3m Swot Case

One cannot deny the huge role sports have in society. With any given cable subscription, there are anywhere from 3 to greater than fifty channels specifically devoted to full sports coverage. American’s bond over shared interests in a team, or over a shared hatred of another. It is nearly impossible to shelter oneself completely from sports, it is constantly around us, which brings about a huge social responsibility to the entities that run the sports world to make sure they are of good nature.

The social responsibility of sports entities is very hard to uphold when it comes to the freedom of speech and expression of both the athletes and the fans. It is hard to find a balance between imposing rules and regulations that would punish those for chants of poor taste but that do not infringe on the rights of the fans to root for or ridicule a particular team and its players. Ask sporting fans and they will tell you that the cheering and jeering are elements of the competition of sport that makes the events worth attending in person rather than watching at home. However, the freedom of cheering and jeering speech is quite often pushed over the limit of appropriateness and is more frequently needing regulation in order to keep the atmosphere safe for the fans and players.

Sports have many groups of participants that have different levels of protection when trying to deal with freedom of speech and controlling abusive and profane speech. There are the players, the coaches, and the fans. One also must consider that protection is different when it comes to professional leagues and private and public educational institutions. The First Amendment to the Constitution protects free speech but only from actions from local, state, and federal governments. This means that the First Amendment does not apply to private or non-governmental agencies, so private organizations have the right to generally impose their own restrictions on speech. Since professional sports leagues like the NFL and NHL are private employers, the professional teams are generally free to impose almost any rule or standard on the players, who are employees of the leagues, as long as they are not deemed to be racially discriminatory, according to Eric P. Robinson, who is the Deputy Director of the Donald W. Reynolds Center for the Courts and Media at the University of Nevada-Reno.

The level of protection is much different for college athletes. While professional athletes are employed by private organizations, student athletes are merely representatives of their respective schools they are associated with, not employees of the school. Once again, the First Amendment limits the restrictions on speech by different levels of government, but does not limit any restrictions that are imposed by private entities. Because of this, private schools are free to impose any restrictions on speech they wish to their athletes--it is part of the price they pay