Elena Kagan on the Judge-Umpire Analogy

Because we can never get enough of the judge-umpire analogy on our blog, here you go:

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan says she agrees with Chief Justice John Roberts that justices basically act like baseball umpires in deciding complex legal issues.

But Kagan said the metaphor isn't quite that simple.

She said Wednesday that while judges should be strictly neutral, they also have to exercise difficult judgments. Said Kagan: "They are not easy calls."

At his confirmation hearings, Roberts said justices call balls and strikes. Kagan said the weakness of the metaphor is that it "might suggest to some people that law is a kind of robotic exercise, that there is a kind of automatic quality to it, that we just stand there and call balls and strikes."

Thanks to Associated Press writer and Boston College professor Jimmy Golen for referring me to the story.

Justice Stevens and the Baseball Antitrust Exemption

Henry Fetter has written an interesting piece for The Atlantic, looking back at retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens' work as associate counsel to the Monopoly Power Subcommittee of the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee, and in particular the role he played during the 1951 Celler Hearings regarding the antitrust status of Major League Baseball. Here is an excerpt:

As curious crowds thronged the Capitol amidst a crush of reporters and newsreel cameras, a diverse lineup of baseball notables took the witness table, including major and minor league officials, team owners, ball players, even sports writers, and associate committee counsel Stevens was asking many of the questions. Not always with success in getting clear answers, as press accounts of his persistent pursuit of a characteristically elusive Branch Rickey show. And Stevens also had to confront a rather forthright rebuke from one witness: sports columnist Red Smith insisted "that in these times I think there are graver matters. I think there are more pressing matters to deal with." Perhaps relieving any frustration and sting from such encounters, Stevens did have the chance to engage in a more amicable interchange with Phil Wrigley, owner of his own beloved Cubs.

The full article is available here.

USC, Institutional Control, and Analogizing the NCAA and the Securities and Exchange Commission

Lewis & Clark law professor Tung Yin has a thoughtful post on his blog, The Yin Blog, that looks into the NCAA's sanctioning of the University of Southern California and draws parallels to SEC investigations. Here's an excerpt:

As virtually all college football fans must be aware, the NCAA has dropped a 2000 lb JDAM on USC for its failure of institutional control over its sports programs. If USC does not succeed in its appeal, it is facing a 2 year ban on postseason play, the vacating of 14 victories in late 2004 and all of 2005, which includes a victory in the BCS championship game over Oklahoma, the loss of 30 scholarships over 3 years, and 4 years of probation.

The NCAA faulted USC for violations in its football, men's basketball, and women's tennis teams. Football star Reggie Bush, who won the Heisman trophy in 2004, was found to have been essentially paid -- and hence ineligible for collegiate play. Basketball player O.J. Mayo was similarly paid by outsiders. (The tennis violations had to do with impermissible long-distance calls, seemingly of much smaller scope than the Bush and Mayo violations.)

What's of interest to me is the seventh infraction in the report: "Lack of Institutional Control" . . . The crux of USC's defense is that it did know of the Bush and Mayo violations and there was no reason it should have known of them; and that the NCAA should not have relied on statements by persons of questionable credibility.

"Lack of institutional control" sounds something like "failure to supervise" in the context of SEC investigations, which is something I dealt with a bit when I was in private practice. Whether one should be required to have compliance controls in place is debatable, I suppose, but that fight has been lost, before both the NCAA and the SEC.

"Failure to supervise" typically arises when you have a rogue employee who does something bad, such as engage in violations of the securities laws. Because corporations are liable for the acts of employees within the scope of employment with (at least partial) intent to benefit the corporation, the company may find itself responsible even though it did not condone the employee's actions and in fact may have been victimized in reality. (The intent to benefit prong is interpreted pretty broadly.) The SEC might slap the corporation for inadequate supervision of the rogue employee.

The important point here is that "we didn't know the employee was doing bad stuff" is not a defense to such a charge. If anything, it aggravates the charge. About the only way you can try to defend yourself against this kind of charge is to show that you had adequate compliance controls in place, which the rogue employee somehow ingeniously circumvented.

To read the rest, click here.

SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL - SOCCER TEAM PHOTO

Here is the very latest SPAIN WORLD CUP TEAM PHOTO for all the "thirsty" image hunters that have solicitated a photo. This is the starting 11 Spanish National Football Team player before the Portugal match.

SPAIN 1 PORTUGAL 0 ...YES!!!

Excuse the bad image...FIFA is taking off most of the videos on youtube, dailymotion, sapo ...etc

Jennifer Capriati and the "Capriati Rule"

Yesterday, various media outlets reported that Jennifer Capriati was rushed to a hospitial for a possible overdose of prescription drugs.

At the age of 34, Capriati has not played professional tennis for 5+ years following shoulder surgery. However, she has yet to officially retire from the sport. Her career record is impressive. Among the numerous highlights - a gold medal in 1992, three Grand Slams titles, and a top ten world ranking at the age of 14.

Capriati's career is also tied to sports law. In 1995, the WTA Tour (the governing body for women's professional tennis worldwide) enacted a minimum age rule. The WTA Tour age eligibility rule is sometimes dubbed the "Capriati Rule" given that it was adopted shortly after Capriati burst onto the tennis scene as a prodigious 13-year-old. Numerous law review articles have been written about the legality of minimum age rules under antitrust law. However, the number of actual legal challenges has been minimal. The most prominent case, of course, was Maurice Clarett's lawsuit against the NFL. In tennis, Mirjana Lucic filed a 1997 lawsuit in Australia, but did not find any success. In 1999, American teenager Monique Viele threatened to file an antitrust suit against the WTA Tour, but never made good on her threats.

In my research on the issue, I have generally found such age-based policies to pass antitrust muster. As such, I am not surprised by the dearth of actual litigation on the issue. However, I remain curious about the effects such policies have on the careers of players subject to the rule's requirements. Over the course of the past two years I undertook a research line that tests the impact of minimum age rules in various sports empirically. Using the tools of econometrics, I investigated the impact of such rules. Dan Stone and I recently finished the first stand-alone paper to come from this research line and are presenting our findings at the Western Economic Association's annual conference tomorrow. We look forward to receiving feedback from other researchers.

Next up is applying similar research methods to the NBA and building on Mike McCann's work. I recently finished compiling a data set that includes every first and second round NBA draft pick since 1975. In the case of women's tennis, we found the 1995 age rule to have very little impact on the labor market outcomes of players subject to the rule. I have yet to run the regressions for the NBA data, but look forward to seeing if there is any evidence to disprove the null hypothesis.

STARTING 11 SPAIN PORTUGAL 2010 WORLD CUP

Source: Spanish Football Sprts /To answer the many emails from readers asking about the SPAIN WORLD CUP TEAM starting 11 against PORTUGAL tonight, the very latest from media observers following the Spanish Football Team is that Coach Del Bosque will repeat with the same SPANISH FOOTBALL TEAM PLAYERS that played against Chile.The injury worries of Xabi Alonso , Ramos & too a lesser extent Torres

SPAIN WORLD CUP TEAM STARTING 11 AGAINST PORTUGAL | FIFA WORLD CUP 2010

Source: Spanish Football Sprts Blog /Hi everyone, the below image is XABI ALONSO training tonight with his team-mates which tells us that he is "basically" over his ankle worry & injury. This should help us speculated further that he will be part of the SPANISH FOOTBALL TEAM STARTING 11 AGAINST PORTUGAL for tomorrows "knock out" game.In fact, media observers go as far as to name the following

REAL MADRID | ANGEL DI MARIA SIGNS FOR 6 YEARS

Spanish sports daily “AS” makes the announcement: Argentine International & BENFICA player ANGEL DI MARIA has signed for REAL MADRID for the next six years. The 22 year old winger has been transferred after Benfica agreed to a 25M€ offer by Real Madrid for the player to incorporate himself as of next season. The announcement has been made public on the Real Madrid website this afternoon around

Being Rasheed Wallace: Would you Walk Away from $12 Million Guaranteed?

In the wake of the Lakers defeating the Celtics in the NBA finals, Celtics center/power forward Rasheed Wallace surprisingly retired. Though he played in 79 of the 82 regular season games and all of the Celtics' playoff games, the 35-year-old Wallace has battled an assortment of injuries in recent years, including foot and ankle problems.

So he decided to call it a career.

In doing so, Wallace will walk away from more than $12 million in guaranteed salary over the next two years [note: there is a possibility, though not a certainty, that the Celtics will give Wallace a portion of the salary in a buyout]. With his playing career over, it seems unlikely he'll ever come to close to earning that kind of salary doing anything else.

Why would somebody walk away from so much money when there's probably no source of income that will ever come close to being a substitute? Hasn't Wallace seen the startling research by Sports Illustrated's Pablo Torre showing that "Within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke"?

To be sure, Wallace could have bucked saving/spending trends of not only pro athletes but Americans in general. As has been reported for many years, we are really, really bad at saving money, but maybe Wallace proved to be an exception. It's also certainly possible that Wallace's agent, Bill Strickland (who's about to lose his 3 or 4% commission on the $12 million), and financial advisers gave him good advice during the 14 years he played and, according to Basketball Reference, earned $150 million in NBA salary.

Still, I find it surprising, and on some level admirable, that someone would walk away from such a huge amount of guaranteed salary. That's especially the case when you think about how easy it would have been for Wallace to get the money. He could have simply gone through the motions for a couple of years or lingered on the injured reserve while collecting paychecks that exceed what most earn in a year (NBA players are paid twice a month and only during the season).

Not sure how many people in Wallace's position would do the same thing, but I can't imagine it's a high percentage. I guess this shows that it's not always about the money.

Update: as Brian mentions in the comment section, former big league reliever Keith Foulke did a similar thing a few years ago, but it didn't work out so well, at least not money-wise. In January 2007, a then 34-year-old Foulke passed a physical with the Cleveland Indians and signed a guaranteed 1-year, $5 million contract with the team. A few weeks later, however, he decided to retire because of recurring elbow problems, thereby walking away from the $5 million. He would never pitch for the Indians. But a year later, Foulke changed his mind, unretired, and signed a 1-year, $700,000 contract with the Oakland A's. That was his last big league contract. Hopefully Wallace isn't making the same mistake here.

SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM STARTING 11 AGAINST PORTUGAL | REIGNING UNKNOWNS

Source: Sp Ftball Sprts /The prognostics & speculations concerning what will be the SPANISH FOOTBALL TEAM STARTING 11 LINE UP against PORTUGAL is difficult to say as the teams advance in the WORLD CUP. Both sides are training behind closed doors & are keeping their cards very close to their chest. Media observers following the SPAIN WORLD CUP TEAM are speculating more than giving any reliable

More Antitrust and the BCS

Following up on my post from last week, the Idaho Statesmen features an interesting article today regarding a potential antitrust lawsuit against the Bowl Championship Series. The article notes that Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff intends to continue his pursuit of an antitrust case against the BCS, despite Utah's recent admission into the Pac-10. The article reports that AG Shurtleff will be meeting with the U.S. Department of Justice in mid-July to discuss the possibility of the DOJ challenging the BCS under federal antitrust law, with a decision from the DOJ expected this fall.

The article also includes an interesting discussion regarding the effect that a possible appearance by Boise State in this season's BCS National Championship Game would have on a potential antitrust suit against the BCS. While other strong antitrust claims against the BCS would continue to exist, having a university from a non-BCS conference appear in the national title game would nevertheless weaken such a case, enabling the BCS to argue that its system is truly open to all Football Bowl Subdivision universities, regardless of conference affiliation. This is one of the reasons why I believe that claims based on price-fixing and unequal revenue distribution provide a stronger basis for an antitrust challenge to the BCS, shifting the focus of the case from one of access to the financial disparities inherent in the current system.

The Idaho Statesmen article is available here. For more on potential antitrust claims against the BCS, see my article Antitrust & The Bowl Championship Series.

FC BARCELONA TRANSFER GOSSIP 2010 | OZIL ROBINHO MASCHERANO?

SPANISH FOOTBALL Clubs keeps working away for next season while the World Cup takes all the spotlight. After surfing the web & checking the Spanish Sports press I pick out these news pieces that although enter the rumour category they should´nt surprise anyone. The South African World Cup is afterall the biggest showcase of “Football Product” & German 21 year old International midfielder OZIL has

ATHLETIC DE BILBAO WINS 2010 JUNIOR SPANISH CUP TITLE

ATHLETIC DE BILBAO defeated REAL MADRID 0 – 2 to take the 2010 JUNIOR SPANISH CUP TITLE after waiting 18 years for it. Real Madrid were favourites before the match with their team full of of “young stars” but last years finalists (lost to Sevilla FC) had an obsession with winning this title. PEÑA & VILLAR were the scorers for Bilbao a helped finally to give them the prized “Silverware” to place

U-17 FEMALE SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM WINS 2010 EUROPEAN TITLE

The South African World Cup & the SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM are taking the spotlight in the area of Spanish Football. However, there an is equally important & great news to announce from the FEMALE SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM, specifically at the U-17 level, whom have proclaimed themselves the 2010 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONS.SPAIN defeated IRELAND in the penalty shoot-out of the Final finishing 0-0 after

Deutscher Tennis Bund vs. ATP World Tour

The first post-American Needle sports-related case was released by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit today. The case is Deutscher Tennis Bund, et al vs. ATP World Tour, et al, No. 08-4123. As of 6:oo PM PDT, the Third Circuit had yet to make the decision available on its website, but I will update this post as soon as it is available. In the interim, I have a copy that I can email to anyone as an attachment upon request. UPDATE - With a hat tip to Nathaniel Grow, the decision can now be found here.


Sports Illustrated's Jon Wertheim and I are collaborating on a law review article about the case (working draft will be posted on SSRN soon) and have been following its developments for the past several years. The case won't receive much attention vis-a-vis the Supreme Court's recent American Needle decision, but is important for a number of reasons. Most notably, it represents the most exhaustive discussion of the authority of an individual sport league to make rules, set schedules, determine player eligibility, etc.


The impetus for the case was the ATP's 2007 move to re-work its tournament calendar. Plaintiff's tournament was demoted as part of the schedule change. Rather than accept its new status as a lower tier tournament, Deutscher Tennis Bund filed suit alleging that the ATP and several individually-named members of the board of directors violated Section 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act (allegations also included breach of fiduciary duty claims against the board members). After extensive discovery, the case went to trial in Delaware. At trial, both parties used expert witnesses. The District Court judge ruled for the ATP as a matter of law in connection with some of the plaintiff's claims. A jury verdict was returned for the ATP on the remaining claims.


Some observations and links about the 45 page Third Circuit decision are below:


1. Oral argument was revealing. Audio is available here (scroll down to #08-4123). Rob MacGill of Barnes & Thornburg argued on behalf of plaintiff. Brad Ruskin of Proskauer Rose represented the ATP during oral arguments. One of the three judges (I can't tell which one on audio) asked Brad Ruskin if the yet-to-be decided American Needle decision would be controlling. Listen to his insightful reply.


2. The ATP's succinct press release is here.


3. Judge Scirica wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel in favor of the ATP. He opened by making an important distinction that is probably only known by fairly hard-core tennis fans - the ATP does not control the four Grand Slam tournaments (Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and the US Open). Such tournaments (as well as the Davis Cup and minor league "Futures" tournaments) are under the International Tennis Federation's (ITF) jurisdiction. In contrast, the ATP oversees all remaining elite-level professional men's tournaments. Examples include the big US tournaments every year in Indian Wells, Key Biscayne, and Cincy as well as smaller US-based tournaments such as Atlanta, San Jose, and Washington, DC.


4. Judge Scirica's opinion followed a fairly standard analytical framework. Seminal cases such as Standard Oil, Continental TV, Dagher, and Nat'l Soc. Prof. Eng. were all cited. This part of the opinion reminded me of American Needle.


5. Today's opinion, in contrast to American Needle, cited many more sports-related cases (many in footnotes). The most treatment was devoted to the Seventh Circuit's Chicago Bulls decision and Justice Stevens's SCOTUS NCAA vs. University of Oklahoma opinion from 1984. Of course, American Needle was also cited a number of times. With that said, Deutscher Tennis Bund vs. ATP World Tour was by no means a simple exercise of applying American Needle to the facts of the case.


6. Citing NCAA vs. Univ. of Oklahoma, Judge Scirica stated: "the per se rule does not apply for a tennis tour, like other sports leagues, where 'horizontal restraints on competition are essential if the product is to be available at all.'"


7. Judge Scirica dismissed the possibility of "quick look" treatment too. In sum, upon defendant's showing of procompetitive benefits stemming from the challenged conduct, the "quick look" possibility is "extinguished."


8. The most pointed analysis of American Needle was on pages 28 (for a discussion of the single entity issue) and 29 (reiterating that "substance, not form" controls the antitrust inquiry). There was nothing that extended, distinguished, or refuted American Needle.


9. At the end of Footnote 15, the judge concluded: "the District Court correctly instructed the jury to evaluate the alleged restraints under the full rule of reason." The jury did this, and found in favor of the ATP. On appeal, the Third Circuit found the plaintiff's failure to prove a relevant market for professional tennis player services fatal. Antitrust plaintiffs challenging aspects of sport industry governance would be well-served to read this footnote.


10. In addition to suing the ATP, the plaintiffs also sued a number of directors on the ATP's board. Judge Scirica concluded the decision with a lengthy discussion of the business judgment rule and found that defendant board members did not breach their fiduciary duty to plaintiffs.


Today's tennis case differs markedly from American Needle. The former resulted in a jury verdict that was validated on appeal. The latter is now on remand, with an upcoming trial on the merits if the parties don't settle. Tennis also differs from football. I was surprised the Deutscher Tennis Bund decision didn't spend more time highlighting the differences. In our upcoming article, Jon and I spend a substantial amount of time making the argument that such differences are important...and in some cases should be dispositive.


I will post more moving forward. With the case being released on a Friday during Wimbledon (see Howard Wasserman's post below about the longest match in the history of professional tennis), most mainstream news outlets probably won't write about the case until next week. When such articles do appear, I will link to them in an update.

UPDATE - Randall Chase of the Associated Press wrote a piece for USA Today that includes some quotes from the attorneys involved.

SPAIN FOOTBALL WORLD CUP TEAM 2010 PHOTO

Source: Sp Ftball Sprts /This is the very latest SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM PHOTO taken just before the start of the Chile Group H game. This hopefully quenches the readers demand for the Spanish World Cup Team photo.

SPAIN WORLD CUP TEAM DEFEATS CHILE 1 - 2 TO FINISH TOP OF GROUP H

Source: Spanish Football Sports Blog /The objective has been achieved. SPAIN has defeated CHILE 1 -2 & finishes in 1ºst position of Group H, along with Chile, to go onto meet Portugal in the from now onwards "knock-out" stages. It wasn´t easy at all with Spain suffering from nerves from the start that were partially settled with the 1ºst goal by DAVID VILLA in the 24th min with a fantastic 30mt "

SPAIN STARTING 11 LINE UP AGAINST CHILE | WORLD CUP 2010

Source: Sp Ftball Sports /The SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM has a do or "go home" match tonight against Chile to shut proceeding in Group H. In the last hours veteran defender Capdevila has gained strenght in speculations that he will retain his left back position over Arbeloa.This is the only area of doubt, if one defender or the other, as Coach Vicente Del Bosque has all his players fully fit

Incredible Heavy Kettlebell Lifting

Another video from MrRegere

Check this shit out!

Total weight 102kg kettlebell lift for reps!!

Not kettlebell press or jerk but more of a side jerk, still a tremendous weight to be lifting. This guy must have elbows of steel

DAVID SILVA AGREES TO MANCHESTER CITY OFFER?

The news from insiders, the last couple of weeks, was that VALENCIA CF was negotiating with an overseas Club & that Spanish International midfielder DAVID SILVA was rejecting succulent overseas offers because he wished to stay in Spain. However, the “surprise” news this afternoon is that according to Spanish radio “Onda Cero” - & picked up by local press – David Silva has come to an agreement

SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM LINE UP AGAINST CHILE | INIESTA FIT ARBELOA TO REPLACE CAPDEVILA

Source : Sp Ftball Sprts /Surfed the Spanish press & checked all the comments from the media observers down South Africa following the SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM & the news is that everyone is fit except SERGIO RAMOS. The defender received a heavy knock in the ribs against Switzerland & played with pain – killers against Honduras. A pre-match concern to keep following closely as apparently he

Long tennis matches and case-based rulemaking

My interest in sports law always has been about sports-as-law; that is, what can sports tell us about law, legal rules, and legal systems. The latest example is the epic early-round match at Wimbledon between American John Isner (who at 6'9" also has the distinction of being the tallest player around) and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut. After ten hours of play, the two are tied 59-59 in the fifth set (which itself has lasted more than seven hours). Play was suspended because of darkness and will resume tomorrow. [Update: They played for about another hour today, with Isner finally prevailing 70-68, which means that just today's portion of the match was an extended no-tiebreak set]

Wimbledon (like the French and Australian Opens, but unlike the U.S. Open) does not allow for fifth-set tiebreakers, so the set continues until someone wins two straight games (with a break of service). This rule has provided some great historical moments--the 8-6 fifth set between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe in the 1980 Men's Finals or the 16-14 fifth set between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick in last year's Final. But it also creates ridiculous moments such as this one. Neither player is close to breaking the other's serve (Isner has 98 aces, Mahut 95), so no one is close to winning two straight games. Actually, this match may highlight why many believe grass tennis is obsolete, at least for men--serves are just too overwhelming and breaks are extremely rare. Both players actually are playing well--lots of winners, few unforced errors. But that is because their serves are so dominant that service points tend to be short, with that dominance exaggerated by the speedy grass surface.

So here is my rule-based quesion: How likely is it that Wimbledon will move to a final-set tiebreaker in the wake of this match? And should the change be made? This illustrates the problem of case-based rulemaking, which is the norm in U.S. (and probably most) legal cultures.

Legal rules generally are made within a particular factual setting. This is obvious where courts make rules (common law or constitutional) in the course of resolving an actual case or controversy. But it also is true for legislative bodies making prospective rules of general applicability, because they usually act with a particular event, case, or situation in mind. The problem with case-based decisionmaking (as Fred Schauer and Richard Zeckhauser argue) is that the case which leads to the rule often is an outlier, an extreme, unusual, unrepresentative case; thus the legal rule that results, enacted in response to those unique outlier facts, may not be the optimal rule for the ordinary situation. This is particularly true for legislative rulemaking, because legislators tend to act, often too quickly and often in something of a moral panic, in response to, and to take care of, the latest high-interest, notorious story that captures media and public attention, even if that story is unusual and far from any norm, and even if the new rule has unintended consequences.

So what should the powers that be at Wimbledon do? Obviously, the Isner-Mahut match (or anything even close) is unprecedented. Should they change the rules to prevent something like it from happening again, since the chances of that have to be slim? We arguably don't need the rule change to keep this case from arising again; a match such as this is so unusual that it never will happen again on its own. So should a rulemaker make a change to prevent a highly unlikely repeat of this unrepresentative match, at the (unintended) loss of future memorable matches (a la Borg-McEnroe) that do not devolve into the current absurdity?

Note that this does not necessarily speak to the merits of the switch to a fifth-set tiebreaker; maybe that is the appropriate rule (certainly the U.S. Open folks believe it to be), especially in light of the modern grass game. But case-based rulemaking is not only problematic because it may produce the wrong rule, but also because it may produce the right rule for the wrong reasons. In other words, Wimbledon officials must be conscious of all the policy issues and implications in deciding whether a final-set tiebreaker is the "best" rule as a whole. The arguments for change must be more than preventing a notorious-but-unlikely case such as Isner-Mahut from happening again. If that is all they have--if there are not other good reasons for adopting a new rule--they should not do it.

SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM PHOTO 2010 | FIFA WORLD CUP

Source: Sp Ftball Sports Blog /My email is almost collapsed with requests from Spanish Football Sports Blog readers requesting an image or directly the SPAIN SOCCER TEAM PHOTO 2010. I actually placed the very latest SPAIN WORLD CUP 2010 TEAM PHOTO below ( against Honduras ) yesterday but the search engine perhaps isn´t going straight to the post when you type your keywords. Because your requests

Reggie Bush and the IRS

Paul Caron, who always has his eye out of a sports/tax link, reports on efforts by the IRS and California to recover back taxes on the benefits Reggie Bush received from an agent while at USC. The NCAA's infraction report found that Bush received about $300, 000 and may owe (with interest and penalties) as much as $ 200,000.

SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM LINE UP AGAINST CHILE | DAVID VILLA OFF THE HOOK & WILL BE AVAILABLE WITH INIESTA

Source: Sp Ftball Sprts Blog /Great news for the SPANISH NATIONAL TEAM & the prognostics for the STARTING LINE UP against Chile next Friday in the do or die game for SPAIN in Group H. The “FIFA Disciplinary Committee” has decided not to sanction Spanish International forward DAVID VILLA after TV cameras caught the Spaniard "fending off" with his hand Honduras defender Emilio Izaguirre who then

SPANISH BASKETBALL | LIST HANDED IN FOR 2010 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

Spanish National Basketball Selector & Coach SERGIO SCARIOLO has handed in his list of 15 Spanish players to make up the Spanish Basketball Squad. The 2010 BASKETBALL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS will be held this year in Turkey with a starting date of the 28th of August until 12th of Septembre. The big name missing from the current European Champions list is LA LAKER Spanish star poivot PAU GASOL who has

FC BARCELONA TRANSFER NEWS 2010 | TOURE TO MANCHESTER CITY | JUAN MATA PREFERRED OVER ROBINHO

Source: Sp Ftball Sprts Blog /FC BARCELONA is looking for a class “winger” to replace Thierry Henry & accompany new signing David Villa in their forward line next season. Two names had been circling the office tables at “Camp Barça”: 26 year old Brazilian International & Manchester City player ROBINHO & 22 year old Valencia CF & Spanish International JUAN MATA.According to Barcelona radio

It's not about the grades

The Times has a story today on the trend in law schools to change their grading systems to inflate student GPAs, often retroactively, and make students more marketable. At FIU, we just changed our system (although not retroactively) by eliminating the mean and reworking the distribution.

But grades aside, the end of the story captures what is really important in getting a job:

James Wagner, the hiring partner at the 29-lawyer Boston firm Conn Kavanaugh Rosenthal Peisch & Ford, said he hadn’t noticed any grade inflation in the last couple of years. But he has noticed something else new from applicants.

“About a third to half of the résumés I’ve been getting now profess a love of the Red Sox,” he chuckles, wondering if the students had been coached by their schools.

“But I’ll bet that if you compared résumés for those same candidates,” he says, “when they apply to New York firms they love the Yankees, and for Chicago firms, it’s the Cubs.”

WORLD CUP 2010 | SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM STATISTICS | GOAL SCORING INEFFECTIVENESS

Source: Sp Ftball Sprts /A few statistics so far from the 2010 WORLD CUP & on the SPANISH WORLD CUP TEAM performance. According to figures published by local Spanish Sports paper "Marca", the SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM is the most attacking & play making team up till now. One would think looking at the numbers that SPAIN would be cruising comfortably if you had not seen any game so far in the

NBA Draft: Point Guard Preview

The point guard class of the 2010 NBA Draft class is not super deepn, but it is strong at the top. The top pick in the draft will be John Wall, a PG from Kentucky, one of the best prospects to enter the draft from the college game in a while.

Wall only played one season at Kentucky, but he mad the most of it. He is a dynamic athlete, and could eventually be the most athletic PG in the NBA at 6'4''. He is not a great shooter yet, but he has all of the other skills necessary to be a great PG in the Association. He is unselfish with the ball, extremely quick (he is lethal in transition, and can get to the rim almost any time he wants), and he steps up his game in big moments. He hit the game-winner in his first collegiate game. As a hyped freshman, he was among the nation's leaders in assists on a 3-loss team that was very young. He will be a great player, and will be excellent from day one.

The next best PG in the draft might be one of Wall's teammates, Eric Bledsoe. Even though he was largely overshadowed by Wall, pro scouts love his potential, and he is the only other true PG that has a chance to be drafted in the lottery. He can play on the ball or off the ball, has a good handle and jump shot, and should be a solid contributor in the NBA. He is not as ready as Wall to contribute in the NBA, but he should be a solid pro.

Terrico White out of Mississippi is not a true PG, but he should be able to play the position in the pros, kind of like Tyreke Evans (though he doesn't have that type of talent). He is very athletic, and can score in a variety of ways. He will be a solid player if he gets to go to a fast paced club.He can fill it up and make plays above the rim, which is vital for success as an athletic guard in the NBA. He has a chance to get drafted in the first round.

The PG position is not very deep at all, as likely only one point guard will get drafted in the lottery, and there will be very few true point guards in the draft. However it is strong at the top, as John Wall will be the top pick and the best player of this class, representing the point guard position well.

SPAIN WORLD CUP 2010 TEAM PHOTO

Source: Sp Ftbll Sprts /Here is the very latest SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL WORLD CUP 2010 PHOTO taken before the start of the Honduras Group H match which SPAIN won 2-0. Hopefully this will quench the "thirst" of photos of the Spanish National Football Team that are being requested via the SFS Blog email from fans around the World.

SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM | SPAIN 2 HONDURAS 0 | WORLD CUP 2010 GROUP H | VIDEO DAVID VILLA GOALS

Source: Spanish Football Sports Blog /The objective was achieved, SPAIN won 2-0 HONDURAS in their second Group H match, which the SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM needed to win at all costs to avoid going home prematurely. The other objective was to score goals in order to avoid a possible 3 team table draw on points within the Group & ensure the Spanish classification via a greater goal figure.

Conference Expansion and the BCS

Although the conference expansion frenzy has seemingly settled down for the time being (see earlier posts on the subject here and here), one of the questions that remains is what impact, if any, the minor reshuffling will have on the Bowl Championship Series. Specifically, following Utah's recent decision to join the Pac-10, the question arises of whether two of the most strident critics of the BCS, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, will remain as interested in pursing antitrust claims against the BCS.

Both Attorney General Shurtleff and Senator Hatch have previously accused the BCS of violating federal antitrust law by granting preferential treatment to universities in the traditionally stronger "BCS Conferences," at the expense of teams from the historically less competitive "non-BCS Conferences." Both men became critical of the BCS following perceived snubs over the years to their home state schools, the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.

For his part, Senator Hatch has stated that he will continue his campaign against the BCS despite Utah's recent admittance into a BCS Conference. Indeed, Senator Hatch - a BYU alumnus - has a strong basis to argue that the BCS continues to violate antitrust law.

In a new paper, Antitrust & The Bowl Championship Series, I argue that the BCS remains quite vulnerable to attack under federal antitrust law. In particular, although recent modifications to the BCS have increased the access for non-BCS Conference teams, the BCS can still be challenged on several grounds.

First, I assert that the BCS can be attacked as an illicit group boycott, insofar as it distributes revenue unequally and without justification, to the detriment of universities in the non-BCS Conferences. For example, following the 2009-10 season, the BCS distributed at least $18 million in revenues to each of the six BCS Conferences, while the five non-BCS Conferences received a total of only $24 million, despite two non-BCS schools (Boise State and TCU) having been selected to participate in BCS bowl games. Thus, despite increased access to BCS games for the non-BCS schools, the non-BCS Conferences still face significant differential treatment with respect to the financial payouts accompanying an appearance in a BCS bowl game.

Second, and perhaps more significantly, the BCS can also be attacked as an illegal price fixing scheme, due to the fact that it enables formerly independent, competing entities (the participating BCS Conferences and bowl games) to collectively determine the amount of revenue to be distributed to BCS participants.

Given this continued antitrust vulnerability, combined with the fact that Senator Hatch seems intent to continue pushing for reform, and it appears that the legality of the BCS under federal antitrust law is an issue that will not be going away anytime soon.

DRI Panel: Licenses, Monopolies and the NFL: An Examination of the Supreme Court's Decision in American Needle v. NFL and Its Effects in Sports,

This Thursday at 1 p.m. (central time) in Chicago, DRI (the Voice of the Defense Bar) will be hosting a panel titled Licenses, Monopolies and the NFL: An Examination of the Supreme Court's Decision in American Needle and Its Effects in Sports, IP, Antitrust and Labor Law. Tim Epstein will moderate the panel discussion, with Gabe Feldman and me as the panelists.

A webcast of the event is available. For DRI members, the webcast costs $150; for non-members, it's $180.

Here are more details:

On May 24, 2010, the Supreme Court decided 9-0 against the National Football League (NFL) in American Needle v. NFL, one of the most important legal decisions in U.S. sports.

The case stems from the NFL's decision to enter into an exclusive, long-term apparel license with Reebok and not to renew its license with American Needle. For antitrust counsel, the decision is important because the Court found that the NFL did not constitute a single entity under the Sherman Act because "the NFL teams do not possess either the unitary decision-making quality or the single aggregation of economic power characteristic of independent action." This decision also affects intellectual property counsel who need to direct clients to tread lightly with exclusive licensing deals. Labor or employment lawyers should take note of the potential effects that such decisions have on collective bargaining negotiations, notably the NFL's negotiations with its players for play beginning in 2011.

Who Should Attend

Attorneys representing product manufacturers and sports entities

Intellectual property attorneys

Antitrust counsel

Labor and employment lawyers

Any counsel with an interest in professional sports and the legal issues involved with the same

What You Will Learn

Background on the American Needle case

Licensing basics for merchandising and products, including the benefits and drawbacks for exclusive licenses

Current state of antitrust law

How the courts treat professional sports leagues

Collective bargaining basics as related to professional sports leagues

We hope you can watch our panel discussion. For more info, click here.

SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM LINE UP 11 AGAINST HONDURAS | JESUS NAVAS FERNANDO TORRES

LATEST NEWS : Confirmed Line-UpCasillas, Sergio Ramos, Puyol, Pique, Capdevila, Busquets, Xabi Alonso, Xavi, Jesus Navas, Fernando Torres & David VillaSource: Spanish Ftball Sprts /The very latest news coming out from the SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM camp at South Africa is that there will be two changes in the starting line-up that lost against Switzerland 1-0 in the opener of Group H. Spanish

MOTO GP | JORGE LORENZO & MARQUEZ WINNERS IN BRITISH MOTOGP

Spanish riders JORGE LORENZO in GP & MARQUEZ in the 125cc catagory flew the Spanish flag high this afternoon at Silverstone - British GP.JORGE LORENZO put himself ahead of the race in the first turn passing Spaniard Dani Pedrosa & never looked back. In fact, the race had its exciting "battle" for the 2º & 3º place which eventually went to Dovizioso & third to Ben Spies. Spanish rider Dani Pedrosa

Why can't MLB Teams trade draft picks?

Jimmy Golen of the Associated Press considers that question. Here are a few excerpts from Jimmy's article:

* * *

Unlike their counterparts in other major pro sports, baseball teams cannot trade draft picks or even trade players for a year after they were drafted, like the Charlotte Hornets did shortly after picking Bryant or the Colts did with Elway. The rule is supposed to keep struggling teams from frittering away their ticket out of the cellar, but concerns that it might be hurting those it's designed to help have many asking whether it's time to finally lift the ban.

* * *

But while football, basketball and hockey teams can package players and picks to land a coveted star, move up in the draft order or even compensate another team for poaching its coach, baseball limits the market to current players and prospects so losing teams can't sell off their future along with their present.

* * *

"There are a lot of positives that could come from it, and then there's some potential danger that I know traditionally Major League Baseball has been worried about. It could hurt (teams) in the long run, because they'd be tempted to help themselves now, or they wouldn't want to spend the money on the draft picks so they trade them. It's a balancing act." [quoting Red Sox GM Theo Epstein]

* * *

This topic regularly comes up on sports law panels that delve into baseball, and it did when Jimmy moderated a baseball and law panel at Harvard Law School earlier this year.

While I understand MLB's collective interest in seeing that weaker teams rebuild through the draft, it seems odd that MLB, of all leagues, would take a protective view of weaker teams when it has neither a salary cap nor a salary floor, has a wide distribution of teams' payrolls (according to CBS Sports, this season the Yankees have a $206 million payroll while the Pirates have a $36 million payroll; in the NFL, in comparison, the Raiders have a $152 million payroll while the Chiefs have an $84 million payroll according to Altius -- though note Rick Karcher's research showing that salary disparities are not necessarily meaningful for MLB teams' on-field performance), and because there is no slotting of salaries for MLB draft picks, some prospective and very talented draft picks' salary demands are too high for small market teams, so those players drop in the draft to big market, successful teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, and a few others which can meet those players' salary demands. In addition, if MLB truly wanted weaker teams to rebuild, why wouldn't it (with assent from the MLBPA) institute a global draft instead of letting non U.S./non-Canadian players become eligible to sign with any team as unrestricted free agents at age 16?

Although the current MLB-MLBPA CBA won't expire until December 11, 2011, and although there are probably more significant issues on the table than the trading of draft picks, perhaps the topic will come up when negotiations heat up in the months ahead. I suspect some MLB teams will push for a rookie wage scale similar to that used in the NBA Draft, where drafted players' salaries are slotted based on where in the draft a player is selected, though a rookie wage scale would probably be opposed vehemently by influential agents (e.g., Scott Boras) who tend to represent top MLB draft picks. Agents, of course, aren't members of a bargaining unit to a CBA, but they nevertheless tend to influence players' views. Still, whether there is the same passion for letting teams trade draft picks remains to be seen.

SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM | FERNANDO TORRES "I AM REDAY"

Source: Sp Ftball Sprts Blog /After the SPAIN was “surprisingly” defeated 0 – 1 in their opening Group H match by Switzerland the “pandora box” of passionate Football observers was opened which released various “opinions” of the why & how to solve things. Ex-Spanish National Team Coach Luis Aragones was one of the first "ghosts" from the past to voice his opinion, the Spanish media was unleashed

REAL MADRID TRANSFER RUMOURS | SCHWEINSTEIGER ATERNATIVE FOR GERRARD DI ROSSI?

Source : Spanish Football Sprts Blog /The World Cup is a showcase, this cannot be denied, as players revalue themselves with a couple of good performances. Todays front cover of Spanish Sports daily “AS” splashes the news that REAL MADRID has noted the name of 25 year old German International midfielder SCHWEINSTEIGER as an alternative if the Spanish Club encounters problems attempting to sign

Call for Papers for Fourth Annual Scholarly Colloquium on Intercollegiate Athletics

Our friend Matt Mitten, who's a law professor at Marquette University Law School and director of the National Sports Law Institute, passes along this call for papers for the NCAA annual convention:

A Call For Papers

“Social Justice in Intercollegiate Sport:
A Critical Examination of Racialized, Gendered and Disabled Bodies”

The Fourth Annual Scholarly Colloquium on Intercollegiate Athletics
In Conjunction with the NCAA Annual Convention
January 12-13, 2011
San Antonio, Texas

The fourth annual Scholarly Colloquium on Intercollegiate Athletics will be held on January 12-13, 2011 in conjunction with the NCAA Annual Convention in San Antonio, Texas. The theme for this year’s colloquium is “Social Justice in Intercollegiate Sport: A Critical Examination of Racialized, Gendered, and Disabled Bodies.” The conference will feature keynote speakers, two formal reactions to each keynote, and sessions of refereed papers.

Keynote speakers include: Harry Edwards [Professor Emeritus of Sociology, UC Berkeley], Susan Cahn [Professor of History, SUNY Buffalo], Ted Fay, [Professor of Sport Management, Center for Sport in Society, SUNY-Cortland], Allen Sack [Professor, Institute for Sports Management, University of New Haven].

Other invited speakers include: Pat Griffin [Professor Emerita in Social Justice Education, UMass Amherst], Louis Harrison [Professor, College of Education, UTexas Austin], Albert Mosley [Professor of Philosophy, Smith College], Ellen Staurowsky [Professor of Sport Management & Media, Ithaca College], Terry Todd [Lecturer, College of Education, UTexas Austin], David Wiggins [Professor & Director, School of Recreation, Health & Tourism, George Mason University].

Papers for the refereed papers session should deal closely with issues related to the conference theme of “Social Justice in Intercollegiate Sport.” They may relate to sport in general or to intercollegiate athletics specifically, as long as they are clearly connected to the conference theme of “Social Justice in Intercollegiate Sports.” Papers may highlight scholarship from the sciences, social sciences, economics, humanities, or any number of professional fields that are either directly or indirectly related to intercollegiate athletics. To be considered for the refereed paper sessions, authors most submit a 500-600 word abstract of the proposed paper via e-mail to David Wiggins, dwiggin1@gmu.edu, and copy the abstract submission to Ketra Armstrong, karmstr2@csulb.edu.

The deadline for proposal submission is October 1, 2010. Individuals will be notified of the results of the review process in early November 2010.

SPANISH FOOTBALL | HERCULES C.F JOINS REAL SOCIEDAD & LEVENTE IN SPANISH 1º DIVISION PROMOTION 2010-2011

HERCULES C.F, Football team from the Spanish city of Alicante defeated REAL UNION 0-2 in their last game of the SPANISH 2º DIVISION to secure the 2º place on the classification table & get promoted to the SPANISH 1º DIVISION LEAGUE – LA LIGA – for season 2010 -2011. Their win keeps out REAL BETIS who defeated 4-0 Levante & finished the season with 71 points, the same as the promoted teams Levente

SPANISH WORLD CUP TEAM LINE UP AGAINST HONDURAS | STAYING TRUE TO PLAYING STYLE & PHILOSOPHY

Source: Spanish Football Sprts Blog /The latest news from the SPAIN NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM is that Coach Vicente De Bosque has commented that he believes 100% in the playing style of the SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM , that Spain will continue with its playing "Touch Football" philosophy & believes wholeheartedly in the starting 11 that played the opening game of Group H against Switzerland were

What Tiger Woods' Loss of Endorsement Income Means to his Agents

CNBC's Darren Rovell has a terrific piece looking at what Tiger's loss of endorsement deals has cost his agency, IMG. Unlike commissions on contracts between athletes and teams, which normally carry a 2 to 4% commission, commissions on endorsement deals normally run in the range of 15 to 20 %. Here's an excerpt of Darren's piece:

Tiger Woods' loss of endorsement income cost his management company IMG $4.6 million in fees, according to a confidential document reviewed by CNBC.

The document provides the most comprehensive financial look into the powerful, but private, sports management company in its 50-year history.

IMG, like other agencies, charges its clients between 15 and 20 percent on endorsement deals it secures, so if it lost $4.6 million on Tiger's endorsements, it would mean the golfer himself lost in between $23 million and $30 million in deals last year.

To read the rest, click here.

SPAIN TEAM LINE UP AGAINST HONDURAS | THE BASE INTACT WITH POSSIBLE "FINE TUNING"

Source: Spanish Football Sprts Blog /The SPANISH NATIONAL TEAM is back at its HQ & training to meet next Monday Honduras in their 2º game of Group H. This match has become a FINAL as a loss here will virtually condemn the SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM to arrive back home before expected & craete the biggest upset of the 2010 World Cup. In fact SPAIN has to score plenty of goals because there is

SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM | WORLD CUP 2010 | THE "TROLLS" APPEAR FOR THEIR FEAST DAY

Source : Sp Ftball Sprts Blog /It is customary that when an event goes against the expected, the “TROLLS” see their chance to come out from under their rock & grab the limelight that they so dearly miss. SPAIN lost yesterday 1-0 against Switzerland in their opening Group H game that went against all prognostics & created the first “shock-wave” of this FIFA World Cup 2010.Firstly, congratulations

WORLD CUP 2010 GROUP H RESULT | SPAIN 0 SWIZERLAND 1 | FIRST SHOCKWAVE FROM SOUTH AFRICA | VIDEO GOAL

Source: Sp Ftball Sprts Blog /The winning goal from GELSON in the 52nd min that finally gave SWITZERLAND the 1-0 victory over SPAIN & consequently produce the first real shockwave in this 2010 FIFA WORLD CUP. Here is the VIDEO of the Switzerland goal that came after a series of unlucky rebounds that allowed a "smart" Gelson to put his boot in first for glory:The SPANISH WORLD CUP TEAM "knockers"

SPAIN STARTING 11 WORD CUP TEAM AGAINST SWITZERLAND | A MATTER OF STATE - ALMOST!

LATEST NEWS - ANDRES INIESTA in starting Line -up Source : Spanish Football Sprts Blog /It’s the million dollar question: which SPANISH FOOTBALL PLAYERS are the candidates to take the place of FC Barcelona midfielder ANDRES INIESTA in the SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM STARTING LINE UP against Switzerland in the Group H opening game? Seems like a question of state as Spain builds up internally with

ATLETICO DE MADRID 2010 - 2011 PLAN | ROD FANNI RIGHT BACK LUIS FELIPE LEFT BACK PLUS A MIDFIELDER

Original Source: Spanish Football Sprts /Straight from the horses mouth, metaphorically speaking, as ATLETICO DE MADRID President Enrique Cerezo has said publicly that he thinks that signing of 28 year old French defender ROD FANNI of STADE RENNES is close. The Spanish Club President said that Atletico is currently negotiating with the French Club & things are moving forward but he could not tell

120 kg Barbell Clean and Press

120 kg Barbell Clean and Press

I have been working almost exclusively with heavy kettlebells recently, you may have seen my exploits with stacked kettlebell pressing

I have always found a great carry over from kettlebells to barbell training.

I haven't touched barbell work for a while (despite wanting to), as I am very busy at work I've been doing what I can. When more time becomes available I'll be hitting the barbells and aiming for a strongman competition at the end of August.

Last nights session consisted of kettlebell snatches, barbell clean and press finished of with grip work using inch dumbbells, blobs and Orbigrip

Here's my video of my top single on the barbell clean and press




Take Your Fitness To Another Level with the Gymboss Interval Timer

SPAIN WORLD CUP TEAM | 2010 | TWO HYPOTHETICAL SPAIN STARTING TEAM LINE-UPS

Source : Spanish Football Sports Blog /Here is a simple video of the SPAIN NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM PLAYERS getting on a bus direction city of Durban where tomorrow they kick-off their Group H match against Switzerland. Last news from the SPAIN PLAYERS is that they are anxious to get going as naturally the tension is mounting inside to begin playing some Football.The other great news is that ANDRES

Ray Allen and Whether Shots Hitting the Rim Should be Reviewed by Instant Replay

Watching the Celtics-Lakers game last night, the topic of instant replay came up. Some background: NBA referees can use instant replay in certain situations, as detailed here:

The NBA instituted instant replay before the start of the 2002-03 season, originally to review period-ending baskets and fouls, and a number of triggers have since been added.

Replay is used for officials to confirm a flagrant foul warranted an ejection, or that players left the bench during an altercation. Referees can now go to the monitor to see if shots or fouls came beyond the 3-point arc, whether they beat the shot clock, or if there was a clock malfunction.

The system was expanded this season to out of bounds possessions in the 2 minutes of regulation or overtime.

Replay wasn't available for a crucial play last night. With 1:05 left to play and the Celtics up 87-82, Ray Allen shot what appeared to be an air ball as the shot clock was about to expire. After Celtics' center Kendrick Perkins grabbed the rebound, the whistle was blown and it looked like the Lakers -- who seemed to have the momentum at that point -- would get the ball back.

Instead, the refs huddled together and determined, without instant replay but with plenty of advocacy from the Celtics and Lakers' respective benches and perhaps the Boston crowd, that the ball actually glanced the rim. The Celtics got the ball back with a fresh 24 seconds on the shot clock and would go on to win the game.

While it's not clear what would have happened had the Lakers gotten the ball back, there seems to be a real possibility that they would have won the game. Kobe was completely dominant in the second half, despite pretty tight defense by Tony Allen, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, and anyone else the Celtics tried in vain to stop him. From the Lakers' perspective, going back to LA with a 3-2 advantage in the series would seem completely different from going back down 2-3. The call on whether the ball hit the rim, in other words, may have changed the outcome of the series.

One of the difficulties of adopting instant replay is figuring out when it should be used and when it shouldn't, and how to justify the lines of demarcation. If instant replay is allowable for determining whether someone got a shot off before the 24 second clock expired -- which it is under NBA rules -- why isn't it okay to use it to see if a ball hit the rim?

Grip Training for Baseball

Jedd Johnson's Forearm Training for Baseball

Generally speaking this blog is about kettlebell training for sports and my own kettlebell training exploits for the sports I do.

However, I have something for you to check out.......

Ultimate Forearm training for Baseball

I've read this product right through and had to laugh! - There's so much great information in here it's crackers!

Jedd always seems to over deliver (in a good way), with the products he offers and the fact that he always thinks up some stuff that was so obvious but ground breakingly clever at the same time, you wish you'd thought of it yourself.

Now this Ebook is around 400 pages jam packed with grip training exercises, routines and ideas that are just brilliant and although it was essentially created for Baseball players, I would still recommend this to anyone who wants to strengthen their grip for sports or just to have strong mitts!

In fact it coulkd quite possibly be called Ultimate Grip Training Bible

Check it out here

SPANISH FOOTBALL SPORTS BLOG PASSES 1,000,000 VISITORS

SPANISH FOOTBALL SPORTS BLOGreaches 1,000,000 unique online site visitorsReaders from all around the World...USA, England, Europe, India, Middle-East, Australia, Africa, Far-East Asia, Russia, China.... 1,000,000 times THANK YOU for being loyal, pro-active, generous, constructive, funny, critical & importantly, for being the Global & Spanish Football Sports Fan that you are.Spanish Football

SPAIN LINE UP FOR WORLD CUP 2010 | WILL OR WILL NOT ANDRES INIESTA PLAY IN THE GROUP H STARTER?

The SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM travels to the city of Durban to face its opening Group H WORLD CUP 2010 game against Switzerland this Wednesday at 16.00 (S.A time). The big unknown is if midfielder ANDRES INIESTA will make the final list of SPAIN PLAYERS to start in the already mentioned match. The player himself said to Spanish TV that he is fine & ready to play, however National Coach

FC BARCELONA | SANDRO ROSELL NEW PRESIDENT

As predicated & expected, candidate SANDRO ROSELL (pictured) has won the FC BARCELONA Presidential Club elections by a landslide. With 100 % of the votes counted 61% has voted Rosell with candidate Benedito coming in second with 14 %.The chart below shows the final voting results:The note here is that the candidate of outgoing President Laporta - Ferrer - finished last in the voting. This

Ninth Circuit Ruling in Barry Bonds Prosecution

Couple days late on this, but here goes. Last Friday, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court ruling that blood and urine samples seized from BALCO and purportedly belonging to Bonds were not admissible. I was interviewed by KCBS Radio in San Francisco on the ruling. The majority agreed that, absent evidence from Bonds trainer/friend/sycophant Greg Anderson (who refuses to testify) the government lacks admissible evidence linking the samples to Bonds; Anderson's statements to a BALCO employee were inadmissible hearsay. The court rejected arguments that Anderson was speaking as Bonds' agent on the matter of the samples or that Anderson had been given authority to speak about the source of the samples--either of which would have made the statements functionally Bonds' statements and therefore not hearsay. Alternatively, the court rejected the government's argument that the statements could come in under the residual exception to the rules. There was a sharp disagreement between the majority and dissent about how to understand independent contractor status and agency for purposes of the hearsay rules.

The ball is back in the government's court with three options: 1) Try to get en banc re-hearing in the Ninth Circuit, an option that might work, given the high-profile nature of the case; 2) Seek cert before the Supreme Court, incredibly unlikely because the Court does not take cases simply to correct one-off errors; or 3) Go back to the district court and determine whether it can win without the evidence. My guess is prosecutors believe the evidence is significant, which is why they appealed a pre-trial evidentiary ruling. What is not clear is whether they did this because the evidence is so central and essential to the case that they cannot prove the case without it or whether they appealed out of an excess of caution, recognizing that perjury prosecutions are hard to win in the first place, especially against a well-funded and well-represented defendant such as Bonds, thus they need all the evidence they can muster. I don't know the answer to that strategic question.

SPANISH FOOTBALL | REAL SOCIEDAD SPANISH 1º DIVISION TEAM NEXT SEASON ALONG WITH LEVANTE

SPANISH FOOTBALL has´nt as yet finished even though the Spanish 1º Division finished weeks back. The Spanish 2º Division continues & tonight we can announce that REAL SOCIEDAD (pictured celebrating below) & LEVANTE are SPANISH 1º DIVISION TEAMS for next season after earning the coveted promotion. Real Sociedad won 2-0 Celta de Vigo maintaining them as classification leaders & 2º placed Levante

MLB players and replay

According to a poll of 100 Major League players: 77% oppose the use of replay on the base paths, 62 % oppose it on fair/foul calls, and 86 % said Bud Selig was correct not to retroactively award Armando Galarraga a perfect game.

What do we do with this information as we consider the increasing use of replay? Should the players' views receive some consideration and even a certain deference? After all, they have the most directly and immediately on the line with a blown call (despite what fans of the team may believe). My speculation, by the way, is that players accept umpire mistakes because they believe that, on average, the disadvantages from bad calls even out over the course of a long season or even series. In other words, just as many bad calls will go for us as against us, so why change.

Explosive Kettlebell Training for Athletes

Kettlebell Power Bombs

Video from Smitty of the Diesel Crew showing how to perform a kettlebell power bomb

The kettlebell power bomb is a very good exercise for creating and developing power, use this movement sparingly as it really gives your nervous system a good pounding.



If you have no training partners or friends like me, then check out my version of the kettlebell powerbomb using powerbands attached to the kettlebell and also to my belt

Take Your Fitness To Another Level with the Gymboss Interval Timer

Thoughts on college conference realignment: The Basketball Effects

Matt Bodie, one of my colleagues at PrawfsBlawg, has some thoughts about conference realignment, arguing that it marks (or should mark, if we all were honest) the end of the pretense of amateurism in college football, the "crashing down" (finally) of the whole system. Worth a read.

An interesting side issue is the effect on, and role of, college basketball. Basketball clearly is in the same boat as football in terms of being essentially professional, but it does not drive the realignment bus and does not take in or spend nearly as much money. College basketball always has at least made a pretense (the loathed Billy Packer notwithstanding) to there being a place at the table for the smaller conferences. But does anyone want to be a basketball-centric conference when football (and its dollars) drives all this?

The school I feel bad for in this is Kansas, which has gotten shafted. It has the top basketball program in the country right now, but not a top football program, so no one wants it (because it also does not add a major television market). Because football and television markets drive the process, Kansas is not attractive to any of of the major conferences (Big ___, SEC, or Pac-___)*, so it is going to end up in the Mountain West, an inferior (at least right now) conference, with hopes and dreams of joining the big boys but having a ways to go. Instead of being a top team in what has been in some recent years the top basketball conference, Kansas risks becoming like Gonzaga or Butler (or, in football, its likely new conference rival, Boise State)--a big fish in a small pond, ripping through an inferior league, but a question mark nationally (unless it takes on some brutal non-conference games).

Any chance that basketball-first schools (the traditional Big East and ACC schools, perhaps) will give up the football money and try to do something to protect their unique basketball-centered interests? And how will that affect the perception of which basketball conferences are "big-time" for NCAA Tournament purposes. Recall that one scenario (not happening yet, but still possible) had the Big Ten raiding some Big East football schools (Pitt, Rutgers, Syracuse) and the SEC raiding some ACC football schools (Miami, Florida State, Virginia Tech).** But that would leave the ACC and Big East as second-tier football conferences, although still great basketball conferences. Is there room for such a thing anymore? Is there room for great basketball-first schools anymore?


* By law, conferences no longer may use numbers in conference names. We are academic institutions--if we form the Pac-10 or Big Ten, there should be only ten teams in each.

** If not swallowing the ACC whole, which now seems unlikely.

FC BARCELONA | CLUB PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS TODAY | WHO WILL BE NEW PRESIDENT?

Sports daily "Mundo Deportivo" gives us this cartoon of the 4 candidates of which FC BARCELONA Club members are called today onto the ballots to choose who will be their next Club President.From left to right : hot favourite Sandro Rosell, Marc Ingla, outgoing Laporta favoured-man Jaume Ferrer & Agustí Benedito.The election campaign has been "dirty" & at times personal as each candidate lacked

SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM PLAYERS | WORLD CUP 2010 | XABI ALONSO GIVES A SCARE

The SPANISH FOOTBALL TEAM is busy training & preparing themselves for their opening game of Group H against Switzerland next Wednesday. The SPAIN WORLD CUP TEAM is based in the South African town of Potchefstroom & in their training session of today gave us all a slight scare when XABI ALONSO retired from training half way through the session.Spain has currently "under care" another vital piece

WORLD CUP 2010 NEWS | SPANISH FOOTBALL TEAM IN SOUTH AFRICA | ANDRES INIESTA AN INJURY WORRY

The SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM was the last WORLD CUP SQUAD to arrive at South Africa today as the FIFA WORLD CUP kicked off with two Group A matches. The SPAIN FOOTBALL TEAM flew over safely & now awaits its first Group H game against Switzerland on the 16th of June.The only apparent worry from a tactical team angle & player concern is midfielder ANDRES INIESTA who trained apart from the

Legal and Political Implications of College Football Conference Changes

It looks like we'll be seeing some movement with conferences, including the real possibility that Texas and Texas A&M will join the Pac 10 and SEC, respectively.

Some members of Congress are already talking about holding hearings to question and possibly block certain conference changes. The legal power of the federal government to stop changes in conferences is another matter. While they impact the economics (and admissions and fundraising efforts) of colleges, conferences are fundamentally voluntary associations of competing schools for scheduling and promoting games. And they are not etched in stone; their rosters have changed over the years, with schools joining and leaving conferences from time-to-time. The choice of competing schools to collude in a conference (and to not allow other competing schools to join and reap the economic benefits of conference membership) could in theory be seen as problematic with Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits concerted action that unreasonably restrains trade, but it's likely a difficult argument to make (as is discussed by Joseph Morton in the Omaha World-Herald). But when coupled with the topic of the BCS and automatic bids -- a topic of interest to the Justice Department -- perhaps we'll still some hearings on conferences.

Anyway, what would be an ideal conference arrangement of schools? My Vermont Law School colleague and good friend Jason Czarnezki, who played football at the University of Chicago in the late 90s, offers these excellent thoughts in his post College Football & Big Ten Expansion:

The Big Ten wants to expand from 11 teams to 12-16 teams. The Big Ten last expanded in 1991 when Penn State joined. Football, and the revenue that comes with it, drives expansion. The Penn State addition proved very successful. From the beginning I have argued that Big Ten expansion from this point is driven by three schools that the Big Ten would like to add:

(1) Notre Dame

(2) Nebraska

(3) Texas

Notre Name was ironically denied admission to the Big Ten at the turn of the century, and now wants to remain an independent. ND will join the Big Ten only when the Big East dies; though joining the Big Ten, and the accompanying Association of American Universities, would greatly enhance its academic profile.

The Big Ten seems to have landed Nebraska and its storied football tradition. My guess is that the Big Ten still wants Texas. The question is whether continued bad blood between Nebraska and Texas will allow this to happen, and whether Texas can join the Big Ten without Texas A&M (something that Texas politics might forbid). My guess is that this can only occur if Texas A&M goes to the SEC as some reports suggest.

Jim Delaney, commissioner of the Big Ten, is in my guess hoping for a dream scenario where the Big 12 (Colorado, for the Pac-10, and Nebraska, for the Big Ten, have already left) and Big East fall apart, and Texas A&M goes to the SEC. Then the Big Ten will have 14 teams with Notre Dame, Nebraska, and Texas, to go along with national football powers Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan. The revenue would pour in at that point for cable’s Big Ten Network. I question whether the Big Ten can pull this off but I think it’s their dream scenario.

The divisions, setting up a conference championship game, would look like this:

West Division: Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Northwestern

East Division: Notre Dame, Indiana, Purdue, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan State

Such a strong football conference might also argue to have two automatic BCS bowl qualifiers.

SPAIN WORLD CUP TEAM | THE FC BARCELONA CONNECTION

This is a curiosity, definitely a fact & information for the reader about the current SPAIN 2010 WORLD CUP TEAM. The below photo illustrates 8 players that are part of the current SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM: Pique, Valdes, Xavi, Villa, Puyol, Busquets, Iniesta & Pedro. All except goalkeeper Valdes would normally start in the SPAIN starting line-up or get a run during the course of a game.

World Series of Boxing: A Strike Out or Home Run for Amateur Boxing?

Baseball’s is the most famous, poker’s is one of the most recent ones to gain traction with the viewing public. Now, in September 2010, the “World Series of Boxing” begins throughout the world. What is the “World Series of Boxing”? Well, if all goes according to plan, the World Series of Boxing (hereinafter the “WSB”) will be, according to its official web site, “an annually recurring, global competition featuring franchises in three regional conferences: ASIA, EUROPE, AND THE AMERICAS. Each region will initially be comprised of FOUR CITY-BASED FRANCHISES, and each franchise will field a SQUAD OF 10 BOXERS across FIVE WEIGHT CLASSES designated by AIBA.” Yes, AIBA, the hand that rocks the cradle of international amateur boxing, along with the international sports marketing agency IMG, is doing its part to bring a team element to professional boxing. But that is not the only twist that the WSB is bringing to professional boxing; the salaried participants in these professional boxing team competitions will not only be select professional boxers who competed in the 2008 Olympics, but also some of the top amateur boxers in the world. However, all of the participating amateurs will retain their eligibility to participate in the Olympics. Thus, if the WSB gains traction, it could eventually result in a sea change in the relationship between amateur and professional boxing. A quick analysis of the current rules concerning Olympic eligibility for professional boxing, and the potential implications of allowing amateur boxers jump between the amateur and professional boxing worlds follows...

For the full article, please go to: http://www.8countnews.com/news/125/ARTICLE/2633/2010-06-10.html

World Cup and NBA Finals

Like many people, I am not much of a soccer fan, but I do love the World Cup, which starts on Friday morning.

Perhaps the greatest sporting event in United States history is the Miracle on Ice in 1980. As I'm sure you remember, a team of U.S. Amateurs shocked the powerful Soviet Union team, going on to win the Olympic Gold Medal at Lake Placid.

Really, the World Cup is the best chance for something like that to ever be duplicated for the United States. It is our last popular sport in which we are extreme underdogs. If the USA were to win the World Cup, it would be even more shocking than the Miracle on Ice, indeed, the goal really is to get out of group play. It will be a fairly successful World Cup if that is all that we accomplish.

The United States is a team without an international star, hoping to get by on superior teammwork and unity. We won't win anything on talent alone (which is not to say that the talent level is terrible, it is not, but it is nowhere near other country powerhouses). It is very exciting... to root for your country in the biggest sporting even in the world, with the extra thrill of them being an underdog.

I wouldn't make any gambling deposits on them at a Moneybookers Casino, but it sure will be fun to watch them play and try to advance. They look as ready as they have been, as the team is playing well (second in the Confederations Cup last year), and Coach Bob Bradley has them playing as one unit.

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The Lakers have a 2-1 lead in the NBA Finals after taking out Boston in a weird Game 3, and the series stays in Boston for games 4 and 5. Boston obviously needs a better effort from Ray Allen, who was as awful in Game 3 as he was brilliant in Game 2.

The bright spot for Boston was Kevin Garnett, who looked like he would provide very little in the series after games 1 and 2. However, he had a brilliant game 3, and put up numbers reminiscent of KG of old. If he can do that again this series, Boston should have a great chance, especially if Pierce and Allen step up.

If I was check out casino deposit options at something like the Roxy Palace Casino, my money would still be on the Lakers in this series. They have the best player in this series, and they might have the second best player as well (depending on whether you prefer Pau Gasol or Rajon Rondo.

It seems clear that home court does not matter that much anymore, as both teams have one on the opponents home court. This is a series that seems ready to go 7 games, and I'll take the Lakers at home in that one, giving Kobe a 5th title and firmly planting him as one of the 10 best players in NBA history.

All in all, it's a good time to be a sports fan!

SPAIN WORLD CUP TEAM | PREVIEW VIDEO TRAILER

Here is a video "mash-up" to support the SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM & its 23 team players who are about to fly off to South Africa with expected arrival tomorrow to begin the long road & attempt to become "eternal" if they can win the 2010 FIFA WORLD CUP. It will not be easy at all, the Spanish Team know it & go into the competition with humility & respect for all of their opponents. Spanish

KOLARAV SAYS YES TO REAL MADRID ?

I always thought it was “illiegal”, according to FIFA rules, to touch (negotiate) a player still under contract with his Club. I understand that if a Club is interested in a player at another Club that the former contacts the latter & begins to negotiate with the player staying at the margin. Perhaps someone can confirm me this?Anyway, I start with all the above because Spanish Sports daily “

SPAIN WORLD CUP TEAM PLAYERS LIST | STARTING LINE UP (AT TIMES)

Receiving lots of emails from readers asking for information about the SPANISH FOOTBALL TEAM PLAYERS LIST & STARTING LINE-UP. Your wishes are my command, although they were posted a month back perhaps the Search Engine isn´t matching your typing words, therefore I post the info here again.The full list of 23 Spanish National Football - World Cup 2010 - Team players are: Goalkeepers: Iker Casillas

VALENCIA CF SIGN GETAFE FORWARD ROBERTO SOLDADO

VALENCIA CF has found a substitute for departed forward David Villa in GETAFE striker & ex-Real Madrid player ROBERTO SOLDADO. The 25 year old player signs for the next 4 years & Valencia pays the Madrid (Getafe) Club a cool 10M€ over the next coming years in various instalments as part of the contract release clause obligation.A good signing as Soldado has had a great 2009-2010 season & now with

SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM | SPAIN 6 POLAND 0 | FRIENDLY GAME 2010 | VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS

Source: Sp Ftball Sprts /SPAIN put in a grand Football show with a 6-0 victory over POLAND in their last friendly game before flying off to South Africa for the World Cup. The SPANISH NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM did play a less than perfect Poland who are in a transition stage with lots of U/21 players, but Spain did give sufficient positive vibrations with their passing & touch game coming together.

REAL MADRID | WHAT ABOUT YOANN GOURCUFF ?

As habitual this time of the year Football player names are flying around & said to be in the orbit of REAL MADRID: Maicon, Kolarov, Steven Gerrard, Jesús Navas, Di Maria, David Silva, Pedro Leon, Di Rossi...bla bla bla.But how about this for a name; YOANN GOURCUFF?This is just a personal hunch. The name is not being splashed on the front-pages of the Spanish Sports dailys at all - not as yet.

Boston College's Professional Sports Counseling Panel: Helping Student-Athletes with the Decision to turn Pro

Good piece by Albert Breer in the Boston Globe on Boston College's Professional Sports Counseling Panel, a BC entity which helps its students-athletes with the challenges and opportunities related to turning pro. No other school has a panel like the one offered at BC; they instead use advisers for individual teams. Breer highlights the excellent work of BC Assistant Dean Warren Zola, who serves as Chairman of the Panel.

Here's an excerpt:

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Boston College won’t be mistaken for Southern Cal or Florida as an NFL pipeline. But in player development, the Eagles feel they have a chance to set the standard.

Warren Zola , an assistant dean in the Carroll School of Management at BC, helped organize the school’s Professional Sports Counseling Panel five years ago and has served as chairman, a non-paying position, since then.

The idea? Give student-athletes with professional potential in all sports the training to prepare for the next level. Some schools have coaches or officials for specific sports to handle these matters. But Zola says that, to his knowledge, BC is the only one to have an overarching group separate from the individual programs.

“It may be cliché, but it feels like we’re doing something good, helping young folks make good decisions, and this is a way for me to stay connected to athletics,’’ said Zola, who also teaches sports business and sports law classes.

Zola graduated from Tulane’s law school in 1992, and wanting to stay in athletics but not work as an agent, he got a job working in Athletic Operations at BC. With the blessing of then-football coach Tom Coughlin, he was soon helping Pete Kendall, Tom Nalen, Glenn Foley, and Mike Mamula prepare for the NFL.

When the panel launched in 2005, Zola’s goals were to make sure athletes knew the rules and could navigate the process while preserving their eligibility, and to educate them on picking an agent.

Zola has helped big-timers like Matt Ryan, B.J. Raji, and Jared Dudley, but also sees his presence as vital to the rookie free agent or female basketball player looking to find a contract in Europe.

“Matt Ryan will have no problem getting the right agent,’’ he said. “It’s the others where you have to make sure they understand what’s critical.’’

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To read the rest, click here.

IBRAHIMOVIC - ROBINHO SWAP OFFER?

While IBRAHIMOVIC hangs out next to a swimming pool in Miami on holidays, ROBINHO is concentrated with the Brazilian National Team in South Africa awaiting the World Cup to kick off. What both do however share & have in common is that neither of their respective Clubs wish them back for next season. Even though FC BARCELONA says that Ibrahimovic is not on sale, the incorporation of Spanish