It's April and for football fans that can only mean one thing... yep, it's for all of us to bone up on labor law!
Usually, football fans spend early April looking over the unrestricted free agents who have fallen into the bargain bin after March's contractual orgies, or pondering the meaning of sub-par forty times run by 20-year-olds in a sunlight-free environment in the middle of Indiana.
This year, interest in the draft is visibly down, as fan enthusiasm is dimmed by the strong possibility that their favorite game may not return until regular season dollars start flowing in September, if then.
If you really want to know how likely it is that football will return, however, you won't listen to talk radio hosts or beat writers whose knowledge of the law is limited to the best ways to get out of a speeding ticket. Instead, turn to the experts.
Here are a couple of sources we recommend for fans who don't want to miss any of the nuances of the thrilling appellate action taking place in the 8th Circuit Court:
-- The always-excellent BizOfFootball.com site has a solid run-down of the major legal issues involved with the union's decertification and a likely timeline that the proceedings will follow.
-- ProFootballTalk.com is a site that people tend to either love or hate, but it's run by a one-time lawyer, Mike Florio, and usually has some good insight into the issues dividing the owners and players.
-- Professor Geoffrey Rapp from the University of Toledo answers some critical questions about the lockout on my old site, The Orange and Brown Report. Rapp's Sports Law Blog also covers the lockout closely from a legal perspective.
The knowledge you need to bore your co-workers to death with the minutiae of employment law awaits behind those links. It's up to you to decide to click.
- Barry
