{"id":10435,"date":"2010-06-15T11:47:23","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T16:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=10435"},"modified":"2010-06-15T11:47:23","modified_gmt":"2010-06-15T16:47:23","slug":"negotiating-punishment-in-the-nfl-and-the-nba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/06\/negotiating-punishment-in-the-nfl-and-the-nba\/","title":{"rendered":"Negotiating Punishment in the NFL and the NBA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Every few months, there is a new media feeding frenzy surrounding a star athlete for something he has done or said off the playing field.\u00a0 The allegations of\u00a0sexual assault\u00a0against Ben Roethlisberger provide just one recent example.\u00a0 Although off-the-field misconduct may sometimes result in serious legal liability (see Plaxico Burress), the most damaging sanctions are often those imposed by a league commissioner.\u00a0 For instance, in a world of multimillion-dollar sports\u00a0contracts, a suspension for even a few games (like Roethlisberger’s) can be extraordinarily expensive.\u00a0 Yet, such sanctions are typically imposed\u00a0under vaguely worded league rules\u00a0and without much by way of formal procedural protections.<\/p>\n

For these reasons, Matt Parlow<\/a>\u00a0wonders in an interesting new\u00a0article whether the\u00a0player unions will make an issue of\u00a0the commissioners’ authority to punish in the impending renegotiation of collective bargaining agreements in the NFL and the NBA.\u00a0 Whether or not they do, Matt makes a good case that the unions should<\/em> pay close attention to this\u00a0issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The article, entitled “Professional Sports League Commissioners\u2019 Authority and Collective Bargaining,” appeared at 11 Tex. Rev. Entertainment & Sports L. 179 (2010).\u00a0 It is available here\u00a0on SSRN<\/a>.\u00a0 The abstract appears after the jump.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

With the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL) collective bargaining agreements set to expire within the next two years, many experts are already predicting what changes may be made to both leagues\u2019 governing labor documents. One likely point of contention between the owners and the players\u2019 unions \u2014 though rarely discussed in the experts\u2019 predictive discourse \u2014 is the power of the respective league commissioners to punish or discipline wayward players for misbehavior committed off of the court or field. This article will analyze this area of sports law by exploring this power of each league\u2019s sports commissioner, as well as its place and significance in collective bargaining.<\/p>\n

This article will begin in Part II by giving a brief overview of the rise in commissioner discipline for players\u2019 misbehavior committed off of the court or field and why commissioners punish in this manner. Parts II and III will track and situate the source of the commissioners\u2019 power to discipline for such reasons \u2014 namely, in the leagues\u2019 respective collective bargaining agreements. Part IV will describe how courts and arbitrators have treated commissioners\u2019 decisions to punish players for their actions off of the court or field, and posit why such treatment is a concern for the labor unions representing professional athletes in these two leagues. Part IV will then give an overview of the collective bargaining process and the effect it has on this power of each league commissioner. Part IV will also explore why the players\u2019 unions will likely make this power of the league commissioner a provision of the collective bargaining agreement that will be negotiated over, unlike in years past. Finally, Part V will provide some concluding insights.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every few months, there is a new media feeding frenzy surrounding a star athlete for something he has done or said off the playing field.\u00a0 The allegations of\u00a0sexual assault\u00a0against Ben Roethlisberger provide just one recent example.\u00a0 Although off-the-field misconduct may sometimes result in serious legal liability (see Plaxico Burress), the most damaging sanctions are often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-scholarship","category-sports-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}