In yesterday's class we had a presentation about injured athletes and their contracts. I thought this was an interesting topic because I didn't know that they usually lose their salary when they have a "career ending" injury. I understand that paying these players millions of dollars when they are not even playing would be a waste of money. Afterall, they signed the contract to be paid to play, not sit out. However, if the athlete gets injured during practice or a game it is obviously an accident and not done intentionally or out of poor judgement. I think the situation would be different if the athlete was out on their own playing a sport or "goofing off" and were to be injured.
After hearing this presentation, I feel that there should be a clause written into the contracts talking about an injury situation. Maybe if an athlete is injured they should receive 50% of their pay or something similar if they are unable to return to the sport. If for some reason, their injury ends up not being "career-ending" then they should be able to slowly work back up to the original salary, assuming he is still able to play as well as before.
This is definately a difficult subject to decide on, but it seems that it isn't fair to cut pay for athletes who hurt themselves while they are playing a game and making money for the owners.
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What surprised me most about the scenario with Darius Miles was that the management for the Trailblazers sent a threatening letter to other teams in the league. I don't know how such behavior could not be considered as collusion. As such, it seems to me that the Trailblazers could be liable or even sued for their poor judgment. The only other solutions I can think of would be to write more incentive clauses into contracts, although then the coaches could play a bigger role in determining what players got paid. It would also be good to include insurance coverage in case of an injury.
ReplyDeleteI think the Darius Miles case is something that is very interesting. I can see why the Trailblazers are upset about having to pay out the original contract but the way they handled it was wrong and very unprofessional by threatening all other teams. I think what they should have done was try to sign him and buy out his contract. It still would cost them money but it wouldn't cost them as much as the original contract. This situation could cause teams to start to look into these situations by maybe adding an injury clause or being able to opt out of contracts if certain situations occur again.
ReplyDeleteAs a future attorney this topic was very interesting to me. I assumed there were already financial clauses laying out circumstances where if a player had a career ending injury how he would be compensated. Contracts these days are very detailed and it really surprised me that there are not clauses that discuss what would happen if a player were to be injured.
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