Game-Day Gangsters: Crime and Deviance in Canadian Football

In the complicated interaction between sport and law, much is
revealed about the perception and understanding of consent and
tolerable deviance. When a football player steps onto the field, what
deviations from the rules of the game are considered acceptable? And
what risks has the player already accepted by voluntarily participating
in the sport? In the case of Canadian football, acts of on-field
violence, hazing, and performance-enhancing drug use that would be
considered criminal outside the context of sport are tolerated and even
promoted by team and league administrators. The manner in which league
review committees and the Canadian legal system understand such actions
highlights the challenges faced by those looking to protect players
from the dangers of the sport. Although there has been some discussion
of legal and institutional reforms dealing with crime and deviance in
Canadian sport, little exists in the way of sports law, with most cases
falling into the legal categories of criminal, administrative, or civil
law.

In Game-Day Gangsters, Fogel argues for a review of the
systems by which Canadian football is governed and analyzes the reforms
proposed by football leagues and by players. Juxtaposing material from
interviews with football players and administrators and from media
files and legal cases, he explores the discrepancies between the
players' own experiences and the institutional handling of
disciplinary matters in junior, university, and professional football
leagues across the country.Curtis Fogel is an assistant professor of criminology
in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Lakehead
University-Orillia.