Random Law Review # 5

Jonathan Etkowicz's Professional Athletes Playing Video Games - The Next Prohibited "Other Activity"? in 15 Villanova Sports & Entertainment Law Journal 65 (2008).

Today's Random Law Review selection is a student piece that focusses on an interesting issue I hadn't heard of before: if professional athletes injure themselves playing video games (like happened to a World Series pitcher after a bout of Guitar Hero and could presumably happen easily with Wii Tennis-elbow), should teams start banning players from playing video games during the season? Apparently, at least one pro team (the Miami Dolphins) and one college team already include such provisions in their contracts, even though video games are apparently a favorite pasttime of pro atheletes. This article looks at the standard contract provisions of four major sports leagues and notices quite different approaches in contractual terminology about what types of off-the-field activities are prohibited. It's an interesting legal issue, though the article itself would have been twice as nice at half the length (most of which was due to repetitive and unnecessary footnotes--did we really need a paragraph long quotation of Major League Baseball's definition of "relief pitcher" and "saved game"?).