OFFSIDES

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me four times, you need your head examined.

The NHL is surely the most dysfunctional family in all of sports, maybe in the history of labor-management relations. Four times in the last 20 years, the league and its players have volunteered to sit in the penalty box and off the ice. In 1992, they lost 30 games; in 1994, about the same; in 2004, they trashed the whole season, and the league just announced the cancellation of games through at least the first two weeks of the season.

I don’t have an opinion as to who is at fault but does either side have any concept as to what is going on in the world’s economy?

The average salary of the players in the league is a healthy $2.4 million. That is a half million dollars higher than the average salary in the NFL, which has three times the total revenue of the NHL.

Still, last year was the best year ever for the teams in terms of revenue, approaching almost three billion dollars. And its individual owners are no slouches either. The league boasts eight billionaires among its top brass, three more than are in Major League Baseball.

So why can’t these folks just get along? Is it the language barrier? After all the league has players from something like 14 nations and even the two thirds of the players which hail from North America seem to be divided equally between French and English speakers. Or is it just greed?

Since it’s obvious the two sides cannot figure out how to negotiate with one another, why not just submit to some sort of binding arbitration? They might be able to agree on an Administrative Law Judge from the Department of Labor. Or better yet, randomly pick three longtime season ticket holders, present your best case, and drop the puck.

Fantastic Borrusia Dortmund attacking force, great Joe hart saves

Great football by Bundesliga back to back champions, Borrusia Dortmund whose attacking force made Joe Hart work for almost from the first to the final whistle.



Fantastic performance by Joe Hart with 8 saves which at the end earned city a crucial draw. The visitor went infront on following mistake by Jack Rodwell on which speeding Marco Reus took advantage and beat Hart. Premier league

Getting the wild card right

I have written several times about baseball's old wild card system, which I argued eliminated the possibility of good division races between top teams. When the top two teams in a league are in one division, there was no real incentive to win the division, because both teams knew they were in the play-offs and being the wild card was not a significant disadvantage.  Otherwise, the real race was between a potential wild card and the other potential wild cards in other divisions or between two weaker division rivals, one of whom will not make the playoffs.

But baseball made two changes this year: 1) they added a second wild card team and 2) the two wild cards meet in a one-game playoff, the winner then playing a division series with the team with the best record in the league. And, at least for this year, these changes prodcued real division races between good teams, at least in the American League: Both the A.L. East and A.L. West came down to the final day of the season, with the Yankees winning 95 games and beating out the Orioles by 2 games and the A's winning 94 games and beating out the Rangers by a game. The difference this year is that both the Rangers and Orioles had a real incentive to catch the team ahead of them on the final day, in order to avoid that one-game playoff.  In previous years, by contrast, the Orioles would not have cared about catching the Yankees in the final two days of the season; they only would have worried about staying ahead of the Rangers, then getting to play in the division series.

So, credit where credit is due--baseball made changes that create the right incentives.

FIFA world football ranking: England move to 5th, Colombia back to top 50.

The FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking for October edition has been released today. The edition had 136 matches played including Brazil 2014 world cup qualifiers and international friendly games.The world cup and European champions Spain and Germany still leads in FIFA ranking as world cup finalist Netherlands keeps dropping.



England climb to 5th after two Brazil world cup qualifiers.

England 5-0

Ed O'Bannon scores victory against ESPN in his NCAA lawsuit

I have a new article for Sports Illustrated on U.S. District Judge Alfred V. Covello ordering ESPN to give Ed O'Bannon its TV & licensing contracts with the NCAA. O'Bannon's class action lawsuit threatens any company that has a contract with the NCAA or its members. O'Bannon may also end up suing those companies. 

Here's an excerpt:

Looking further down-the-line, Judge Covello's ruling is a reminder that O'Bannon's case presents real financial and legal risk for companies that have contracts with the NCAA, CLC or member institutions. ESPN is not the first company to see this risk materialize, as Electronic Arts, makers of college sports video games, has similarly been impacted by the litigation. And yet divulging information they consider privileged is not the greatest worry for these companies. Instead, it's this: relinquishing private knowledge about how much they have profited from the labor of college athletes illuminates these companies' own susceptibility to being sued by O'Bannon. After all, if the NCAA wrongly profited from the names, likenesses and images of college athletes, then companies in contract with the NCAA have arguably done the same.

Hope you have a chance to check out the article.

The Presidential Debate: Baseball Quiz

The Huffington Post's Aaron Zelinsky, who has written extensively about the intersection of sports, law, and government (see his Yale Law Journal Online article The Justice as Commissioner: Benching the Judge-Umpire Analogy) has an interactive piece on the Huffington Post called "The Presidential Debate: Baseball Quiz".  Try to match the presidential debater with the ballplayer they most resemble.

Lance Armstrong and Morals Clauses

I was asked an interesting question recently, in the aftermath of Lance Armstrong's decision to no longer contest the doping allegations pending against him.  Would his failure to contest the allegations trigger a morals clause in any of his endorsement contracts and lead present or former endorsing companies to sue him?

It's an interesting question on a number of levels.

First, assuming his endorsement contracts do have morals clauses, the critical issue is what specific language they provide.  Do they have broad enough language to cover a situation where the conduct at issue hasn't been admitted, but is no longer being contested?

If the morals clause is broad enough to even be triggered, is it too late for the endorsing company to assert a claim?  The answer to this question depends on what the basis for the claim is and when the conduct at issue occurred.  For example, would the claim be for breach of contract, which has a statute of limitations of six years in many jurisdictions?  Would the claim be for fraud, based on Armstrong's misrepresenting at the time he signed a contract that he was not engaged in doping?  Fraud claims often have a shorter statute of limitations, typically three years.

The other fundamental questions is what the offending conduct is and when it occurred.  Armstrong won his first Tour de France in 1999 and his last in 2005.  If the basis for a breach of contract claim arises from doping during that period, it would appear that any claim would be barred based on the statute of limitations, unless a plaintiff could argue that the statute was tolled based on concealment of doping.

One final issue, regardless of the legal issues surrounding a claim based on a morals clause, is whether it is worth it for any company that endorsed Armstrong to bring a claim.  Would a company want to spend the time and money litigating to recover endorsement fees so long after the fact, and essentially having to prove that Armstrong doped?  Thus far, no company that endorsed him has taken such action.