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I didn't really think it through. I actually thought that teaching Business Associations (BA) online, would mean that I would have fewer students. I'm teaching online because I have two immunocompromised parents and I don't want to take any risks. But alas, I have 90 students this semester.

Not to brag, but I'm pretty good at teaching online. I haves some students who have taken three or four classes with me online and none of them are required. But I have never taught ninety online. That number is completely contrary to best practices for online teaching and learning. 

I even tried to scare some students away. Before every semester, I ask all students to complete a Google form that helps me understand them a bit better. This lets me know how to pronounce their names, what experience they have in business, where they have worked, what classes they are taking, and what they are most interested in learning about. This survey helped me understand how many of them were taking BA and Evidence at the same time. Some masochists are taking BA, Evidence, and our Transactional Skills I course, which is incredibly time consuming. But alas, only two dropped.…

I'm a huge football fan. I mean real football– what people in the US call soccer. I went to Brazil for the World Cup in 2014 twice and have watched as many matches on TV as I could during the last tournament and this one. In some countries, over half of the residents watch the matches when their team plays even though most matches happen during work hours or the middle of the night in some countries. NBC estimates that 5 billion people across the world will watch this World Cup with an average of 227 million people a day. For perspective, roughly 208 million people, 2/3 of the population, watched Superbowl LVI in the US, which occurs on a Sunday.

Football is big business for FIFA and for many of its sponsors. Working with companies such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, Hyundai / KIA, Visa, McDonald's, and Budweiser has earned nonprofit FIFA a record 7.5 billion in revenue for this Cup. Fortunately for Budweiser, which paid 75 million to sponsor the World Cup, Qatar does not ban alcohol. But in a plot twist, the company had to deal with a last-minute stadium ban. FIFA was more effective in Brazil, which has…

Greetings from SEALS in lovely Amelia Island. On Wednesday I presented on a proposed bilateral investment treaty between the US and Cuba, and tomorrow I am part of a discussion group on Sustainable Business. I will focus on the roles and responsibilities of corporate sponsors of the Rio Olympics. According to the official Olympics website, “[m]ore than just providing products and services for the event, [the sponsors] ensure that sport always comes first and that the whole world is inspired alongside us.”

Sponsors can spend up to $200 million for the privilege to inspire us. For many sponsors, the chance to have over a billion people watch their commercials and logos appear repeatedly over a period of a few weeks on television is worth the tens of millions of dollars. They often invest in slick YouTube campaigns that show their real or imagined connections to young athletes finally achieving their lifelong dream of bringing home the gold for their country. Apparently, 54% of consumers surveyed felt more positive about Nike after the company sponsored the Olympics based on how it chose to advertise. Many companies use these kinds of sponsorships as part of their corporate social responsibility initiatives. Dow…

I had planned to write a post about Delaware LLCs and who has standing to request judicial dissolution, but that post is going to wait.  I'm knee deep in Sports Law exam grading, and so sports is on my mind.  The big thing going on right now is, of course, Tom Brady's four-game suspension for his apparent participation in having footballs deflated to a psi that was not in compliance with league rules.  

The science on the benefits of deflating footballs is not clear, as noted here.  That, of course, is irrelevant to whether the rules were broken.  Some have argued that the air pressure rules are stupid, especially given that the league not long ago change the rules to allow each team to prepare their own footballs for use on offense. Andy Benoit of SI.com explains, 

With football being so much about strategy, the more comfortable the ball is for a quarterback and his receivers, the more entertaining the game becomes.

The NFL already agrees with this. Why do you think officials and ball boys go to such lengths to try to keep a football dry during a rainy game? Or, bringing it back to the

…

This Sunday, the NCAA will announce the 68 basketball teams that are scheduled to participate in this year's men's basketball tournament.  Then, the true "madness" begins.  

At many schools, one or more professors will likely organize an NCAA Tournament pool.  The pool will likely include entry fees and prize money. The pool's rules and standings will often appear on a public website.

All of this may sound like innocuous fun — especially during the anxiety-ridden days of waiting for ExpressO and Scholastica acceptances to arrive.  However, law professors playing in online, pay-to-enter NCAA Tournament pools technically are acting in violation of several federal laws — albeit, laws that are rarely enforced,

One federal law that seems to prohibit online, pay-to-enter NCAA Tournament pools is the Interstate Wire Act of 1961.  This act disallows individuals from “engaging in the business of betting or wagering [through the knowing use of] a wire communication for the transmission in interstate or foreign commerce.”  According to various recent court decisions, the Wire Act applies to contests hosted via the Internet, as well as those hosted over the phone.  And even though the act was originally passed to crack down on organized crime, even "upstanding" individuals…

Ten days from now will mark the start of the 2015 NCAA men's basketball tournament — one of the most watched sporting events of the year.   Recently, the NCAA sold 14 years worth of television broadcast rights to the NCAA Tournament for $10.8 Billion.  On an annual basis, that comes to an annual sum of  $770 Million per year.  

The athletes who play in these games, by contrast, do not receive any share of the derived revenues, nor are they allowed to endorse products or sign autographs for money.  In addition, the most successful teams in this tournament will have athletes that are required to miss upwards of nine class days based on a tournament schedule that is created to accommodate television broadcasts.

As a guest blogger for the month of March, I will be discussing the legal issues related to NCAA amateurism and the economic realities of the NCAA men's basketball tournament.  Some of the topics I will discuss include why the NCAA is indeed an economic cartel, why the U.S. district court's decision in O'Bannon v. NCAA does not go far enough to protect college athletes, why perhaps the National…