Just as the NHL and the other big 3 professional sports leagues continue to crack down on athlete misconduct on and off the field, NASCAR seems to be headed in the opposite direction. The NHL now forbids blindside hits to the head, and the NFL forbids almost any hit to the quarterback, but NASCAR has decided that it is permissible for one driver to intentionally crash his car into another driver during a race. I have a new column up on the Huffington Post that compares NASCAR’s new (or reborn) “have it and have a good time” policy with the safety/image-first policies of the big 4 pro sports leagues.

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Recently published scholarship includes:

Douglas E. Abrams, Sports in the courts: the role of sports references in judicial opinions, 17 VILLANOVA SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT LAW JOURNAL 1 (2010)

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The state of Tennessee last year enacted a Professional Privilege Tax on Professional Athletes, taxing home and visiting NBA and NHL players $ 2500 per game, up to three games. (H/T: Deadspin, via FIU student Wes Plympton). Detroit Red Wings Captain Brian Rafalski has objected to the tax, noting that seventeen teammates who make in the $ 500,000 range (minimum NHL salary) end up losing money on the days they play in Tennessee. Proceeds from the tax apparently go to the municipality to fund various public parks/recreation projects. Interestingly, the NFL is exempted from the tax because the league had an existing rule that would penalize any state that attempted to impose such a tax. Minor league players are exempted as well (the original proposal covered only players making $ 50,000 or more).

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Sport represents the only occasion in which adults regularly participate in patriotic symbolic rituals and ceremonies, such as the singing of the national anthem. I have written a great deal about the free-speech liberty to engage in patriotic symbolic counter-speech–declining to participate or engage with the symbol or its associated rituals or otherwise using (or not using) the ritual to protest the symbol and its message.

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Like we blogged about before, tomorrow has a number of great sports law-related events scheduled, all of which are free and open to the public:

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I look forward to being a panelist at the 2010 Scholarly Conference on College Sport at UNC Chapel Hill. It will be a three-day event held from April 21 to 23 and is being hosted by the College Sport Research Institute and the UNC Exercise and Sport Science Department. This student-run conference features a one-day Issues in College Sport Symposium followed by two full days of academic research presentations by sport management faculty from across the nation. This annual conference is the creation of UNC Professor Richard Southall, the founder and director of the College Sports Research Institute.

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Paul Haberman and I will be panelists at this year’s New York Law School Sports Law Symposium on Monday, April 5. It will be an all-day event and should be excellent. Matthew Corwin, Alycia Hucabey, and Lauren Friedberg have done a great job organizing it. Here are some details:

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FIU Law will be hosting what looks to be an excellent labor law symposium this Friday (the same date that Harvard Law School and Fordham Law School will be hosting sports law symposium). There are some terrific panelists, including those with sports law backgrounds, such as Boston University Law Prof Michael Harper, Marquette Law Prof Paul Secunda, and WVU Law Prof Anne Lofaso. Here are the details:

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On Friday, April 2, at noon, we’ll have what should be an engaging panel discussion on the role of age limits in professional sports. We hope you can make it up here (Vermont in April is about as nice a place as you can find). Here is the press release:

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Here’s a good story talking about baseball’s “codes” as to civility and conduct, in advance of publication of The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime.

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