Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig has been named to the adjunct faculty at Marquette University Law School as distinguished lecturer in sports law and policy.
“Bud Selig is, without question, one of the most skilled and accomplished professionals in the sports industry today,” said Joseph D. Kearney, dean of Marquette Law School. “We are truly honored that he would commit his time to our students and grateful that he’s chosen our classrooms as a place to pass down his significant wisdom to the next generation of leaders.”
Bud has actually lectured there for a couple of years. It’s just now being formalized as, you know, a thing.
And he’s fun in class too! I’ve been trying to track it down, but I can’t find it: last year, during a lecture at Marquette, someone who was in the class emailed me to tell me that Bud had actually let slip some piece of commissioner news. Like a positive drug test or something. The news was officially announced later in the day. So I guess what I’m saying is that, if you’re a law student at Marquette, sign up for Bud’s class and drop me a line if you hear anything good. Cool?
My take: Bud won’t even be the best law school professor who knows a bit about baseball. My first law school class at George Washington University Law School was in August 1995. Civil Procedure, with Professor Jonathan Siegel. It was, as a matter of fact, his first law school class too, as he had just been hired away from the DOJ. The first thing Professor Siegel did was to start reading from the Official Rules of Baseball, with the purpose of showing us that all games have rules, and that as far as litigation is concerned, civil procedure -- which many 1L’s find maddening -- are merely the rules of the game. I don’t know if Professor Siegel still does that, but I kinda hope he does. Certainly beats opening up the civil rules and starting with “Rule 3 . . . Commencing an Action . . . .”