Mark Levison, The Levison Group
As lawyers, we are proud that our profession is steeped in tradition. We rely on old legal principals as our guide posts to the future. Lawyers of yesterday, like Blackstone, Marshall Holmes and Darrow are venerated icons, and that’s the way it is with my law school football team. Well, okay, we may not stand the test of time as venerated icons to onlookers other than ourselves, but as far as we’re concerned, our achievements rank right up there with Marbury v. Madison and Clarence Earl Gideon himself. At first we were merely a bunch of overly confident males, from diverse geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds, who found ourselves huddled together in concrete walled Midwestern lecture halls learning to be lawyers. Well that’s probably an overstatement. Schools in those days didn’t even pretend to teach us “how to be lawyers.” The goal was “learning to think like a lawyer.” Schools left the task of learning the actual practice of law to ourselves, and whomever we might find to mentor us along the way.
During our law school days, Oakland Raiders George Atkinson, caused Pittsburgh Steelers standout receiver, Lynn Swann, to suffer two concussions in two successive games. Steelers Coach, Chuck Noll, reacting to the hits, declared that there was a “criminal element” in football. At the time, that seemed like an awfully good name for a law school football team, and so the Criminal Element was born.
During our first year of graduate league intramural football, the team did pretty well. We were even better in year two. By the time we began our third year of law school, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves in the class room, as well as on the field. Between the goal posts we’d been subjected to strategies, strange configurations, and dipsy doodles. In the class room we’d suffered through those exact same things, and the Socratic method, to boot. In both venues, we had been tested, had taken our blows, and still standing, we were ready to move on to better things.
Unfortunately, up to that point the med school had always won the grad school championship. It takes longer to be a doctor than a lawyer, and they just had too many years playing together to be beaten. The dental school always finished second. Our upstart goal was to dethrone one, or both of them, but from our historical, need I say, stare decisis vantage point, our chances seemed virtually impossible.
In search of new precedent, however, we pushed ahead. We mowed down our opponents to win the law school division, and moved on to the all grad championship playoffs. Arriving in the semi-finals we came face-to-face with the fearsome dental school. They all wore mouth guards! I guess we were learning about different things. The game turned out to be an offensive free for all. Our little quarterback, small, but ever the logical thinker, combined with our tall and swift receivers to lead the way. To our shock, we actually won 35-34. Now, only the storied medical school team stood in the way of imagined accolades and fame.
On the first play of the championship game my assignment, a former honorable mention all American receiver from Stanford, ran by me as if I were on crutches. Fortunately the ball was overthrown. Analyzing the facts, as lawyers will do, I decided to play way back and let him catch the balls in front of me for the rest of the game. As often happens in the playoffs, defense dominated. At the half it was 6-6, the Criminal Element having scored its only touchdown when one of our guards deflected a pass and it careened into the arms of our other guard, who scampered for the touchdown. The Med School’s touchdown was admittedly more elegant, but both teams missed the point after. It was a tense battle, and then, late in the game, we scored our only offensive touchdown. We held on tight for another set of downs or two, and won the championship 12 to 6. The joy of that day, and of that surprising victory, has lasted for over 30 years, Springsteen’s Glory Days be damned.
Since that time, cases have been lost and won, wives have been found and lost. We have all, in our own way, learned to practice law. All of us in varying degrees have become indebted to those who we picked up along the way as mentors and friends.
As young, macho law students, many of us guys were interested not just in competing in sports, but in competing in sports law itself. I was lucky enough to be hired by a number of athletes through the years, generally in commercial disputes; athletes like Jerry Rice, who I believe was the greatest football player ever. As the years have gone by the spotlight on the criminal element in pro sports has changed somewhat from cheap hits to true criminal law violations. There are other questions of right and wrong these days as well, not the least of which are the repeated questions to the league itself about proper protection of its players from concussions. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to bring what I believe was the first helmet case. It resulted from the near death (and eventual close to full recovery) of Reggie Brown, the Lion’s middle linebacker who after a helmet to helmet collision, stopped breathing, paralyzed, on a Detroit football field, Christmas Day, 1999.
And now it is Superbowl time again. The crucible of law school results in a shared and intense experience among classmate which, when combined with sport, can forge a unique bond. Winning helps. For over 30 years now members of the Criminal Element have been getting together, at sites across the country, to watch the big game. When this year’s Superbowl is over, the winners will be excited, but I submit that their degree of elation will pale compared to what was experienced by the Criminal Element that Saturday afternoon, many years ago when we won the championship. Although it was a long time ago, I can still feel the sting of the champagne running in my eyes.
This year I am hosting the Criminal Element get-together. Along with war stories and beer drinking, we used to play a Criminal Element memorial football game at our reunion Super Bowl party each year. Frozen and snow covered fields from the Northeast to the Midwest often provided memories of our own “ice bowls.” Some years ago a majority of our players got too fat and too old to play any longer and we gave the game up. I, of course, am as fast as ever. Although, I do remember that after breaking a few fingers in one cold game, my wife put her foot down and refused to take me to the emergency room any longer, “due to my irresponsible behavior.” Sometimes it’s hard to give certain things up. Still, eventually new things replace the old. Actions become memories, memories get glorified, and if we are lucky, new, good memories are made.
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Under Analysis is a nationally syndicated column. Mark Levison is a member of the law firm Lashly & Baer. You can reach the Levison Group in care of this paper or by e-mail at comments@levisongroup.com.
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