Free But Sequestered Wi-Fi

No matter how many cases a lawyer has tried before, a new trial on Monday morning is just as anxiety-inducing as the very first one. Each case is new: a new client, a new deed, new circumstances, new political climate, a new judge, new opposing counsel, a new pair of pants that may or may not have a stain on the ass. And a new panel of potential jurors.

“Jury Selection,” or “Voir Dire” as it’s haughtily known among lawyers, is a new phenomenon every single time. And it is a phenomenon. People are summoned—required—to show up to the courthouse to answer questions, and ultimately, if they’re supremely unlucky, earn their way into a three-month trial where they must impart judgment on a fellow citizen, sometimes sending that fellow citizen away for a very long time. Perhaps you’ve been so unlucky in the past. This responsibility, coupled with the perks of a free hotel stay, lots of pizza, unlimited but not-on-demand HBO, and no internet access, is not highly coveted. Amendments VI and VII of the Constitution did not contemplate what depriving a person of wi-fi might do to them.

To call it “jury selection” is misleading. It’d be more apt to call it “jury de-selection”, meaning you don’t get “picked” to be a juror so much as you are one of the warm bodies left after the lawyers on both sides have eliminated the jurors they know they absolutely do not want here in the building. The only time I ever “picked” a juror for a case was when I chose not to eliminate a so-called engineer because he smiled and winked at me during jury selection, so I thought he was a fan of mine. Even though I was suspicious of the guy, the wink fooled me, perhaps tickled my ego in just the right way, and I chose not to strike the winking juror from my panel—I kept him around. Coincidentally, the lawyer for the other side let this juror hang around too, which in hindsight was a very smart move on her part. Whether she did it intentionally or not I have no idea. Probably the former. I’m thinking she knew something I did not.

Because this winking juror wasn’t really an engineer at all. He lied on his questionnaire. He became part of the jury that presided over the trial, and because I failed to “de-select” him, he tanked my case. This was one of my first trials, and I learned the hard way that if anyone ever winks at you, let alone a juror, back up slowly, maintain a safe distance, and then, at the first opportunity, run.

Some people like being called to jury duty to become a potential juror, to see if they get “picked” to preside over a case. My winking juror was probably one of these people. If you’re unemployed and have no responsibilities, kids, general interests outside of being summoned to a courthouse for an entire day, jury duty sounds like fun. These are exactly the kind of jurors I fear. Almost everyone else hates jury duty—you know, the people with shit going on in their lives.

It’s one thing as a juror to be curious as to the process of a trial. But if you tell me during jury selection that you actually are glad to be here, enjoy the experience, indeed want to serve on a jury, and wouldn’t mind sequestering yourself for weeks at a time with no access to the outside world, then I need you gone now. We lawyers in the room are now wary of you, have been looking to spot you, and are glad you spoke up, because now we can eliminate you as quickly as you came in.

On Hold with Your Wife, On Hold with the Insurance Company

Say your wife has needed to call her insurance company to discuss a claim. Don’t fall asleep on that sentence. Enter: you. You want to help, you need to help, to ask the right questions to get the exact answer. But insert important premise: you didn’t enter the room until 30 minutes into the phone call. So now you want everything rehashed, and the poor insurance lady on the other line, and your poor wife, are both now trying to answer your questions, at the same time, that were already answered. Three people talking over each other and the baby is making additional noises, all convulsing into a pitch resembling an F sharp.

But you’re here now, you’re in. Your problem is you want to hear the answers again from insurance lady, from the horse’s mouth, not through your wife relaying what the horse said. The problem with that of course is that maybe your wife didn’t understand the horse, and only by hearing it from the horse’s mouth can you confirm that wife is getting (a) not only correct information but (b) the information your wife needs to know. If they deny the claim, you want to know why.

Here's the problem with that. It’s like being a passenger in a car and spotting an empty parking space in a busy parking lot. “Ooh Ooh there’s one over there!...oh, you missed it. Go back around.” I do not say anything anymore as a passenger in a car trying to find a parking space in a crowded lot. No one wins. If I spot a spot, it will get taken before we get there anyway, and it took us from another spot that would have surely opened up from whence we came. And then it’s my fault. I don’t want that kind of ownership. I can’t take that kind of blame.

Ditto for phone call with insurance lady. What will I really add to the phone call about benefits? Is it my control issues that want to be in on the call to solve it myself? Probably. I believe I am the smartest guy, and I will ask the exact pointed questions that will obtain the solution, good or bad, that we’ve been needing to know.

But life is not a courtroom trial, and the insurance lady is not a witness. You can’t cross-examine your way through life. You are exhausting! You inevitably cause further stress, and unwanted overlap, and double-work, and now the insurance lady and your wife are both upset, and the baby is crying again.

What to do? Call the insurance on your own time? Good luck with that. Yeah that’s a brilliant idea. No—you let your wife handle it. Good results be damned. Of course your wife can figure it out all on her own, and if she needs your help, and asks for it, then step in. Oh but be careful there, too. Only step in relative to the scope of work in which you were asked to step in, and do not exceed it. Don’t get carried away with more questions. Get in and get out, or don’t go in at all. Tend to the baby, dad.

The NCAA’s Foolish Memo

The NCAA issued a memo today that says if a state passes a law or a rule that allows payments to student-athletes, then the NCAA rule should take precedence. Otherwise, the NCAA will prosecute the school.

The rules on which the memo is based are foolish and out of touch with reality, of course, but it's another level of foolishness to issue a memo that doubles down on these rules.

As a bit of background, this payment that the NCAA is outlawing is a payment made by the school, or a booster associated with the school, to pay the student-athlete for the use of their name, image, and likeness, or NIL.

The term "NIL" seems to me to just be a euphemism dreamed up by a judge or rulemaker somewhere that makes it sound like it’s not a salary. That it’s not the same thing as paying a pro athlete for their professional services. The Lakers pay Lebron for his NIL. Oh and they pay him to play basketball too. They just call that a salary with bonuses. NIL should just be called a salary, with some bonuses, for student-athletes. Am I wrong?

Without getting into whether you think schools should be able to pay student-athletes (because that train is already down the track, my friend), I am more interested in the aloof and head-in-the-sand decision by the NCAA to publish a memo that says “hey we have rules! You better follow them!”.

These NCAA rules, and the memo they issued, is like when the clown-man-villian in Air Bud is trying to convince the golden retriever to come to him and not to Josh. You’re a mean clown, bro, and you are not living in reality—Buddy wants to get properly fed for once!

So if the NCAA says they will fine or sanction a school (or an affiliated booster) for paying a student-athlete for their services, how do you think that will turn out? Do you think the football programs at Alabama or Texas need the NCAA? If the NCAA prosecutes Alabama for one of its boosters paying the star quarterback, what will be the penalty? Steep fines? Suspension of players and coaches? Cancelling games?

What will inevitably happen here, if the NCAA’s rules are not revised, is that these schools—all of them—will leave the NCAA and start their own association, or multiple associations, with more favorable rules. Rules that take into account, oh I don’t know, reality?

I don’t know if the disbanding of the NCAA will be a good or bad thing, just like I don’t know if schools being able to pay student-athletes a salary is a good or bad thing, or how we will look back on it thirty years from now.

But what I do know is publishing a memo that supports rules that aren’t grounded in reality is bad PR. It’s a fiat issued by a dictator who is clinging to power when the citizenry has already moved on.

So long as you believe the free market is the best way we know how to run an economy, which is a debate for another day, then we might as well get on the train of playing star athletes for the revenue they bring to a school. And what does Alabama, or Georgia, or Oklahoma, need the NCAA for? What does the NCAA do for the school? Look over its shoulder and fine them when they pay an athlete?

From a legal standpoint, an organization, just like the one you work for, can limit what you do. An association you belong to can do the same. If you break a rule, you can be fired, or kicked out. On the flipside, you can quit a thing if you don’t like a rule or think it’s unfair.

In the same way, the NCAA can enforce rules. But if the rules suck, the schools can quit.

Marquette’s water polo team needs the NCAA. USC football does not need the NCAA. We will gather around the tube to watch Ohio State v. Michigan on that Saturday whether the NCAA logo is emblazoned on the field or not.

The memo the NCAA issued is out of touch, but you know this already. The Big Ten, the SEC, hell, even the ACC or the Mountain West Conference, does not need the NCAA anymore. The NCAA should (and probably will) change the rules that are described in this memo, or it will die.

On its face, the NCAA is within its right to have rules and say they are going to enforce them, and to punish its members (i.e., the schools) for violating them. But just because they are within their right to say it doesn’t mean they should. You can either get on the train or get out of the way.

Paying student-athletes is here to stay. Any rules to prohibit these payments are out-of-date, a fool’s errand, to put it gently. Rules like this are expected from a tired and worn-out bureaucracy that is the NCAA. But it takes a special dose of foolishness to issue an edict that clings to these archaic rules.