Coaching Changes Lead to Lawsuit

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Benjamin Clark

In sports news, its common to hear about coaches who leave one program for the next, often breaking their contract to do so.  This time, somebody is getting sued.  In Tennessee Football, Inc. v. Lane Kiffin, University of Southern California, the Tennessee Titans sued the new USC football coach for "inducement of breach of contract" and tortious interference with contractual relations claiming that Coach Kiffin and USC induced Tennessee Titans' running back coach Kennedy Pola to breach his contract with Tennessee by convincing him to coach at USC instead.

Clay Travis at AOL Fanhouse gives a great synopsis of the case and other details surrounding it.  Time will tell whether the outcome of this lawsuit will change how contracts are treated in collegiate and professional sports, but it will be a great spectator event over the next year or two.

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NCAA Football: Let the Votes be Counted...Publicly

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Benjamin Clark

As reported on August 25, 2009 by Andy Staples on SportsIllustrated.com, SI.com is issuing open records requests to the 51 public school bowl championship subdivision football coaches who cast votes for the weekly coaches poll in NCAA football.  The coaches poll carries 33% weight in the determination of which schools are eligible to compete in the BCS national championship game, and other high-paying bowl games.  Staples argues that since football coaches at public universities are public employees, all records-including their votes-are subject to the open records laws of their specific states. 

 

Neither Kirk Ferentz or Paul Rhoads are voting in the coaches this year (2009), but if they were, an interested person could make an open records request under Iowa Code Chapter 22.  Whether such requests by SI.com are successful remains to be seen, but Iowa's law in particular seems to favor the interested person under these circumstances.

 

What is clear, however, is that this author is excited for the approaching college football season.  Stay tuned for any other excuses to write about the divergence of college football and the law. 

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