https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/01/21/n...eles-rams-pass-interference-no-legal-remedies
Don't Expect Legal Remedies in Aftermath of Rams' Win Over Saints
By MICHAEL MCCANN (SI’s legal analyst. He is also Associate Dean of the University of New Hampshire School of Law)
The reality is that if Roger Goodell—who attended the AFC Championship in Kansas City and who presumably watched the NFC Championship on TV—wished to invoke Rule 17, the time to do so would have been during the game. Once a conference championship is over, restarting or replaying it would involve a bevy of logistical hurdles.
For instance, would ticketed fans be allowed back in the Superdome or would new tickets be sold? Or, would the game be played with no live audience—which would take away a key ingredient to the Saints’ homefield advantage? Also, would Fox, which like other networks carefully plans every minute of air time months in advance, broadcast the resumed game instead of another scheduled program (and if the answer is yes, what would be the contractual ramifications for that other program with Fox)?
Would the same, and much-maligned, officiating crew referee the resumed game, or would other officials be brought in? How about the players, coaches and staff—might they have other commitments or family responsibilities on the day when the game would be restarted or replayed?
And would players, coaches, staff and referees be paid extra to play or coach in what would seem like Part II of the game? Since the Super Bowl wouldn’t be postponed absent the most compelling of exceptional circumstances, the restarted NFC Championship would also need to happen in the very near future.
The Rams, who are flying back to Los Angeles, would surely object to any restart or re-do. They would contend that returning to New Orleans would be extremely disruptive, especially since they now need to prepare to play the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl on Feb. 3. Like a winner in a disputed election, the Rams would do everything possible to claim finality in the outcome, downplay any questions as to the legitimacy of the victory and attempt to thwart any substantive review.
Even if logistical hurdles could be overcome, resuming the NFC Championship could trigger other kinds of unfairness. The coaches on each team would have time to evaluate what already occurred in the game and use it to devise new plays and schemes. If days from now the game restarted at 1:49 left on the clock, those coaches would know much more than they ought to know had the game played out in real-time.
While both teams would enjoy this same tactical advantage, it would create a different kind of game. Also, would the same players be available for the remainder of the game and if not, would roster exemptions be available? For instance, Saints tight end Josh Hill suffered a concussion in the first quarter. It’s unclear if the Saints would simply be short a player in a resumed game or if they could replace Hill.
Perhaps most important, Goodell invoking Rule 17 would create precedent which would bound him and his successors going forward. Once the commissioner injects himself into a game to alter a referee’s mistake, there would be an expectation that he would do so again. This is how a slippery slope begins to cause slippage. And, obviously, there will be bad calls and bad no-calls in future NFL games.
The idea of the commissioner as a sort of interventionist, “super-referee” would likely be unwelcome news to many owners, coaches and players, and probably many fans, too. If Goodell intervenes for one team but not another, some would say this proves Goodell is biased against certain teams. For their part, referees would find that possibility troubling—especially since there is no reason to believe that the commissioner knows more about officiating than a trained referee.
Although the betting community doesn’t have a formal say in the matter, it’s worth noting that this community might the find the possibility of game re-dos as undermining the certainty of bets. This would be particularly true if Goodell was inconsistent in intervening. On the other hand, a bad call can itself undermine a bet. To that point, The Action Network’s Darren Rovell reports that PointsBet Sportsbook will
refund all wagers on the Saints due to the “highly controversial non-call.”
The absence of a viable remedy outside of the NFL
The finality of sporting contests is one of the most appealing virtues of sports: There’s a winner and there’s a loser, and the game is truly over. There’s no appellate process or follow-up review. We simply accept that that the game has ended. For the commissioner to disturb that finality seems unlikely.
The same is true of courts.
Bad calls and other irregularities (real or perceived) have led to lawsuits from aggrieved players and fans. Those lawsuits have
failed.
Courts have consistently enunciated that bad calls are not causes of action for courts to consider. Stated differently, not all “harms” are remedied through law. Disappointment and frustration over a game, even a wrongly decided one, are harms that law isn’t designed to redress.
To that point, a fan who attended the NFC Championship would struggle to claim a winning contractual violation. While a game ticket is a contract, it’s a very limited contract. It provides a revocable license to enter a facility for a specific event. So long as the ticket holder adheres to the stadium’s code of conduct, the ticket guarantees its holder the right to see the event.
However, the ticket does not guarantee a right to see specific players or see a specific team win or lose. It also doesn’t guarantee that bad calls, which are obviously foreseeable occurrences in sports, won’t happen. These limitations shed light on why a lawsuit brought by a Miami Heat ticketholder against the San Antonio Spurs for resting Tim Duncan and other Spurs stars
failed.
It’s also why a lawsuit brought by a New York Jets fan over Spygate
failed. A game ticket to an NFL, NBA, MLB or NHL game only guarantees its holder that two teams will play each other and that the fan can watch the game from a specific seat. Here, people who attended the NFC Championship received what they bargained for: a right to watch the NFC Championship from the vantagepoint of assigned seats in the Superdome.
Courts also do not want to expend the finite time of judges and jurors on disputes over who won a sporting contest. To the extent courts involve themselves in games, it is usually in relationship to a criminal act, such as White Sox players accepting illegal bribes to
throw the 1919 World Series or Boston College basketball players taking bribes to
shave points of wins during the 1978-79 season.
In those cases, courts were involved not because of honest mistakes by referees. They were involved because of deliberate attempts to undermine the integrity of the contest and change the outcome. As of this writing, there is no reason to believe that the no-call in the NFC Championship was anything other than an unintentional human error.
As a franchise, the Saints would have no viable grounds to sue the league. The NFL constitution, which governs the relationship between teams and the league, makes clear that the decisions of the commissioner are final, conclusive and unappealable.
Unless Goodell chooses to reconsider the NFC Championship (which, as explained above, he almost certainly won’t), the outcome of the game is over. Further, franchise agreements between owners and the league also waiver of recourse language that limits the capacity of owners to sue the league, other owners or the commissioner.
There are other persons who may have “lost” as a result of the no-call. They include bettors and businesses that would have profited from the Saints going to the Super Bowl. These parties, in all likelihood, lack standing to bring a case against the NFL. “Standing” refers to a legitimate legal interest in a dispute.
A better who places a bet with a sportsbook is in contract with the sportsbook, not the NFL, and thus a lawsuit would be proper against the sportsbook, not the NFL. Such a lawsuit, however, also seems unlikely to succeed given that bad-calls are foreseeable undermines in sporting events and bettors presumably assume their risk when placing a bet. Likewise, any business that would gain from the Saints playing in the Super Bowl isn’t in contract with the NFL. The NFL owes no legal duty to it.
