Media & Entertainment Law

Reverse Engineering a Doping Allegation

Posted on November 13, 2010
In a wide-ranging interview last week, recently retired tennis pro Christophe Rochus made a number of statements about doping. Such commentary is nothing new. Athletes and others affiliated with sports often make vague, generalized statements about doping without implicating anyone specific...

3 K's for Kickbacks: White Sox are Latest Team with Troubles in Latin America

Posted on November 12, 2010
In another chapter in MLB?s simmering baseball kickback scandal, a Federal grand jury has indicted a former Chicago White Sox executive and two team scouts on charges that they took kickbacks totaling approximately $400,000 from signing bonuses and contract buyouts paid to secure 23 prospective players between December 2004 and February 2008...

Are NBA fines tax deductible? Lamar Odom takes on the IRS

Posted on November 10, 2010
From William Barrett of Forbes:Lamar Odom has sued the Internal Revenue Service, which said he couldn?t take tax deductions for $12,000 in sports fines and another $178,000 spent getting himself in shape. The 6-foot-10 Odom . . . filed suit in U.S. Tax Court to fight an IRS bill for $87,000 over his taxes for 2007...

Top Five Sports Lawsuits

Posted on November 08, 2010
Shaun Assael of ESPN has a good article (subscription required) highlighting "five lawsuits that will change sports." Sports Law Blog's Mike McCann and Gabe Feldman are both quoted. The article also has links to actual court documents in each case. Recommended reading!

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U.S. Department of Justice Weighing Antitrust Suit Against the BCS

Posted on November 04, 2010
The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting that Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a long-time critic of the Bowl Championship Series, met yesterday with officials from the U.S. Department of Justice regarding a potential antitrust suit against the BCS. Following the meeting, Shurtleff said he was "blown away" by the government's due diligence on the issue, and found it hard to imagine a scenario where either the state or federal government did not file suit against the BCS...

Video of Boston College Law Review Sympsoium on the NCAA at 100 Years

Posted on November 03, 2010
Video of the panels below can be found at this link.The NCAA at 100 Years: perspectives on its past, present, and future Sponsored by the Boston College Law Review and by: On October 15, 2010, Boston College Law School and the BC Law Review hosted an all-day symposium examining the legal issues surrounding the unprecedented growth of the NCAA over the last 100 years and the impact on amateurism, academic standards, and student rights...

New York Law School Second Annual Sports Law Symposium

Posted on November 03, 2010
I look forward to being a part of next week's sports law symposium at New York Law School. Here are the details (and outstanding work by 3L Alycia Huckabey, the founder and president of the New York Law School Sports Law Society, in putting this event together):The New York Law School Institute for Information Law and Policy and theNew York Law School Sports Law Society proudly present: The Second Annual Sports Law Symposium Date: Friday, November 12, 2010Location: New York Law School, 185 West Broadway, Events Center, 2nd Floor CLE Credits: 1 CLE credit per panel (no charge)...

Unique role (and problem) of faculty athletics representatives

Posted on November 02, 2010
Interesting story in this week's Chronicle of High Education. One of the contributors to my forthcoming book on the Duke Lacrosse scandal wrote about faculty oversight of athletics (or lack thereof), particularly the conflicts-of-interest that the athletics reps face...

Is Notre Dame Responsible for Student's Death?

Posted on October 30, 2010
I was interviewed by Maggie Gray of Sports Illustrated Video on Notre Dame student Declan Sullivan, a 20-year-old junior, dying in a tragic accident while filming an Irish football practice earlier this week.

Antitrust Lawsuit Filed Against the NCAA

Posted on October 28, 2010
As noted by a commenter to an earlier post, a class action antitrust lawsuit was filed against the NCAA on Monday in United States District Court in San Francisco by former Rice University football player Joseph Agnew. Specifically, the suit alleges that NCAA rules prohibiting universities from offering guaranteed multi-year athletic scholarships, as well as rules limiting the number of scholarships a university can offer in a particular sport, violate federal antitrust law...

An Update on the WAC v. Mountain West Lawsuit

Posted on October 28, 2010
Last month the Western Athletic Conference filed a lawsuit against the Mountain West Conference, Fresno State, and the University of Nevada, seeking to prevent the two schools from leaving the WAC to join the Mountain West until after the 2011-12 school year...

NY Times on the Sports Fans Coalition

Posted on October 23, 2010
Today's New York Times features a story on the Sports Fans Coalition, a nonprofit interest group in Washington D.C. formed for the purpose of organizing sports fans and representing their interests in public policy issues. Led by executive director Brian Frederick, the group has initially focused its attention on several issues affecting sports fans, including: "television blackouts (especially at taxpayer-funded stadiums), the Bowl Championship Series and the ballooning cost of attending games...

More Antitrust and the BCS

Posted on October 21, 2010
In a recent interview with Salt Lake City's ABC affiliate KTVX, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff announced that his office has completed a draft antitrust complaint to be filed against the Bowl Championship Series. The article indicates that the lawsuit would allege both illegal monopolization and price fixing claims against the BCS...

Agents recouping illegal payments?

Posted on October 16, 2010
People have been talking about this week's Sports Illustrated, featuring a confessional article by former NFL agent Josh Luchs, who admits to paying numerous college players over the years to induce them to sign with him.One interesting tidbit: Luchs mentions that prior to 1999, the NFLPA had a rule that required a player who had taken money from an agent to repay that money; the rule was changed in 1999...

Pressure Mounts on the BCS

Posted on October 15, 2010
The legality of the Bowl Championship Series has been a frequent topic of discussion over the years at Sports Law Blog. Typically, legal criticism of the BCS has centered on whether the system violates federal antitrust law. However, a new line of legal attack was recently asserted against the BCS...

New Sports Illustrated Column on Tom Hicks post Liverpool Sale to Red Sox owner John Henry

Posted on October 15, 2010
Here's an excerpt from my new column published this evening:The prospect of Hicks and Gillett pursuing a successful litigation strategy against RBS and NESV in Great Britain is dim. The London High Court unequivocally found nothing wrong in the RBS-NESV sale and in fact admonished Hicks and Gillett to accept it...

New Sports Illustrated Column on Liverpool Sale and Tom Hicks

Posted on October 14, 2010
I have a new SI.com column on how the Red Sox ownership group is trying to buy Liverpool from a bank that loaned money to former Texas Rangers owners and Liverpool owner Tom Hicks. British and Texas courts have reached contradictory decisions on whether this sale should go through...

New Sports Law Scholarship

Posted on October 13, 2010
Recently published scholarship includes:Erin Abbey-Pinegar, Note, The need for a global amateurism standard: international student athlete issues and controversies, 17 INDIANA JOURNAL OF GLOBAL LEGAL STUDIES 341 (2010) Constantine J. Avgiris, Comment, Huddle up: surveying the playing field on the single entity status of the National Football League in anticipation of American Needle v...

Favre, Wrangler, and athletes behaving badly

Posted on October 12, 2010
Michael links to Darren Rovel's column yesterday arguing why Brett Favre's Wrangler ads are still running in the face of the current investigation into his behavior towards a Jets employee when he played for New York two years ago. I am not a Favre fan (and I am really not a fan of fawning media)...

Fallout for Brett Favre's Endorsement Deal with Wrangler

Posted on October 11, 2010
CNBC's Darren Rovell looks at how Wrangler, which has paid Brett Favre millions for his endorsement and for his appearances in a wide-range of All-American type ads, often with footballs and dogs and pick-up trucks, might respond to allegations indicating that Favre, who has been married for 14 years with two children, may have sent inappropriate messages and photos to another woman...

University of Baltimore School of Law Symposium "The Death of Amateurism: Implications for Sport and Health"

Posted on October 09, 2010
Professor Dionne Koller of the University of Baltimore School of Law passes along this announcement of what should be an engaging symposium titled "The Death of Amateurism: Implications for Sport and Health":Thursday, Oct. 28 | 9:30 a.m. ? 3 p.m.John and Frances Angelos Law CenterVenable Moot Court Room1415 Maryland Ave...

ASU College of Law?s Sports and Entertainment Law Journal Conference

Posted on October 09, 2010
Some news from Arizona State University College of Law about an upcoming sports law conference:This is the first year for the Sports and Entertainment Law Journal at ASU College of Law. This Journal will be launched at a Conference on Saturday, October 30, 2010, entitled, "A-Rod to Jay-Z: Sports and Entertainment Law in the 21st Century...

Everything Duke and lacrosse is not "Duke Lacrosse"

Posted on October 08, 2010
By now, everyone has heard about the "senior thesis" in "horizontal academics" that a 2010 Duke grad wrote as joke, a spoof thesis presentation describing the performance of thirteen Duke student-athletes (seven of them happened to be lacrosse players) with whom she had sex during her time in school...

The McCourt/Divorce Saga: Was a Key Document Altered?

Posted on October 06, 2010
Over on M & A Law Prof Blog, Boston College Law Professor Brian Quinn takes a look at the divorce between Frank and Jamie McCourt and specifically how a document from six years ago -- three copies of which use the word "exclusive" in it; three use "inclusive" -- could impact whether Frank is the sole or joint owner:What with clients sending you only signature pages, it becomes very tempting to make a quick little change in a document that no one will notice...

Changes in Free Agency, Tender/Non-tender, and Arbitration Deadlines

Posted on October 04, 2010
Last Thursday, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association reached an agreement to alter some of the deadlines regarding free agency, tender/non-tender, and arbitration for upcoming negotiations in 2010 and 2011. The agreement grew out of concerns raised by the Players Association about the 2008 and 2009 off-season negotiation periods...

More on choking

Posted on October 03, 2010
Following on Mike's post about the new book on the science of choking: Prof. Bielock was on Diane Rehm two weeks ago (my wife had told me about the show, but I had not gotten around to the podcast; my plan for this week). Also, the New Yorker covered similar ground in 2000 in a piece called "The Art of Failure" (abstract and registration required)...

The Science of Choking

Posted on October 03, 2010
Over on The Situationist, Drexel University law professor and good friend Adam Benforado discusses some of the science of choking and a new book out by University of Chicago psychology professor Sian Bielock on that topic.What is the most infamous example of choking in sports? I'd have to say it's Bill Buckner in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series between the Red Sox and Mets, when a routine ground ball hit by Mookie Wilson in the 11th inning went through Buckner's legs, leading the winning run to score (the Mets would go on to win Game 7)...

New Article: Going Pro in Sports: Improving Guidance to Student-Athletes in a Complicated Legal & Regulatory Environment

Posted on October 02, 2010
A terrific new article in the Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal has posted on SSRN: Going Pro in Sports: Improving Guidance to Student-Athletes in a Complicated Legal & Regulatory Environment The article is authored by Warren Zola (Boston College Assistant Dean, Sports Business Professor/Sports Attorney, and Chair of BC's Professional Sports Counseling Panel), Glenn Wong (UMass Isenberg School of Management sports business professor), and Chris Deubert (Associate at Ginsberg & Burgos)...

The 4th Annual Tulane Law School National Baseball Arbitration Competition

Posted on September 27, 2010
I am pleased to announce that the 4th Annual Tulane Law School National Baseball Arbitration Competition will take place in New Orleans on February 10-11, 2011. The event is a great opportunity for students interested in sports law to compete in a simulated salary arbitration competition modeled closely on the salary arbitration procedures used by Major League Baseball...

Adding wildcards to make divisions meaningful?

Posted on September 24, 2010
It turns out I have even more company in my wildcard-makes-division-races meaningful crusade: Jayson Stark (and apparently Elias and SI's Tom Verducci). Stark, and everyone else, now recognize that when the two best teams play in the same division (Yanks-Rays this year) and both are guaranteed to make the play-offs, the incentive to win the division all but disappears, because the single benefit of home-field advantage is minimally important (Stark points out that the team without home-field advantage wins 50 % of post-season series)...

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