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A time and a place

Thank you again Patrick for live-blogging the DE event. It gave me the opportunity to go to the 49ers event instead. I encourage people to see the town hall post below this very long one.

For those who missed the 49ers event, it featured the 49ers' Executive VP of Football Operations and the 49ers' Football Operations Analyst. These two people handle contract negotiations and some legal work for the 49ers (salary cap, budgeting, land use with the new stadium, etc). The point of the event was to be a Q&A-style opportunity for people interested in sports law (learn their daily routine, background, etc). The analyst also happens to be married to a 2L in our class, but that's somewhat tangential.

The event was sponsored by SELS- which is mostly made up of three people.

The event started a bit late because the speakers got caught in traffic. They arrived and some kid got up and started walking all around the room with a camera taking pictures of the speakers. I thought that the kid was with the school, as he was snapping a ton of pictures and had a very expensive camera.

It progressed well for about 20 mins of introductions and got about 5 questions into the Q&A before a Boalt student asked about disability pay for former players. The main speaker got about 3/4 into his answer (recall: he doesn't work for the league, he's just the contract and negotiations lawyer for one of its teams) before the same student cuts him off to ask another pointed question on the same topic.

This continues with progressively more awkwardness and hostility before the student reveals he had invited a former NFL linebacker. The linebacker then starts reading off of a speech he had written about how he was injured, the NFL had been denying his claims for disability, and how he's now poor and unable to pay for his college kid (which he then identifies to be the kid with the camera who has been snapping pictures the whole time). [edit: the connection to the photographer actually being his son, versus simply gesturing to any old college kid, has been disputed- anyone else get a read on the accuracy of this? At a minimum, expect to see this in some newsletter or college paper. The greater point is that it was clearly orchestrated.]

One of the SELS organizers then asks the linebacker if he'd allow students to ask questions, as this detour had taken 20 minutes of the total 30 thus far. The main speaker said he'd be more than happy to talk to him about the subject at the end after other people asked all their questions. Three or so more students ask questions. Then another student asks a question to bring back up the mental health issue again. The topic carries on for another 10 minutes of awkwardness. The main speaker has been very gracious thus far (no frustration visible, though I'm sure it existed) and the other speaker is being relatively ignored despite I'm sure having had plenty to say about his job. It hits 2:00 and the same SELS organizer would have to interrupt once more because there was a class coming in to the room.

My gripe: we have a hard enough time getting high profile business or sports related speakers to come to Boalt as it is. We also have a hard time with our lesser funded student orgs getting coordinated to throw events that people would enjoy. Here's an example of a small group with passionate members getting high profile people to come speak at our school, but one of our own students organizes an ambush of the speaker during the middle of the presentation. To make it worse: neither the speaker nor the topic had anything at all to do with the ambushee's goals.

I'm all for people having their causes. - especially this particular one. The NFL's retired players ARE getting the shaft on disability pay (though both the league and the union are to blame).

BUT neither speaker had anything to do with disability pay and SELS certainly doesn't need to be stabbed in the back by its fellow students. I sincerely hope today's events do not discourage either SELS or future speakers from coming again. Thanks to them both for at least attempting to give me and my fellow interested Boalties a window into sports law in the NFL.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on March 11, 2008 (boomark / email).