Time does fly - Li is 12 weeks old today and growing well. We think he is pretty smart, so does he...
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Boston Celtics and the Law
Tonight at 7:15 p.m. EST I will be a guest on Celticsstuff Live (update: podcast available here) a radio show devoted to discussion of the Boston Celtics, my favorite NBA team. We will be discussing a recent post that I helped to write on The Situationist entitled "The Situation of the NBA Draft," which examined how NBA players' success is often based on the situation in...
Random Thoughts on Various Subjects
1. IDIOT OF THE WEEKThe award goes to Sheryl Crow and her environmentalist call to use only a single sheet of toilet paper to wipe your ass in order to save the planet. The comment was later described as a joke. Either way, she is a stupid bitch. I will still continue to listen to her music though.2. ROSIE OFF THE VIEWI have mixed thoughts on Rosie O'Donnell. She is a stupid leftist loudmouth fat fucking bitch. OTOH, she is entertaining. Without a doubt, she got canned for being controversial, but I think controversy is a good thing. First, Imus,...
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Christians are Imbeciles
In keeping with my resolution to be more hostile to religion, I have decided to devote space on the CBlog each Sunday (the Lord's Day) to bashing on religion, religious fuckheads, and what have you.I credit Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris with my militancy regarding atheism. As they rightly point out, religion is a taboo subject in our current culture, and we too easily give these shitheads a free pass on their faith. This might seem relatively harmless, but 9/11 shows the extremes that religion will go to as well as the cover even moderates give...
Q&A
Q: What about Enron?A: I get this question a lot when I talk about free markets. I often wonder why people don't throw in Global Crossing, Long Term Capital Management, or the forgotten Union Carbide disaster in India where people were killed by poisonous gas.First of all, let's get one thing straight about Enron. Enron FAILED. They went bankrupt. They were punished by the free market for cooking their books. This is supposed to happen in the free market. Compare Enron to government entities like the post office or Amtrak that can run deficits...
Brady Quinn, the NFL Draft on ESPN, and Confirmation Bias
For those of you who are also watching the NFL Draft, I wonder if we can get any more attention devoted to Brady Quinn, who has received more air time (and at least three personal interviews, including one with a moribund Suzy Kolber who tried desperately to get him to shed a tear or at least a swear) than all other players there, combined? Quinn, who was projected by most...
Friday, April 27, 2007
Honoring Harvard Law School Professor Paul Weiler
Harvard Law School professor Paul Weiler is considered by many to be the founder of American sports law and the most distinguished sports law professor around. A renowned expert in many legal fields, including labor law and entertainment law, his extraordinary legacy in sports law is the focus of this post.From a pedagogical perspective, Professor Weiler's sports law course...
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Michael Vick, Pit Bull Fighting, and The NFL's New Personal Conduct Policy
Last week, Rick had a terrific post that examined whether the NFL's new personal conduct policy affords Commissioner Roger Goodell too much discretion. We now hear, through Deadspin, that Michael Vick has possibly been running an illegal pit bull fighting ring, and it's interesting to speculate how Commissioner Goodell might apply the code to Vick.So what has Vick allegedly...
Time, Money, and Energy
Regular readers of the CBlog will notice that I am rather sporadic in my posting. You might go for a few days with no new content only to get a massive dump on a tuesday. And so it goes. . .The reason my blog is like this is because my life is like this. I am always butting up against what I call the Limiting Factors which are time, money, and energy. To use the blog as a for instance, my main limiting factors are time and energy. It costs nothing to produce this thing in terms of money. But it does take time to write this bullshit. I usually have...
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
The Lost NCAA Conference
In 2002, John Thelin noted:"[I]n recent years there has been a groundswell of excellent scholarly works dealing with intercollegiate athletics. The topic has both endurance and significance now that such disciplines as history, economics, law, literary analysis, and political science have been brought to bear on the serious study of college sports. Don't hold your breath for any strong connection between research and reform. As the scholarship on college sports gets better, the educational and ethical problems of college sports get worse."In 2006,...
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
The Importance of Which Team Drafts You
We have an article up on The Situationist today entitled "The Situation of the NBA Draft." It's premised on the idea that many, if not most, players selected in the NBA Draft will succeed or fail largely due to the situation of the team that drafts them. In other words, some players will find themselves in the right environment in terms of teammates and coaches and fans,...
Monday, April 23, 2007
I met the surgeon general - he offered me a cigarette.RODNEY DANGERFIELDFor my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in the same room and let them fight it out. STEVEN WRIGHTImmorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.H.L. MENCKENSociety bends over backward to be accommodating to religious sensibilities but not to other kinds of sensibilities. If I say something offensive to religious people, I'll be universally censured, including by many atheists. But if I say something insulting about Democrats or Republicans...
Spurrier and the Confederate Flag
Coach Steve Spurrier caused a bit of controversy when he called for the state of South Carolina to remove the confederate flag from the grounds of the statehouse. Undoubtedly, he thinks such a move might help him in recruiting black and Northern ballplayers, but the most likely result is to alienate many Carolina alumni.As a Carolina alumnus, a South Carolinian, and a Southerner,...
New Sports Law Scholarship
New this week:Vanessa Bovo, Comment, Keeping the public in the public use requirement: acquisition of land by eminent domain for new sports stadiums should require more than hypothetical jobs and tax revenues to meet the public use requirement, 16 SETON HALL JOURNAL OF SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT LAW 289 (2006)Thomas Brophy, Casenote, Icing the competition: the nonstatutory labor exemption and the conspiracy between the NHL and OHL, 14 VILLANOVA SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT LAW JOURNAL 1 (2007)Meri J. Van Blarcom-Gupko, Should NASCAR be allowed...
Saturday, April 21, 2007
DVD-Pumping Iron
In 1977, Pumping Iron came out. This documentary highlighted bodybuilding and has gone on to become the best of its category. Thanks to Netflix, I was able to watch this flick, and here's my review.I am not a bodybuilder. I just wanted to get that out of the way. If it was up to me, I would weigh 140 pounds and look like an Auschwitz survivor. But I still enjoy learning about...
Tanking: The Fan's Perspective
Will Leitch, the editor of Deadspin, has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times wondering how fans can be so accepting of their teams tanking. This is a different perspective on the issue of tanking that Michael considered here and here.Leitch's point is that being a fan (as opposed to being the team's GM) is a game-by-game, short-term consideration, rather than a long-term, big-picture commitment. You want the team to win this game once it begins; you are not thinking about how a loss may help you three months down the road.Money line:"Because...
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Give It Up, Al
Today, Attorney General Albert Gonzales testified before Congress that he did not know anything about the US attorneys he fired and that he did not fire them for political reasons but because they sucked. He then replaced them with political cronies. The firings were not his fault, but he took full responsibility. In addition, he did not lie but certain statements he made may have not fully conveyed the truth which everyone in the rest of the world would call lies. Finally, he didn't do anything wrong, and he promised never to do it again.I'll...
Cho Analysis
NBC broadcasted portions of the Virginia Tech gunman's "multimedia manifesto." The network has garnered some criticism for doing this, but I agree with what the network did. It was news, and that should be the only consideration in journalism except in those rare instances where a person's life might be endangered.As for the videos, they basically confirmed what I already knew. Cho was a nut. Nothing he said made any sense. He was a narcissist pissed off that the world would not kiss his ass. He was a "victim." Please. . .There is no preventing...
Oral Agruments in TSSAA v. Brentwood Academy (Updated)
For those interested, this morning's oral argument in TSSAA v. Brentwood Academy is available here (HT: SCOTUSBlog).I will provide some comments and thoughts once I have a chance to read it, probably tomorrow.UPDATE and MOVED TO TOPHaving read the oral argument transcript, it appears one of my earlier predictions proved false: No sports puns or analogies from anyone. I stand by my other prediction, however: the Supreme Court will reverse the Sixth Circuit.Some random thoughts:* The TSSAA focused the First Amendment argument on its interests in...
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
How Many Wheelchair Seats Does the Big House Need?
News broke this week of a lawsuit filed by the Michigan Paralyzed Veterans of America under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) against the University of Michigan. The suit concerns the number of seats that need to be wheelchair accessible in the stadium, which to this point has been exempt from the 1990 ADA because it was constructed decades before the statute was enacted....
The SCOTUS and Partial Birth Abortion
For the record, I am pro-choice.Today, the SCOTUS gutted Roe vs. Wade in a 5-4 decision upholding a ban on partial birth abortion. Justice Kennedy pretty much opened the door for the states and federal legislators to begin whittling away at a woman's right to choose. An outright ban on abortion probably would not pass constitutional muster, but the same thing can be achieved through a thousand little cuts as opposed to plunging the dagger straight into the heart.I expect a division to occur between red states and blue states as abortion becomes...
Does the NFL's New Personal Conduct Policy Afford the Commissioner Too Much Discretion?
Last Friday, I participated on a panel at DePaul University College of Law on the topic of regulating off-field misconduct. We had a lively discussion and debate regarding the timely issue of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell's one year suspension of Adam "Pacman" Jones. I raised a number of questions that should be considered by the players regarding this particular suspension, but more importantly, any future disciplinary actions taken by the commissioner under the NFL's new personal conduct policy.1. Is it connected to the NFL's business? Internal...
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Virginia Tech Massacre
I've held my fire on this one until enough facts were in. Now, here's what I have to say:1. There are nutcases in this world.2. There is no deeper meaning in this tragedy. There are simply nutcases in this world.3. A couple of students/faculty with concealed weapons would have made this a very different story. Fuck the gun control people. Gun control makes us all sitting ducks.There you have ...
Tax Day
Today is the darkest day in the libertarian calendar. It is the day when we settle accounts with the slaveholder, and we either pay more from what we worked for or we get some peanuts back in gratitude thankful that master let us have some of our money back.I pay taxes to stay out of jail. I know my dollars that I worked for will be wasted on the welfare state, pork barrel spending, foreign aid, etc. Unlike the rest of America who are stupid as teetotal fuck, I don't comfort myself with some sort of philosophy about duty to country or paying my...
