Outside Publication

We Helped Start the Fire: A College Sporting Event Incitement Standard, Virginia Sports & Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 14 Issue 2

Fall 2015

This article examines the Supreme Court’s First Amendment incitement (Brandenburg v. Ohio) and school speech (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District) standards as they apply to post-game rioting following college sporting events. The article uses the East Lansing, Michigan rioting that followed the 2013 Big Ten Football Championship as a case study and argues that public universities/colleges should be able to discipline students for speech at college sporting events that “can reasonably be regarded as encouraging violence or property destruction.”