Professional Sports League Commissioners’ Authority and Collective Bargaining
Texas Review of Entertainment & Sports Law, Vol. 11, p. 179, 2010
26 Pages Posted: 22 Apr 2010
Date Written: April 22, 2010
Abstract
With the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL) collective bargaining agreements set to expire within the next two years, many experts are already predicting what changes may be made to both leagues’ governing labor documents. One likely point of contention between the owners and the players’ unions — though rarely discussed in the experts’ predictive discourse — is the power of the respective league commissioners to punish or discipline wayward players for misbehavior committed off of the court or field. This article will analyze this area of sports law by exploring this power of each league’s sports commissioner, as well as its place and significance in collective bargaining.
This article will begin in Part II by giving a brief overview of the rise in commissioner discipline for players’ misbehavior committed off of the court or field and why commissioners punish in this manner. Parts II and III will track and situate the source of the commissioners’ power to discipline for such reasons — namely, in the leagues’ respective collective bargaining agreements. Part IV will describe how courts and arbitrators have treated commissioners’ decisions to punish players for their actions off of the court or field, and posit why such treatment is a concern for the labor unions representing professional athletes in these two leagues. Part IV will then give an overview of the collective bargaining process and the effect it has on this power of each league commissioner. Part IV will also explore why the players’ unions will likely make this power of the league commissioner a provision of the collective bargaining agreement that will be negotiated over, unlike in years past. Finally, Part V will provide some concluding insights.
Keywords: professional sports, commissioner, league, discipline, collective bargaining, professional athletes
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