Saturday, November 7, 2009

U. of New Mexico Women's Soccer Player Attacks BYU




I know it's all over the web and TV but if you haven't seen the crazy things this University of New Mexico women's soccer player did to BYU's soccer team, you gotta see this. Could she be charged criminally for some of the things she did? Especially the hair pulling.
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Posted by Clint Dunaway at 3:44 PM
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3 comments:

  1. Um, where's the legal analysis? Okay, fine, I'll try to make some legal connection.

    Every time athletes get violent on the field or the court, impassioned commenters (usually supporters of the other team) call for the player's arrest and/or for criminal charges to be brought. But it's actually pretty unusual for a player to be charged for actions during a game. Even relatively flagrant misdeeds performed after a game, like Oregon football player LeGarrette Blount's knock-out punch of Boise State's Byron Hout last September, are usually dealt with administratively by the team or league. Criminal charges are most common in cases involving young players, as with a recent Canadian youth league hockey fight case.

    Could Lambert be charged with battery? Probably. While there is an inevitable level of roughness in all sports, even non-contacts ports, her actions caught on tape probably exceeded the level of violence opposing players could be said to have accepted by participating in the game. Will she be charged? Almost certainly not. If you were to ask her, Lambert might even prefer an arrest to being suspended indefinitely, which makes the punishment she did receive more appropriate.
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  2. Peter R.

    Your tone is annoying. Lighten up.
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  3. It is interesting to track the tort cases involving sports.

    But Peter R is right, usually the criminal charges are reserved for local sports leagues.

    Lambert, though, is at risk for being expelled, losing sports eligibility next year, and such. The hair pulling is her only real risk, and then only if the BYU player was seriously injured.

    That is where those matters go from embarrassing and thus administrative to something else. Kind of puts new meaning in "no blood, no foul."
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