The Latest in the ARod Saga

The ARod saga continued this week with allegations, shared by 60 Minutes, that Rodriguez's "inner circle" acquired and shared documents with Yahoo! Sports implicating Ryan Braun, among others, in the Biogenesis scandal.

While ARod has lost the support of MLB and fans for some time, this revelation, if true, may have finally turned fellow players and union against him once for and for all.  Cheating is bad, selling out your brethren is worse.

Not surprisingly, editors of The Sports Law Blog, became "go to" sports law experts on the unfolding situation.  Michael McCann penned a piece for CNNSI evaluating the potential legal ramifications of this latest twist in the ARod story in this article yesterday.  I was interviewed on the leading sports radio show in Canada (eh!) by Bob McCown on his Prime Time Sports show on Sportsnet.  You can listen to the interview at the 28:30 mark of yesterday's 4:00 pm hour here.  [OK, I know a lead story on CNNSI is a tad more impressive than a 10 minute interview on Toronto Sports Radio but I'm trying....]

Well, I'm heading to Fenway to watch my beloved Red Sox battle the Yankees this afternoon...any recommendations on what I should put on the sign I'll be taking?

When a (Sports Law) Research Line Ends

Edward Elger recently published the Handbook on the Economics of Women in Sports.  The 443 page tome was edited by Eva Marikova Leeds and Michael A. Leeds.  I contributed a chapter entitled "The Goals and Impacts of Age Restrictions in Sports."  As I was flipping through the pages, it dawned on me that the publication of my chapter marked the end of my decade-long inquiry into the legality and efficacy of minimum age rules in the sports industry.

My inquiry started as 2L, when I wrote a full length law review article examining the WTA Tour's so-called "Capriati Rule" under American antitrust law  A few years later, I penned a case note about the Toscana v. PGA Tour case.  After the NBA and NBPA agreed on a minimum age rule, I wrote a short piece about the new rule in basketball.

After a trilogy of law-focused articles, my attention turned to testing the efficacy (and effect) of such rules.  With sports labor market data largely in the public domain, I opted to statistically test both the WTA Tour rule and the NBA-NBPA policy.  The former was published in 2011 in the Journal of Labor Research.  The latter was published last year in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports.  With a dozen unrelated research projects in my queue and my interests moving elsewhere, I am fairly certain that my survey piece in the handbook edited by Leeds and Leeds will be my last contribution in this area for quite some time.

If/when there is another Clarett-type lawsuit challenging a sports league's age rule, there will, undoubtedly, be another flurry of academic work in the area.  Likewise, on the empirical side, researchers will have access to larger data sets with less censored data in the years ahead.  I will be very interested to see how this "sports law analytics" research line is extended by others.

Will Pujols go through with defamation suit?

On the heels of Jack Clark's statements on a St. Louis radio program that Albert Pujols uses steroids (based, Clark said, on what Pujols' former trainer told him in 2000), Clark has been fired by the radio station and Pujols has announced his intent to sue Clark and the radio station for defamation. Pujols expressed his desire to "send a message that you cannot act in a reckless manner, like they have, and get away with it."

As I've written before, the threat of suit in the wake of cheating accusations is a two-edged sword. On one hand, the failure to sue often is taken as evidence that the allegations are true (i.e., "If the statements were false, why not sue?"). On the other hand, the threat of suit often looks like little more than posturing, an attempt to show that the accusations were false (i.e., "He wouldn't threaten to sue if the statements were true"), even if he has no real plan to go down this road.

Either way, there are reasons Pujols might not win his suit, even if Clark's statements were false. Pujols is a public figure and thus would have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that Clark spoke with "actual malice"--that he knew his statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for their false. Pujols' using "reckless" in his public statements is likely not accidental or coincidental. This barrier to recovery may deter him from initiating litigation in the first place. On the other hand, that legal standard may be exactly why Pujols would sue. Suing makes him look like a man fighting hard to vindicate his reputation against blatantly false and harmful statements, while the lawsuit's ultimate failure would have nothing to do with truth or falsity of the statements themselves.

Northwoods Baseball League

Tired of college athletes generating revenue yet receiving no compensation?  If so, skip this post.  If not, here's a novel way that seems to take advantage of the NCAA's definition of amateurism (restricing compensation to college athletes) in the sport of baseball: the Northwoods Baseball League. 

Any true college baseball fan has heard about the Cape Cod League which started in 1885.  The league is a non-profit tax exempt 501 (c) (3) organization run by volunteers, operating 10 teams competing during the summer.  With over 250 alums in the major leagues, the Cape Cod League is a romantic venue offering elite amateur baseball players the ability to compete, prove themselves with wooden bats, and impress scouts.  The college baseball players are allowed to have expenses covered but, to be clear, receive no salaries and thus retain their "amateur" status by the NCAA.  The NCAA views the teams in this league as "club teams."  Any profits that are generated make their way to charity.

Enter the Northwoods Baseball League in the Upper Midwest co-founded by former Boston Red Sox star Dick Radatz Jr.  Same idea, bring college baseball players to the league during the summer, play in venues, attract crowds (over 950,000 fans a year) while only having to cover expenses because of the NCAA's restriction on compensation.  One difference, this league is very much for profit.  Thus, as the league generates significant revenue it skips the players and finds its way directly to the team owners.  Currently there are 16 teams and new franchises are going for $1 million each.

Can you imagine a for-profit basketball league where elite college players were brought together, played in front of huge crowds over the summer, and franchise owners made millions?  [I know, spare me the AAU comparison, at least it's a non-profit organization.]

Economics is a wonderful thing.  At its essence, there is demand for a product (baseball) which generates revenue.  Because of the NCAA's definition of amateurism, the labor producing the demand can't be paid.  This means more money for those running the league.  Wonder how many industries would love to have a system where employees couldn't be paid fair market value?  I know it's the summer, and it's been months since I taught Sports Law, but isn't that an ANTITRUST violation in the real world?

For more on this league, read this article in the Boston Globe by Stan Grossfeld.

The Legal Implications of Alex Rodriguez's Suspension

I have a new article for SI on the legal implications of Alex Rodriguez's suspension.  Hope you have a chance to check it out.

Also, Alan Milstein analyzes the suspension for Marketplace.

Words and actions

Riley Cooper, a member of the Philadelphia Eagles, is in deep trouble because he was video-recorded using a racial epithet in talking about who he was ready to get into a fight with. Cooper apologized all over the place (and not the typical celebrity non-apology apology) and was fined (but not suspended) by the team. Cooper today left the team to seek counseling and at least one Philadelphia commentator has suggested that this will cost him his job (and, implicitly, that no team ever will touch him).

But the NFL (all big-time sports, actually) are notorious for giving players second (and third and fourth and fifth) chances for off-field misconduct. Players who have engaged in domestic violence, sexual violence, sexual harassment, drunk driving, and other misconduct (again, involving action) are routinely welcomed back and allowed to continue playing for their teams, perhaps following a short suspension or fine. Without condoning, excusing, or minimizing what Cooper said, is dropping a racial epithet (in a context, by the way, where it was unquestionably lawful) really more unforgiveable than all of those things?

The NCAA Accountability Act

New bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress today that would, if it became law, compel major changes to college sports administration. Jon Solomom of The Birmingham News has all the details on the NCAA Accountability Act.