Lawrence Delevingne of The Business Insider explores athletes and crime in a recent piece. He interviews Geoff, Duke Law Prof Lisa Kern Griffin, and me. Here’s an excerpt:
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Pulitzer prize winner H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger (author of the famed Friday Night Lights and LeBron James’ co-author of Shooting Stars) pens an outstanding op-ed in today’s New York Times on the NBA’s eligibility rule, which Bissinger admits he thought was a good idea back in 2005 but now believes was a terrible idea. I’m honored that Bissinger would cite a couple of my studies in his piece (which is on page A25 of today’s paper). Here are a couple of excerpts:
Congratulations to agent/attorney Joe Rosen, who has guest blogged here on a number of occasions (including in 2005 when he asked “Is NASCAR a Sport?“), on signing as a client Boston Red Sox reliever Hideki Okajima. This news has been reported in the Boston Globe and Boston Herald, among other media outlets.
Sorry for the late notice, but if you’re in the Cambridge Massachusetts area today and are free between 3:15 and 4:30, Boston Celtics Assistant Executive Director of Basketball Operations & Associate Counsel Mike Zarren and I will be co-lecturing on age eligibility restrictions in the NBA and NFL, and also on American Needle v. NFL, at Harvard Law School. We are guest lecturing Professor Peter Carfagna’s sports law class. If you are interested in attending as a guest, please contact Ashwin Krishnan, Professor Carfagna’s teaching assistant and the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law.
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Shaun Assel of ESPN Magazine has an interesting article on the sports implications of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which goes into effect Nov. 21, and which explicitly bars employers from using genetic results in hiring and workplace decisions. The piece, which discusses a topic that might make for a great student law review/journal note, is available on ESPN Insider, so I can only post a small portion it. Here’s a short excerpt, which features an interview with Sports Law Blog’s Alan Milstein, a national expert on bioethics and the law and who represented Eddy Curry when he played for the Chicago Bulls and when the Bulls demanded that Curry take a DNA test:
Recently published scholarship includes:
Phyllis Coleman, Note to athletes, NFL, and NBA: dog fighting is a crime, not a sport, 3 JOURNAL OF ANIMAL LAW AND ETHICS 85 (2009)
Alert reader Devin Black sends along this story about Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors, who successfully sued to recover use of the domain chrisbosh.com from a cyber-squatter named Luis Zavala, who also held domain names of more than 800 other celebrities.
TheHill.com reports that baseball’s historic antitrust exemption has been highlighted as part of a new advertising campaign criticizing the health insurance industry. No doubt hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the baseball playoffs, the group Americans United for Change has launched the TV commercial below, noting that the baseball and health insurance industries are the only two enjoying an exemption from federal antitrust law. In the process, the ad depicts the effect of the baseball antitrust exemption as being relatively benign, a characterization I suspect many here would take issue with.
Earlier this year, an Ohio state court ruled in favor of Oklahoma State University star pitcher Andrew Oliver in his lawsuit against the NCAA. Oliver had been suspended by OSU after news emerged that, years earlier, he had met with Minnesota Twins representatives with his attorneys while contemplating whether to retain his amateur status and attend college or turn pro after high school. Oliver maintained the rule which prohibited that meeting interfered with his attorney-client relationship and was against public policy (For more background see Alan Milstein’s post and posts by others, including one on the NCAA Compliance Blog, one by Dan Fitzgerald on Connecticut Sports Law, and those with competing viewpoints from Rick Karcher and Tassos Kaburakis).
In light of the controversy over Ryan Howard’s home run ball, as well as past controversies over other record-setting and significant balls, I wonder if we are heading towards a change in how baseballs hit into the stands (at least fair balls) are treated.
