Covering the Intersection of Sports and the Law
Mark Ecke, the extraordinarily successful football coach at Cheshire High School, resigned this week rather than face a hearing before the Board of Education over his proposed termination. Ecke had been suspended since a junior varsity lacrosse game on May 3, during which his son was injured after a violent hit, triggering Ecke to reportedly scold the referees. Local [...]
When many student-athletes sign their National Letter of Intent (NLI) today, they will be become bound to an agreement that refuses to acknowledge the obvious: coaching changes have become a regular aspect of Division I college athletics. The NLI, however, clings to the unrealistic notion that student-athletes make their college choice based solely on the school, irrespective of [...]
With 2011 coming to a close, I have compiled a list of the top story lines and accompanying blog posts from the past year. Part I will list story lines 6 through 10; Part II will be posted tomorrow and will include 2 through 5; and the top story line will be posted on Tuesday, [...]
Tom Lamb, Hall of Fame football coach from Natick (Mass.) High School, has returned to coaching as an assistant with English High School in Boston. Boston Globe correspondent Lenny Megliola has the story. Congratulations to Coach Lamb for returning to the gridiron to work with young athletes. Coach Lamb’s interview on the state of high [...]
According to Rivals High, a player in Florida, another in South Carolina, two from Georgia and a coach in Texas have died after participating in football activities held during hot weather in the last week or so. These tragic stories remind me of the case of Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Jason David Stinson, the first reported criminal case [...]
About two weeks ago Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy introduced a budget plan that included cutting the athletic programs from vocational-technical high schools (“Vo-Techs”), which are operated by the state. Tonight, Vanessa De La Torre of the Hartford Courant is reporting that fall sports will be played at Vo-Techs this year, primarily due to scheduling issues: Mark Linabury, spokesman for Acting [...]
I was reading a recent Connecticut federal court decision in a case concerning the termination of an assistant football coach from a public high school. The decision itself was not particularly remarkable, but did include a discussion of Connecticut General Statute Section 10-222e, entitled “Policy on evaluation and termination of athletic coaches.” This is a statute with [...]
It has been reported that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s budget plan includes cutting the athletic programs from Connecticut’s vocational-technical high schools (“Vo-Techs”), which are operated by the state. 16 Vo-Techs will lose their athletic programs indefinitely and 10,000 students could be affected. Under existing CIAC rules, students at Connecticut’s Vo-Techs would be eligible to compete at their hometown [...]
