Most Cited Tenured &Tenure Track Antitrust Law Professors

Antitrust law is arguably the most important part of sports law, with labor law, intellectual property law, contract law, constitutional law, criminal law, tax law and immigration law (among other areas of law) also playing key roles. Whether the topic is lockouts, age restrictions or any other way teams/leagues/conferences/divisions join hands, antitrust law is implicated.

Over on Antitrust Competition and Policy Blog, University of Florida Law Professor Daniel Sokol, who is visiting this upcoming year at the University of Minnesota Law School, has used the Westlaw journals and law review (JLR) database to determine which antitrust law professors who are tenured or tenure-track have received the most citations since 2010.

Three of the top 75 professors are sports law professors, and a few others on the list have writings that implicate sports law.

Good to see our area of law continue to gain influence in the broader legal academy.

Turley on Olympic Rules

Jonathan Turley (George Washington and a fellow Northwestern grad) offers some thoughts on rule changes that the Olympics should implement, including the use of instant replay and establishing the same rules for men and women competing in the same sports. Worth a read.

The point about the same rules for men and women raises some interesting questions about when different rules should apply. Turley points to the rules for aborting a vault (women can do it, men can't) or for redoing a dive (men can, women can't). But this list is potentially endless--men do the decathlon while women do the heptathlon, women run a 100-m hurdle while men run 110-m hurdle, women use a smaller basketball. As with all equality issues, it all turns on there being a rational basis for the distinction, one not bound up in stereotypes and myths about women's athletic ability. On the other hand, there can be a visceral sense in which men and women playing the same sport are not playing the same game. I watched a lot of handball and the women's game felt very different from the men's game, so perhaps different rules make sense (although I don't believe there are different rules).

Texas Review of Entertainment and Sports Law’s 4th Annual Symposium

The University of Texas School of Law and Texas Review of Entertainment and Sports Law are hosting a conference devoted to the "dark side" of sports and entertainment law on September 7, 2012 in Austin. Complete details are below.

Agenda:

8:30-9:00 a.m. – Registration and Breakfast
9:00-9:15 a.m. – Opening Speakers: Professor David Sokolow,Mr. Tristan Griffin
9:15-10:45 a.m.– Coaching Affairs: Coaches in Trouble with the Law, the NCAA, and their Universities
Panel:Moderator: Mr. Jason Belzer, Panelists: Mr. Holt Hackney, Mr. Darren Heitner, Professor Theodore Curtis
10:45-10:55 a.m. – Break
10:55-11:55 a.m. – Morals, Disparagement, and Performance Clauses: Addressing Immoral and Problematic Behavior in the Endorsement and Talent Services Context
Speaker: Mr. Christopher Chase
11:55-12:05 p.m. – Break
12:05-1:05 p.m. – Lunch Presentation: Fixing the Game:Sports Betting and the Law Speaker: Mr. Jeffrey Standen
1:05-2:05 p.m. – Doping in Sports: WADAWorld Anti-Doping Code and its Harmonization with Other Sports and Federations Speaker:Dr. Steven Ungerleider
2:05-2:15p.m. – Break
2:15-3:45 p.m. – Head Cases: Long-Term Tort Implications of Professional Sports
Panel: Moderator: Professor Thomas McGarity, Panelists: Mr. Darren Heitner, Ms. Carla Varialle, Mr. Derek Muller
3:45-4:00 p.m. – Closing
Speakers: Professor David Sokolow, Mr. Tristan Griffin

Munich basketball, 40 years later

A few days ago, I linked to a post by Lisa McElroy on using the scoring errors in the 2004 Men's Gymnastics to generate a discussion of law and justice. I mentioned that the previous standard example was the 1972 Men's Basketball Gold Medal Game, forgetting that this year is the 40th anniversary. Well, ESPN.com has published a series of essays on that game, including a recounting of the gap, an interview with Doug Collins (who hit what should have been the game-winning free throws with 3 seconds left), and a piece on an Illinois attorney who is pushing the IOC to award duplicate gold medals (as was done in 2002 for a Candian pairs figure skating team).

On that last point, here is an interesting ethical and/or remedial question: The push is to get duplicate golds and 11 members of the team have agreed to that solution. But one player--team captain Kenny Davis--insists that not only must the U.S. be awarded the gold, the Soviets (or Russia, as the successor nation) must be stripped of theirs. Is that the right position to take?

Women's sports and the Olympics

A few of thoughts and questions on a good morning to talk about women's sports and Title IX, in the wake of 1) yesterday's gold medal win by the U.S. women's soccer team before 80,000 at Wembley Stadium (and millions more live on some medium--are you listening NBC) and 2) the Second Circuit's decision earlier this week holding that Quinnipiac University violated Title IX by trying to eliminate the women's volleyball team.

First, there has been  talk in the last few days about US women earning more medals, and more golds, than their male counterparts. Yesterday's wins in soccer and water polo add to that, as might a gold in today's women's volleyball final (the men were eliminated in the quarters).

Second, here is a nice essay by Slate/NPR's Stefan Fatsis about the women's soccer match and its "meaning," arguing that it actually has no deeper meaning other than that a bunch of women's teams played an exciting tournament that in every way (from playing hard to bitching about the refs) resembled a men's tournament, was watched by a lot of people, and can be evaluated on its own terms. He does consider briefly what the large audience for Olympic soccer tells us about the sustainability of a professional women's league (a point I addressed here). I do like his broader point--that women's sports is, slowly, becoming less of a cause and a simply a matter of good competition.

Third, the Second Circuit decision received some attention because Quinnipiac had sought to make up the lost volleyball spaces by creating a competitive cheerleading team; this required the court to consider whether cheerleading is a sport, concluding it was not (although not for the reasons I would offer--it had to do with how well-established and well-organized something was as a competitive event, meaning cheer could become a sport some day).

A question: Would a more purposivist take on Title IX uniformly favor opportunities in volleyball or soccer over opportunities in cheer, given the statute's goal of creating new opportunities for women in sports? Cheerleading predates Title IX by many years, obviously, and it seems to me it would undermine the statute if schools could satisfy their statutory obligations by increasing the number of opportunities for women/girls to do what they have been doing all along rather than providing genuinely new athletic opportunities.

Cheerleading is not a sport

Although not for the reasons I would urge. The Second Circuit held that Quinnipiac University violated Title IX by eliminating the women's volleyball team and that it could not compensate for the shortfall in sports opportunities for women with a competitive cheer team, because the latter was not a sport. This conclusion is obvious under my as-refined definition. The court considered a number of much different factors, although one included the lack of uniform competitive rules (competition being one of my preferred elements).

The Curious Dynamic of Players' Associations Bargaining Eligibility Rules on Behalf of Prospective Players

I had the honor of speaking at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Judicial Conference earlier today in Kansas City. It was a great experience to speak to so many judges and top appellate attorneys, including Ted Olson and Paul Clement, both of whom played major roles in last year's NFL and NBA lockouts. I was on a panel with Gary Roberts, Bob Wallace and Judge Mary Vasaly. I have posted my remarks on SSRN. They will be converted to a law review submission later. I address whether players' associations should be able to bargain eligibility rules (i.e,. the NBA, WNBA and NFL age limits) on behalf of prospective players. Here's an excerpt:

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Clearly commissioners, leagues and their teams want these rules, for reasons that can be debated. I have argued for more than 10 years that 18-year-old players should have the choice to turn pro and take the benefits and risks that go along with it. I also have conducted my own empirical research -- both for on-court performance and for off-court issues, such as arrest propensity as correlated to number of years spent in college -- and read the research of others on the NBA's age restriction. The data is clear: the rule and the numbers behind it tell contradictory stories.

But that's not new, nor is it necessarily relevant to a legal discussion, at least not yet. And instead of looking at age limits from a view directed at David Stern or Roger Goodell or various league officials and lawyers, I'd rather look at the players associations that have approved these rules as part of collective bargaining agreements. How often are Billy Hunter, the NBA players' executive director, or De Smith, the NFLPA's executive director, criticized for age restrictions? Not often, if ever. But maybe they should.

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Hope you have a chance to check out what I said.