Media & Entertainment Law

Professors Thomas Hazlett and Joshua Wright on Insuring Top College Basketball Players

Posted on May 08, 2008
George Mason University School of Law professors Thomas Hazlett and Joshua Wright have published a provocative and engaging op-ed in today's Chicago Tribune that proposes insurance as a way of offsetting the risk to players and schools that the players leave early for the NBA Draft...

Mike Zarren: The Growing Importance of Statistical Analysis in the NBA

Posted on May 06, 2008
Great piece by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt on the NY Times' Freakonomics on my good friend and former law school classmate Mike Zarren, who is the Boston Celtics' associate counsel and also, more significantly, the team's statistical expert.Here is an excerpt from their piece, which highlights the growing importance of "Moneyball" - type thinking in basketball:* * *But the team also employs what the general manager, Danny Ainge, calls his ?secret weapon,? a 32-year-old named Mike Zarren, who seems to know every data point about every N...

Defining Sport

Posted on May 06, 2008
I jokingly have been interested in trying to define "sport." I have toyed with a definition that requires objectivity in scoring and determining winners. Thus, if it is about objective questions such as who runs faster or who scores more points, it is a sport; if it is about getting a 5...

Applying Antitrust Labor Exemptions to Professional Golf and Tennis

Posted on May 05, 2008
Daniel Kaplan of SportsBusiness Journal (subscription only) has an interesting piece in this week's edition in which he reveals that The ATP World Tour is losing millions of dollars because of steep legal expenses tied to an antitrust lawsuit brought by one of its tournaments against the men?s circuit (5/5/08, Mounting Legal Expenses Add to ATP's Losses)...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

The Economics of Baseball Fandom

Posted on May 05, 2008
From Daniel Hamermesh at Freakonomics:A recent article notes that attendance in Major League Baseball parks is actually above last year, despite, so the story says, the economic downturn (recession?). But despite is incorrect ? it should be ?because? of the economic downturn...

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Posted on May 04, 2008
At Saturday's "dramatic" Kentucky derby, runner-up Eight Bells broke both ankles and had to be put down.Two years ago, when Barbaro suffered the injury that eventually ended his life, I asked, Was Barbaro Abused?Imagine if every year, one player died in the Superbowl...

A Different Way to "Hold" Coaches to Contracts

Posted on May 04, 2008
We have had some discussion here lately about colleges using injunctions to try to keep coaches who are under contract from jumping to other schools.Well Memphis, fresh off its Championship Game appearance (and almost victory) gave Head Coach John Calipari a five-year extension, averaging $ 2...

Clemens and the Rules of Evidence: A More Absolute View

Posted on May 03, 2008
The whole Roger Clemens story has been a big Claude Raines Moment: "I'm shocked, shocked, to find that a Major League Baseball player cheated on his wife."But I am going to take a more absolute view than Michael did: There is no way, if the judge is not asleep at the switch, that any evidence about Clemens' alleged affairs with McCready or Paulette Dean Daly is admissible...

Implications of Mindy McCready Affair Allegation on Roger Clemens' Defamation Lawsuit

Posted on May 02, 2008
Earlier this week, I wrote a column for SI.com on the implications of Roger Clemens' alleged sexual relationship with a then 15-year-old Mindy McCready on his defamation lawsuit against Brian McNamee. I was also interviewed by Russell Goldman for his piece on the same topic for ABC News...

Judge Rules in Favor of NCAA in Alabama Football Booster's Defamation Lawsuit

Posted on May 02, 2008
In my post last November, "Alabama Jury Gets Revenge Against NCAA," I discussed a jury's $5 million award in favor of former Alabama football booster Ray Keller on his defamation claim against the NCAA alleging that the NCAA slandered and libeled him during the announcement of penalties against the Crimson Tide by referring to Keller and others as "rogue boosters," "parasites" and "pariahs...

New Sports Law Scholarship

Posted on May 02, 2008
Recently published scholarship:Anthony N. Cabot and Louis V. Csoka, Fantasy sports: one form of mainstream wagering in the United States, 40 JOHN MARSHALL LAW REVIEW 1195 (2007) Peter Charlish and Stephen Riley, Should Oscar run?, 18 FORDHAM INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT LAW JOURNAL 929 (2008)A...

Constitutional law in unexpected places

Posted on April 25, 2008
For example, in George Clooney cinematic homages to His Girl Friday, every Cary Grant-Katherine Hepburn comedy, and movies depicting the minor-league backwaters of professional sports.One of my colleagues was approached by a student in his Con Law I class, who had just seen the movie...

U. of Hawaii Enforces Contract Against Breaching Coach

Posted on April 24, 2008
In the first week of January, Hawaii football coach June Jones terminated his 5-year contract that expires on June 30 of this year and accepted a job worth about $2 million per year at Southern Methodist. Hawaii claims it is entitled to damages for his early termination in the amount of $400,008 (which amount represents half of his annual salary)...

Another victim of sports mascot violence

Posted on April 24, 2008
In a previous post, I discussed the interesting role of sports mascots in spectator injury cases. Assumption of risk usually bars spectators injured by batted balls at baseball games from suing the team or arena. However, there is a split on whether a spectator distracted by a mascot should be able to get around this ordinary bar...

Sonny Vaccaro to Speak at Columbia University Tomorrow Night

Posted on April 23, 2008
For those of you in the New York City area, Columbia University will be hosting its second annual Sports Ethics Symposium tomorrow night from 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.. The keynote speaker will be basketball legend Sonny Vaccaro, who has recently delivered talks at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, the University of Memphis, and the University of Maryland...

Sports Leagues and the New Media

Posted on April 21, 2008
Good story in The New York Times (free subscription required) on the way that sports leagues are attempting to deal with changing sports media. The piece touches on some issues that we have discussed here in the past: credentialing independent bloggers and allowing them access to the locker room and other places; restricting audio and video clips on media web sites and blogs; and live blogging the games...

New Sports Law Scholarship

Posted on April 21, 2008
Recently published scholarship includes: Jon Boswell, Note, Fantasy sports: a game of skill that is implicitly legal under state law, and now explicitly legal under federal law, 25 CARDOZO ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT LAW JOURNAL 1257 (2008) Jesse Crew, Note, In Irabu?s footsteps: baseball?s posting system and the non-statutory antitrust exemption, 7 VIRGINIA SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT LAW JOURNAL 127 (2007)Christian Dennie, White out full grant-in-aid: an antitrust action the NCAA cannot afford to lose, 7 VIRGINIA SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT LAW JOURNAL 97-125 (2007)Robyn R...

Those who don't learn from history . . .

Posted on April 21, 2008
(H/T: Andrew Sullivan)Twice actually--history has forgotten that the 1936 Winter Games also were in Nazi Germany, in Garmisch-Partinkirchen. We also let a brutally repressive totalitarian Communist regimes host: the Soviet Union (Moscow) in 1980 (my mistake as to Munich), plus a "less repressive" Communist regime in Yugoslavia in 1984...

Congrats to Florida Coastal and UVA Law School Softball Teams

Posted on April 20, 2008
Via TaxProf: For the second year in a row, Florida Coastal School of Law and the University of Virginia have won the annual and only mildly corrupt UVA law school softball tournament in the co-rec and men's divisions, respectively. One suspects that a certain Sports Law blogger may have contributed to the Florida Coastal victory.

Legal Fallout from Sonics Move to Oklahoma City

Posted on April 19, 2008
I was interviewed by NPR to discuss the legal and economic implications of the Sonics upcoming move from Seattle to Oklahoma City. By a vote of 28-2 (with Dallas' Mark Cuban and Portland's Paul Allen voting no), the NBA owners voted to approve the move...

Long-Term Contracts and the Coaching Carousel

Posted on April 19, 2008
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...

Breaching Contracts: It's Just Part of the College Coaching Biz

Posted on April 17, 2008
One week ago, Travis Ford signed a contract extension to remain at UMass for the next seven years and said, "I am excited to know that UMass is committed to building the men's basketball program back to one of the best in the East and that I will have the chance to be at the helm for many years to come...

David Ortiz's Curious Start to the 2008 Season

Posted on April 16, 2008
On Monday, Geoff wrote a great piece about the legal issues of the Red Sox fan who buried a jersey of David Ortiz under the new Yankees stadiumOver on The Situationist, Jon Hanson and I take a stab at trying to explain David Ortiz's hard-to-fathom early season struggles...

David Throws Two Punches at Goliath

Posted on April 15, 2008
A year ago last April, it was reported that Houston Baptist University (HBU), an NAIA school, made an application to rejoin the NCAA at the division one level, on a provisional basis. At that time, it was also reported that, because HBU was an NCAA division one school previously from 1973 to 1990, HBU would be required to wait only three years instead of the normal seven to become a full-fledged member of the NCAA...

Trespassing to Lay a Curse

Posted on April 14, 2008
An amusing story from the new Yankee stadium, where construction crews jackhammered through concrete to retrieve a David Ortiz Red Sox jersey buried there in an effort to hex the bronx bombers by Red Sox fan (and one-day stadium construction worker) Gino Castignoli...

Florida Coastal School of Law Skills Practicum

Posted on April 14, 2008
On Friday, April 18th, the Sports Law Society at Florida Coastal School of Law will be hosting a "Skills Practicum for the In-House Counsel". The practicum will consist of three separate seminars focusing on the every day legal issues faced by in-house counsel working for professional sports organizations, and the seminars will be taught by the very people who face them...

Harvard Law School Panel on Acquiring a Sports Franchise

Posted on April 13, 2008
The Harvard Law School Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law will be hosting a panel tomorrow (Monday, April 14) at 7:30 p.m. in Hauser 102 entitled "Acquiring a Sports Franchise." (directions to Harvard Law School/campus map). Panelists include three transacation attorneys:Adam Klein from Katten Muchin RosenmanLarry Silverstein from Bingham McCutchenJon Bernstein from Bingham McCutchen...

Did Clay Bennett Lie About His "Good Faith" Intent to Keep Sonics in Seattle?

Posted on April 11, 2008
Jim Brunner and Jonathan Martin of the Seattle Times have an interesting piece today on new e-mail evidence suggesting that Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett and other members of his SuperSonics ownership group violated the "good faith" contractual pledge to keep the franchise in Seattle...

Newly Posted Paper on Racist Sports Fans

Posted on April 10, 2008
Dr. Lawrence McNamara, a Professor at England's University of Reading School of Law, has posted Sport, Spectator and Traditions of Hatred: Responding to Racist Abuse on SSRN (the article was published in 2001 in the Griffith Law Review). Here's an abstract:This article is primarily concerned with racist abuse by spectators that is targeted at indigenous Australian footballers...

Tacky or Fun?

Posted on April 10, 2008
Via ESPN, play Torch Run. No explanation necessary.

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.