European soccer players are notorious for faking injuries in order to kill time or get a beneficial call. I have tons of examples at the ready, but Rivaldo's "simulation" (official term for taking a dive in order to earn a free kick) in the 2002 World Cup may be the best example. (Note: if this link breaks, go to YouTube and search "Rivaldo fake injury" or something like that.)
If you couldn't tell exactly what went on, a player from Turkey kicked the ball towards/at Rivaldo because Brazil had a corner kick. The ball hit Rivaldo's upper leg on the fly, but Rivaldo pretended that he had been hit in the face and went down holding his nose. The referee inexplicably bought it, and gave the player from Turkey a red card. (Not sure whether that was a straight red or the second yellow card, but either way it's an unjust result.) How did the linesman not see what happened?! This is a World Cup match!! Terrible.
As a soccer player, these faked injuries embarrass me. Why would Americans want to watch a game where the players act so cowardly? Hell, these players' dives have turned me off from "the beautiful game," as soccer is known--I can't imagine a typical person wanting to tune in. What's worse is that American sports have caught the simulation disease. Basketball may be the best example. Take a look at a clip from yesterday's Bulls-Heat playoff game:
Let me make this clear: that's the league's best player blatantly pretending to have been fouled. He even winks at his bench shortly thereafter. Pathetic. It's not one isolated instance, either--and it's certainly not limited to LeBron James. Superstars across the league (Pau Gasol, Manu Ginobili, etc.) fall to the ground in agony without the slightest touch. It makes the NBA even less watchable. It's bad enough that the faces of the league whine to the referees at every opportunity (Kobe, Dwyane Wade, and Duncan are the most egregious offenders, though every team has at least one crybaby)...now we have to watch them topple like a house of cards?
I wish David Stern (the Commissioner of the league) would put a stop to this nonsense. Simply give the referees the authority to hit the flopper with a technical foul. The refs wouldn't dole out too many, because it's difficult to tell whether a player is taking a dive or not, but the mere threat of the punishment should deter the players from acting. You know who would love this rule? Players like LeBron, who suffers from this plague of simulation way more often than they benefit. I guarantee the superstars would love to get rid of flopping, but they can't just lead by example. It's akin to the Prisoner's Dilemma--why cooperate when you have no guarantees your partner in crime will do the same? If you have an outside authority step in and force the prisoners to cooperate, everyone wins. The Commish can be that strong hand to ensure that no one flops. The game will be better as a result. After all, do we really want the NBA to devolve into stuff like this?
Hell, no.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Title IX
Most everyone has heard of Title IX (read: Title Nine) and could give a brief description of its purpose: to promote gender equality in the world of collegiate sports. When a university cuts wrestling or another male varsity sport, Title IX often bears the blame. In these next few paragraphs, we'll examine just what Title IX requires of universities and the various ways these schools comply with the federal law.
In 1972, Congress passed and President Nixon signed into law Title IX, which reads in part that "[n]o person . . . shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in . . . any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." Since virtually every university gets some federal funding, Title IX applies to virtually every college in America.
In 1979, the Carter Administration's Office of Civil Rights issued a Policy Interpretation that elaborated on the requirements of Title IX. The OCR created three ways for a university to conform with the law, which I will paraphrase:
- The school must have equal athletic opportunities for men and women.
- If the school doesn't have equal athletic opportunities, it must have a continuous record of expanding its programs to meet the needs of the underrepresented sex (women).
- If the university can't meet #1 or #2, it must demonstrate that women's interests are fully accommodated by its current programs.
- Provide varsity slots for men and women at a 3-to-2 ratio. (For every 3 slots for men, there must be 2 for women.) This would satisfy Requirement #1.
- Be able to show that it's continually adding women's sports to its offerings. This would satisfy Requirement #2.
- Provide 250 slots for women. This satisfies Requirement #3. According to our example, 250 women want to play sports. To fully accommodate women, NU must have 250 slots for women.
- Provide varsity slots for men and women at a 2-to-1 ratio, which corresponds with the number of men and women interested in sports. Courts think this is myopic; just because women aren't that interested in sports at the moment doesn't mean they won't become more interested in the future.
- Have an equal amount of men's and women's teams. This might work, but it doesn't necessarily satisfy Title IX, which concerns itself with the number of roster slots. A college football team has 110 or so slots, depending on the school, whereas a women's tennis team will have 15 or so. You can see how an equal number of sports, by itself, doesn't suffice. [Aside: this is partly why schools have such huge women's crew teams. At least at NU, I believe every girl who tried out for varsity crew made the team--not that stopped those girls from acting cool for being a varsity "athlete."]
- Say to the court, "yeah, our women aren't fully represented, but so what? Neither are our men. 500 want to play sports, and we only have room for 300. It's a tough economic climate and we can't afford enough teams for everyone." The courts don't care. Title IX concerns itself with the underrepresented gender; how the men are doing is irrelevant (unless they're the ones who are underrepresented).
Hope this shed some light on a fairly well-known topic of law. For further reading, here's an NYT article on the subject. Btw, my sports law final is tomorrow, so if you're getting sick of these sports-law themed posts, you're in luck.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
A Quick Discussion of Contracts
As I may have mentioned, I'm taking Sports Law this semester. It's far from the hardest law school course I've encountered, but I'm learning a good deal--mainly because the course draws on many different areas of law. In my previous post, we saw how antitrust and labor law can feature prominently in the world of professional leagues. Today, I'd like to provide use sports to explain a bit of contract law.
The main issue I'll be focusing on today is this: how does Player get out of his contract with Team A in order to go play for Team B? What can Team A do to stop Player?
Hypothetical: Player, a star in both basketball and baseball, signs a contract with Baseball Team. Unfortunately, a few months in to this contract, Player realizes that he can't hit a major league curveball. He wants to go back to the hardwood, but he's under contract with Baseball Team. What happens now?
Well, Player could simply refuse to perform. He could leave Baseball Team and go sign a contract with Basketball Team. That would leave it up to Baseball Team to go to the courts. Baseball Team could simply sue for a breach of contract, a lawsuit it would almost certainly win. The remedy for a breach of contract is typically monetary damages (I use "typically" because I don't want to sound too authoritative--it's been a while since I took contract law). So, Player would have to pay Baseball Team a sum of money that the judge believes would make Baseball Team whole. Easy enough, right?
Well, sure, but imagine you're Baseball Team. You believe that Player, despite his troubles, has great potential. You don't want monetary compensation--you want Player to stick to his contract. Thus, you ask the court not for damages but for an injunction. You want the court to enjoin Player from playing anywhere but for your team. In essence, you want the court to step in and hold Player to his contract.
An injunction is a tougher remedy to obtain. Courts are happy to award damages, but they're reluctant to force a party to adhere to his contract. Understandably so: breaching a contract occasionally leads to a more efficient allocation of resources. If Player is a mediocre slugger but a star cager,* it makes more sense for him to go play basketball.
Here's a non-sports example of efficient breach that you could totally skip over and not miss a beat (I even changed the font to show you how unessential it is!):
"Suppose I sign a contract to deliver 100,000 custom-ground widgets at $.10 apiece to A, for use in his boiler factory. After I have delivered 10,000, B comes to me, explains that he desperately needs 25,000 custom-ground widgets at once since otherwise he will be forced to close his pianola factory at great cost, and offers me $.15 apiece for 25,000 widgets. I sell him the widgets and as a result do not complete timely delivery to A, who sustains $1000 in damages from my breach. Having obtained an additional profit of $1250 on the sale to B, I am better off even after reimbursing A for his loss. Society is also better off. Since B was willing to pay me $.15 per widget, it must mean that each widget was worth at least $.15 to him. But it was worth only $.14 to A – $.10, what he paid, plus $.04 ($1000 divided by 25,000), his expected profit. Thus the breach resulted in a transfer of the 25,000 widgets from a lower valued to a higher valued use." Richard Posner, Economic Analysis of the Law (got it from here).
Thus, Player would argue to the judge, "look, I know I'm breaching my contract. I'm not denying that; in fact, tell me how much to pay and I'll pay. But don't hold me to this contract--it would result in an inefficient allocation of resources." Baseball Team would respond, "Judge, contracts should be seen as something more than an economic instrument. They should be seen as moral obligations worthy of as much 'legal teeth' as the law can reasonably provide."
In addition to this broad principle, Baseball Team could make the following arguments (I'll leave it to you to evaluate their merits):
So, now you've gotten a taste of both sides of the issue. Player doesn't have tons to say, but keep in mind that many courts look favorably on the concept of efficient breach and similarly are quite reluctant to grant a remedy as extraordinary as an injunction. This issue of players jumping from one team/league to another is uncommon these days, as two-sport athletes are rare and the big four sports leagues have no real competition. (These cases were more common back when the AFL and the NFL were on approximately equal footing and you'd see someone want to leave one of these football leagues for the other.) Even though we don't see this type of case much in sports law, it still is an important aspect of contract law. I just framed the concept in a sports law context to make it more interesting and readable.
*cager is a great crossword clue, btw.
The main issue I'll be focusing on today is this: how does Player get out of his contract with Team A in order to go play for Team B? What can Team A do to stop Player?
Hypothetical: Player, a star in both basketball and baseball, signs a contract with Baseball Team. Unfortunately, a few months in to this contract, Player realizes that he can't hit a major league curveball. He wants to go back to the hardwood, but he's under contract with Baseball Team. What happens now?
Well, Player could simply refuse to perform. He could leave Baseball Team and go sign a contract with Basketball Team. That would leave it up to Baseball Team to go to the courts. Baseball Team could simply sue for a breach of contract, a lawsuit it would almost certainly win. The remedy for a breach of contract is typically monetary damages (I use "typically" because I don't want to sound too authoritative--it's been a while since I took contract law). So, Player would have to pay Baseball Team a sum of money that the judge believes would make Baseball Team whole. Easy enough, right?
Well, sure, but imagine you're Baseball Team. You believe that Player, despite his troubles, has great potential. You don't want monetary compensation--you want Player to stick to his contract. Thus, you ask the court not for damages but for an injunction. You want the court to enjoin Player from playing anywhere but for your team. In essence, you want the court to step in and hold Player to his contract.
An injunction is a tougher remedy to obtain. Courts are happy to award damages, but they're reluctant to force a party to adhere to his contract. Understandably so: breaching a contract occasionally leads to a more efficient allocation of resources. If Player is a mediocre slugger but a star cager,* it makes more sense for him to go play basketball.
Here's a non-sports example of efficient breach that you could totally skip over and not miss a beat (I even changed the font to show you how unessential it is!):
"Suppose I sign a contract to deliver 100,000 custom-ground widgets at $.10 apiece to A, for use in his boiler factory. After I have delivered 10,000, B comes to me, explains that he desperately needs 25,000 custom-ground widgets at once since otherwise he will be forced to close his pianola factory at great cost, and offers me $.15 apiece for 25,000 widgets. I sell him the widgets and as a result do not complete timely delivery to A, who sustains $1000 in damages from my breach. Having obtained an additional profit of $1250 on the sale to B, I am better off even after reimbursing A for his loss. Society is also better off. Since B was willing to pay me $.15 per widget, it must mean that each widget was worth at least $.15 to him. But it was worth only $.14 to A – $.10, what he paid, plus $.04 ($1000 divided by 25,000), his expected profit. Thus the breach resulted in a transfer of the 25,000 widgets from a lower valued to a higher valued use." Richard Posner, Economic Analysis of the Law (got it from here).
Thus, Player would argue to the judge, "look, I know I'm breaching my contract. I'm not denying that; in fact, tell me how much to pay and I'll pay. But don't hold me to this contract--it would result in an inefficient allocation of resources." Baseball Team would respond, "Judge, contracts should be seen as something more than an economic instrument. They should be seen as moral obligations worthy of as much 'legal teeth' as the law can reasonably provide."
In addition to this broad principle, Baseball Team could make the following arguments (I'll leave it to you to evaluate their merits):
- Money isn't enough of a remedy. Player is so uniquely skilled that losing him would cause our team irreparable injury that you can't put a price on.
- Player is of such unique talents that we wouldn't be able to replace him. (Imagine if Derrick Rose went to go play hockey. The Bulls would have a helluva time finding a new Derrick Rose.)
So, now you've gotten a taste of both sides of the issue. Player doesn't have tons to say, but keep in mind that many courts look favorably on the concept of efficient breach and similarly are quite reluctant to grant a remedy as extraordinary as an injunction. This issue of players jumping from one team/league to another is uncommon these days, as two-sport athletes are rare and the big four sports leagues have no real competition. (These cases were more common back when the AFL and the NFL were on approximately equal footing and you'd see someone want to leave one of these football leagues for the other.) Even though we don't see this type of case much in sports law, it still is an important aspect of contract law. I just framed the concept in a sports law context to make it more interesting and readable.
*cager is a great crossword clue, btw.
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