Sports Law Paper Topics (1 Viewer)

[The Flying Elvis]

I am in a Sports Law class right now and have to choose a topic to write a term paper on. The paper has to have legal significance and analysis. There are the obvious issues right now with the O'Bannon case as well as the recent lockouts but I was wondering if anyone had any other potential suggestions that would be significant enough for say a 4000 word/20 page double space paper. Thanks. I was looking into law surrounding fantasy sports but am coming up rather dry except for the recent challenge to FanDuel and daily sports leagues.

 

[shake zula]

I am in a Sports Law class right now and have to choose a topic to write a term paper on. The paper has to have legal significance and analysis. There are the obvious issues right now with the O'Bannon case as well as the recent lockouts but I was wondering if anyone had any other potential suggestions that would be significant enough for say a 4000 word/20 page double space paper. Thanks. I was looking into law surrounding fantasy sports but am coming up rather dry except for the recent challenge to FanDuel and daily sports leagues.

I'd do something dealing with how the NCAA enslaves and exploits its "student athletes".

 

[Ray Karpis]

I did a paper in law school on the Court of Arbitration for Sport. At times it has been a pretty controversial body.

 

[BroadwayG]

Law of averages: Fact or fiction

 

[bigbottom]

How about the brain injury class action suit against the NFL?

http://www.pri.org/stories/arts-entertainment/nfl-faces-class-action-lawsuit-from-thousands-of-former-players-12846.html

 

[ffldrew]

Transgender athletes rights to play sports

 

[Notorious T.R.E.]

How about drug testing/HGH in the various sports? Lot of material there. Battles between players associations and leagues, etc.

 

[Please See Mine]

Unamericanness of the draft

 

[Please See Mine]

Waiting periods for players to enter leagues, particularly NFL and NBA are kind of hot.

 

[rockaction]

Wait a second. Are you going to UCONN right now?

Regardless, you could do free agency w/r/t to antitrust or franchise relocation w/r/t to antitrust.

 

[whoknew]

Unamericanness of the draft

How about whether the antitrust exemptions should apply to the drafts? I know very little about labor law, but it has always seemed strange to me that two parties can collectively bargain to limit the rights of people who are not members of those parties.

 

[Ramsay Hunt Experience]

Unamericanness of the draft

How about whether the antitrust exemptions should apply to the drafts? I know very little about labor law, but it has always seemed strange to me that two parties can collectively bargain to limit the rights of people who are not members of those parties.

The problem is that the legal answer is so clear that he'd have a hard time getting 20-pages. Collectively bargained labor agreements are allowed to affect people who are not yet part of the bargaining unit. Which is why steamfitters have seniority rules. I seems weird, but it's just not controversial.The Redskins salary cap controversy might be an interesting paper. I've read a lot of really, really bad legal analysis on that dispute. Both in the mainstream press and on message boards like this one. I don't think people really even understand what the Redskins did (hint, it's not just going over an imaginary cap in an uncapped year). So a paper that properly analyzed the behavior, analyzed the jurisdiction of the special master, and analyzed whether the NFL's collective action violated Section 1, would be helpful.

 

[Ramsay Hunt Experience]

Another topic that I was once asked to look at for a sports league is whether a prospective buyer of a franchise has any possible cause of action against the league owners if they reject his bid and choose another (presumably inferior) bid.

Sports leagues like the NFL are voluntary associations. So if Mark Cuban wants to bid $1.3 billion for the Cowboys after Jerry Jones dies in plane crash, and the other owners just hate Shark Tank and accept a $900 million offer from a group fronted by Nolan Ryan instead, does Cuban have any recourse? In fairness, that answer is pretty definitive as well, but there are enough weird voluntary association cases with wrinkles that you could probably get 20 pages.

 

[Buckfast 1]

Back in law school, I wrote a Sports Law paper about the potential conflict between fantasy sports and the players' publicity rights. My paper focused on a U.S. District Court case titled C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, in which a district court judge had granted summary judgment finding that major league baseball players did not have a right of publicity in their names and statistics as used by a fantasy website and that the fantasy website had, therefore, not violated the players' claimed right of publicity. I argued that the district court decision was wrongly decided, in that, contrary to the court's ruling, the players could in fact make out a prima facie case of infringment of their publicity rights, while relying on a line of cases involving the appropriation of player names and statistics for board games. However, I argued that the fantasy website should nonetheless prevail on a First Amendment defense, in which the court would engage in a balancing test to determine whether the individual's interest in his or her persona outweighs the society's interest in free expression. Out of curiousity, I just looked it up and the Eighth Circuit apparently decided the appeal of that case in C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, 505 F.3d 818 (8th Cir. 2007), and held exactly as I argued that they should in my paper. Although the law is apparently not quite as unsettled now as it was then, it might be worth looking into that decision, as I think it presents an interesting and relevant sports issue that involves an interesting discussion of First Amendment precedent.

 

[Ramsay Hunt Experience]

I was going to suggest just Buckfast's issue if the OP wanted to do something on fantasy sports. That's pretty much THE fantasy sports question, although I agree that the question is pretty much settled.

 

[Ramsay Hunt Experience]

Without just doing the "lockouts" it might be interesting to do a paper on how courts should treat decertification and a resultant antitrust claim against a lockout, in light of the Norris / La-Guardia Act.

The problem with the cases, is that once the NFL had the injunction overturned, the parties settled. So we don't really know the status of the law. It's a tricky decsision, because (IMO) all it's saying is that District Courts lack the ability to enjoin a strike or lockout under the N/L Act, and NOT that such a strike or lockout isn't an antitrust violation. So even if the NFL is right, the next step might be for a union to de-certify and take the case through the entire process, running up potential treble damages the entire way.

 

[The Flying Elvis]

Thanks for all the great suggestions everyone... Right now I am leaning towards an Anti-Trust/Franchise Location or the Redskins cap situation. I am thinking of going with the Redskins though because it seems that it is far from settled and a lot of analysis could go with it.

In regards to the fantasy sports issue, thank you for the cases to look up and I agree that I am probably going to go in a different direction just because the law seems to be pretty much settled at this point and the paper would just end up really being a case history. There is the Fan Duel stuff with gambling and daily leagues but I am not I want to take it in the gambling analysis direction.

Also to answer rocknation, I do not go to UCONN right now but I did graduate from there a few years ago. Currently finishing up law school in Boston.

 

[Ramsay Hunt Experience]

If you do the Redskins cap thing, here are some questions I'd suggest you address:

Do the Redskins have antitrust standing?

Keeping in mind the maxim that the antitrust laws are designed "to protect competition and not competitors" does it matter that the cap penalties were distributed back into the other teams' salary caps (so that the league-wide cap stayed constant).

Should any action have been prohibited in the uncapped year? Say the Redskins signed a bunch of stars to six year contracts. But instead of a signing bonus allocated over the entire six year run, they gave each star $35 million base salaries in the uncapped year, which was the first year of the contract, and manageable salaries in each subsequent year (extending into the period covered by the new CBA). How does this apply to what the Redskins did? Is this really about new contracts or about getting out of old contracts (like Haynesworth).

Do the Redskins have a plausible cause of action outside of antitrust? What do the NFL by-laws say (these might be hard to get ahold of, see if you professor has some ideas). What is the significance to the fact that all contracts were approved by the league and the union?

 

[rockaction]

Thanks for all the great suggestions everyone... Right now I am leaning towards an Anti-Trust/Franchise Location or the Redskins cap situation. I am thinking of going with the Redskins though because it seems that it is far from settled and a lot of analysis could go with it.

In regards to the fantasy sports issue, thank you for the cases to look up and I agree that I am probably going to go in a different direction just because the law seems to be pretty much settled at this point and the paper would just end up really being a case history. There is the Fan Duel stuff with gambling and daily leagues but I am not I want to take it in the gambling analysis direction.

Also to answer rocknation, I do not go to UCONN right now but I did graduate from there a few years ago. Currently finishing up law school in Boston.

Ah, I see. Thought maybe you were taking a specific course that I took there, which was relevant, because the paper topics got quite varied (everything from boxing and animal cruelty laws regarding cockfighting to player transfers in the EPL). Best of luck with the paper and with school.

 

[GroveDiesel]

I think another interesting topic would be players filing workers comp claims in the states where they occurred. I know some NFL players have been agitating about this.

 

[Aerial Assault]

I think another interesting topic would be players filing workers comp claims in the states where they occurred. I know some NFL players have been agitating about this.

You're right. I almost represented one, but ended up referring him out. Nice guy. To the OP, I always found Curt Flood's litigation fascinating, and it seems to me that there are some parallels that might guide the courts in the O'Bannon litigation, along with some healthy differences that you could contrast. Maybe too much for 20 pages, but just an idea.

 

[Frostillicus]

My link

 

[Orange Crush]

Transgender athletes rights to play sports

One of the two questions on my Sports Law final exam was to analyze the various legal positions surrounding that track athlete who had always competed as a woman, but was temporarily barred from competing internationally pending a decision over what to do with genetic test results that made her gender ambiguous.It was an open-internet exam and I was still at a loss on what to write.

 

[ffldrew]

Transgender athletes rights to play sports

One of the two questions on my Sports Law final exam was to analyze the various legal positions surrounding that track athlete who had always competed as a woman, but was temporarily barred from competing internationally pending a decision over what to do with genetic test results that made her gender ambiguous.It was an open-internet exam and I was still at a loss on what to write.

And you are going to have it in grade school and high school - here in Colorado we had the big story of the child who wanted to use the girls restroom at school and was refused and all the parents lost it one way or the other. Won't be long until a child like this wants to play sports and will be faced with genetic rights questions.

 

[Todd Andrews]

If you do the Redskins cap thing, here are some questions I'd suggest you addresso the Redskins have antitrust standing?Keeping in mind the maxim that the antitrust laws are designed "to protect competition and not competitors" does it matter that the cap penalties were distributed back into the other teams' salary caps (so that the league-wide cap stayed constant).Should any action have been prohibited in the uncapped year? Say the Redskins signed a bunch of stars to six year contracts. But instead of a signing bonus allocated over the entire six year run, they gave each star $35 million base salaries in the uncapped year, which was the first year of the contract, and manageable salaries in each subsequent year (extending into the period covered by the new CBA). How does this apply to what the Redskins did? Is this really about new contracts or about getting out of old contracts (like Haynesworth).Do the Redskins have a plausible cause of action outside of antitrust? What do the NFL by-laws say (these might be hard to get ahold of, see if you professor has some ideas). What is the significance to the fact that all contracts were approved by the league and the union?

I would like to see these questions answered, as well as the issue of teams spending far below the floor in the "uncapped" year and why that didnt violate the competitive "spirit" of the league (see, Tampa Bay).

 

[fatguyinalittlecoat]

If you're still looking for a topic, the Ed O'Bannon lawsuit could be a good one.

 

[Instinctive]

Bumping this because I have a sports law paper assignment, although I'm posting with some clarifications:

Ideally, this is something that would be useful for a GM, or something I can point to in the future as a depth of knowledge. So it isn't about a case or something, but rather about a full topic. I have toyed with looking at Restricted Free Agency and why it is allowed, how it works, etc. I have also thought about the same but with trades. The problem is that the answer generally ends up being, "Because it is collectively bargained," and that's that. If there's a way I can do RFA/Trades that allows me to analyze them for success on the field while incorporating a legal perspective, that would be the goal. Any ideas for how to do that?

I considered looking into the buying and selling of teams, as someone above mentioned where owners get to vote on whether or not someone can sell to a certain other party or not, but am not sure there's enough depth there.

I don't want to do anything regarding college sports, as it's not where my interests lie.

 

[Ramsay Hunt Experience]

Bumping this because I have a sports law paper assignment, although I'm posting with some clarifications:

Ideally, this is something that would be useful for a GM, or something I can point to in the future as a depth of knowledge. So it isn't about a case or something, but rather about a full topic. I have toyed with looking at Restricted Free Agency and why it is allowed, how it works, etc. I have also thought about the same but with trades. The problem is that the answer generally ends up being, "Because it is collectively bargained," and that's that. If there's a way I can do RFA/Trades that allows me to analyze them for success on the field while incorporating a legal perspective, that would be the goal. Any ideas for how to do that?

I considered looking into the buying and selling of teams, as someone above mentioned where owners get to vote on whether or not someone can sell to a certain other party or not, but am not sure there's enough depth there.

I don't want to do anything regarding college sports, as it's not where my interests lie.

You might consider something about whether any sports league, such as MLS, could viably invoke the single-entity "Copperweld" defense in an antitrust action in the post American Needle world.