pitch in a crucial regional championship game. Hours before the game, and presumably as a result of the interview, Oklahoma State declared Andy Oliver ineligible...

Pro Sports Team Owners' Contributions to McCain and Obama

Posted on August 15, 2008
The political leanings of owners of NFL, NBA, MLB, or NHL teams are often unknown. To the extent the media reports on those owners, it's normally sports reporters who do so, and normally in the context of the team they own or the league in which they are associated...

Executive Compensation and Professional Sports

Posted on August 13, 2008
Paul Caron (TaxProf) and Verity Winship (guesting at Prawfs) both discuss recent efforts by the NFL to avoid federal rules requiring not-for-profit organizations to disclose all executives earning in excess of $ 150,000. The New York Times story on the NFL is here...

Blogging the Olympics

Posted on August 12, 2008
At Opinio Juris, a top international-law blog, they have a bunch of posts on the Olympics, including excellent commentary on Olympic arbitration procedures, the role of citizenship in Olympic-team membership, and the influence of professionalism. They will be doing this throughout the Olympics, so it might be worth checking over there periodically...

Recent Sports Law Scholarship

Posted on August 11, 2008
Recent scholarship includes:James R. Devine, The Duke lacrosse matter as a case study of the right to reply to prejudicial pretrial extrajudicial publicity under Rule 3.6(c), 15 VILLANOVA SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT LAW JOURNAL 175 (2008)Aaron Brooks and David Davies, Exploring student-athlete compensation: why the NCAA cannot afford to leave athletes uncompensated, 34 JOURNAL OF CITIES & URBAN LAW 747(2008) Todd Crosset and Lisa Masteralexis, The changing collective definition of collegiate sport and the potential demise of Title IX protections, 34 J...

Presidential Debate Moderators as Umpires

Posted on August 11, 2008
Over on The Presidential Debate Blog, Aaron Zelinsky has a really interesting piece entitled Debate Moderators as Umpires. Here is an excerpt:* * *The problem is that a debate moderator, like a judge, (and as Professor Howard Wasserman points out in attack on the judge-umpire analogy at Sports Law Blog , the role of an umpire and almost any other decision maker) is more complicated than merely applying a fixed set of rules...

The Web Olympics

Posted on August 08, 2008
Apologies to NBC, but I have just seen the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. Online and Live. Superb picture quality. Without commercials.And if you wish to brush up on your high school German, German television coverage of the ceremony would help...

Academic Free Agency and Sports Free Agency

Posted on August 08, 2008
Apropos of the most recent example of college coaches signing long-term contracts that are not really long-term and the broader question of movement of players and coaches and comparisons to academics, comes Clayton Gillette's Law Faculty as Free Agents...

The "Pay-for-Play" Debate

Posted on August 07, 2008
Matt Winkeljohn of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution wrote an excellent article 10 days ago that debates the issue of paying amateur athletes, including the use of players' likenesses in video games (Advocates, NCAA Take Sides on Paying Student-Athletes, 7/27/09)...

No Negotiation Required Between KU and Self

Posted on August 07, 2008
It is reported today that Kansas and basketball coach Bill Self reduced to writing a contract extension announced last April, which we debated at length here on the blog. It's a 10-year, $30 million contract, and KU athletic director, Lew Perkins, said it was easy to work out:I wouldn't even use the word "negotiate...

Unanimous Jury Upholds ATP's Tournament Restructuring Plan

Posted on August 06, 2008
Yesterday, it was reported that jurors unanimously decided "the ATP did not enter into any contract or conspiracy that might have harmed competition, and that there is no market that it monopolized or attempted to monopolize," when it reorganized its tournament structure whereby top-ranked ATP players would be required to play in each of eight top-tier tournaments, known as the Master Series 1000, and four of 11 tournaments in the second-tier Master Series 500...

United States Olympic Committee's Behavior Policies

Posted on August 06, 2008
Let's call this column a tale of two behavior policies. Part I -- The USOC's Charm School In a move that reminded me of attempts of my seven-year-old son's counsellor's to ensure good behavior at summer camp, the USOC began an "ambassador program" to teach all U...

More against the Judge-Umpire Analogy

Posted on August 05, 2008
Some recent discussion of the analogies between judges and umpires (or other sports officials) over the past few days at the Volokh Conspiracy (here, here, here, and here) and Erike Lilliquist at CoOp (here). Ilya Somin calls the analogy "a good shorthand way of emphasizing the judge's duty to set aside his policy preferences and be impartial between litigants...

Interview on Celtics Stuff Live to Discuss Tim Donaghy Scandal

Posted on August 03, 2008
Quick scheduling note: I'll be a guest tonight on Celtics Stuff Live to discuss the legal fallout from the Tim Donaghy sentencing, a topic which I recently discussed on CNN and wrote about on SI.com. I'll be on from about 8:00 to 8:30 p.m. Hope you can listen.

Jim Brown's Lawsuit Against Video Game Company Puts Fantasy League Ruling to the Test

Posted on August 03, 2008
Bloomberg News reports that Jim Brown filed a lawsuit last week against Sony and Electronic Arts alleging that the unauthorized use of the character in the "Madden" football video game, part of the "Real Old School Teams and Players'' series -- a muscular, African-American running back wearing the number 32 jersey who is featured in the game's "All Brown's Team" -- violates his right of publicity...

Obama v. MacCain: No one is leading because the game has not started yet

Posted on August 01, 2008
The line between politics and sports frequently is blurred, but rarely more so than in the "horse-race" coverage of political campaigns, which treats the campaign as an ongoing game. Thus, the constant story, besides criticism of the MSM, is the narrative, based on polls, that Obama is "winning" and McCain is "losing" and the question is by how much and whether Obama should be leading by more and who is gaining or losing ground...

More on Duke Lacrosse at SEALS

Posted on August 01, 2008
For those interested, the audio of my SEALS panel is here. Download DukePanel0730.mp3 I thought it went very well, an excellent, vibrant discussion. We managed to hit almost all the points and issues I wanted to hit, although not necessarily in any expected order; in fact, we got knocked out of expected order after the first answer...

Fantasy Leagues Now Profiting from the Likenesses of College Athletes

Posted on July 30, 2008
Of course, I couldn't withhold my thoughts on today's press release that CBSSports.com has decided to make millions using the names and performance statistics of college football and basketball players in a fantasy league game without paying for it. There are a couple of points in the press release that I need to address:1...

Tim Donaghy Sentencing

Posted on July 30, 2008
Much has been written about yesterday's sentencing of disgraced former NBA referee Tim Donaghy to 15 months in prison. Here are some stories that may be of interest:* I wrote a piece on SI.com on the sentencing. My thanks to the folks on Celtics Blog for their nice words about it...

IOC lifts Iraq's Olympic Suspension

Posted on July 29, 2008
Last week, Aaron Zelinsky argued that the IOC should reverse its ban on Iraqi players from the Olympics. Today, the IOC did just that (though only two of the seven banned athletes remain eligible to participate in the Olympics, meaning the other five won't benefit from the IOC's reversal).

Duke Lacrosse at SEALS

Posted on July 28, 2008
Tomorrow I will be at SEALS, hosting and moderating a panel titled The Phases and Faces of the Duke Lacrosse Controversy. This will be a moderated conversation about the multiple facets, details, and issues of this still-ongoing legal controversy. Panelists include KC Johnson of Brooklyn College (author of a bestselling book on the case), James Coleman of Duke Law (who chaired a University committee that investigated the case), Michael Gerhardt of UNC Law, Lyrissa Lidsky of Florida Law, and Angela Davis of American/Washington College...

Minor League Pitcher Charged With Felonious Assault in Brawl

Posted on July 26, 2008
The AP reports that Peoria Chiefs pitcher Julio Castillo will be charged with felonious assault in the aftermath of a brawl between the Chiefs and the Dayton Dragons. Castillo has been arraigned and ordered to give up his passport.During a bench-clearing brawl (which you can view in its lengthy entirety here or here, Castillo seems to have thrown a baseball towards a member of the opposing team, or perhaps (as some reports suggested, but as the video seems to contradict) towards the opposing team's dugout...

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