Showing posts with label John Rocker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Rocker. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Shameless Plug: Social Media in Sports: Can Professional Sports League Commissioners Punish 'Twackle Dummies'?

Please excuse this interruption to your regularly scheduled May Day reading as I shamelessly plug my article, which was recently published by the Pace I.P., Sports & Entertainment Law Forum. 

With celebrities, politicians, athletes, and non-athlete-kinda-Twitter famous-so not really celebrities, finding themselves in hot water due to some unfortunate comments they made via social media, I thought out loud---well---actually wrote out loud, as to whether professional sports league commissioners had the authority to punish their respective sports stars for tweeting bone-headed comments.   From my abstract:

Monday, September 26, 2011

In the NFL, It Gets Better; I Promise.

Pete Olsen, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law 3L Student, and author of the blog "Wide Rights" has uncovered quite a find in the new NFL collective bargaining agreement.  The NFL is the first professional sports league to protect players from any sexual orientation related discrimination (assist PrawfsBlawg). 
As Prawfsblawg (emphasis added by author) points out, the language from the 2006 CBA Article VII, Player Security, reads :
Section 1. No Discrimination: There will be no discrimination in any form against any player by the Management Council, any Club or by the NFLPA because of race, religion, national origin or activity or lack of activity on behalf of the NFLPA.
The new language in the 2011 CBA, now moved to Article 49, reads: