In a very unusual promotional deal, a law school in Michigan has bought the naming rights to a minor league ballpark. The Lansing Lugnuts (goofiest-sounding team name ever) will now play at Cooley Law School Stadium.

Quoting Cooley President Don LeDuc, The National Law Journal writes:

“It’s a little bit unique, but this is just one example of how we do marketing to get our name out there,” LeDuc said.

Cooley has long taken a different approach to marketing than do most law schools — it has advertised on billboards and sponsored television and radio programs, for example.

“People like to pretend that education isn’t competitive, but it is,” LeDuc said. “You’ll probably see more things like this in the future.”

With 3,600 students at campuses in Lansing, Grand Rapids, Auburn Hills and Ann Arbor, Mich., Cooley is the largest law school in the country and attracts a large number of part-time students. Cooley has been expanding steadily, but just keeping the student body at its present level requires getting its name out into the public, LeDuc said.

Can you see anything like this ever happening with either of the two law schools in Maryland? I’m thinking no. However, if UB Law ever does decide it wants Oriole Park at Camden Yards to be known as “University of Baltimore School of Law Oriole Park at Camden Yards” (or something like that), perhaps its most prominent alumnus can float a discount.

The U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow will hear arguments in American Needle v. NFL, a case ostensibly about who gets to make officially-licensed team hats.

But the underlying issue — whether the NFL and other sports leagues should be considered one business or multiple, privately-owned ones — could have a dramatic effect on professional sports. Only Major League Baseball now has an antitrust exemption.

Sports business and law observers have been weighing in on the case, but the commentary I found most surprising and compelling was by Drew Brees in Sunday’s Washington Post.

Surprising because Brees is the All-Pro quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, and he has a playoff game this weekend. (Granted, Brees was off last week, but most sports fans like to believe the players on our team are concentrating only on the next game; imagine Joe Flacco writing an op-ed about the health care debate as he prepared to play the Patriots.)

Brees, a member of the NFL Players’ Association Executive Committee, argues granting the NFL an antitrust exemption “would enable owners to exert total control over this multibillion-dollar business.” Such a ruling would be particularly onerous for the NFLPA as it negotiates a new collective bargaining agreement, he writes; there is already widespread discussion about a lockout for the 2011 season.

Like any good brief, Brees ends with a zinger, this one directed at two of the most high-profile owners in the league:

I hope that the justices of the Supreme Court recognize and ensure the continuance of the intense competition inherent in this game, and in the business behind the game. As readers of The Washington Post know well, NFL teams such as the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins are by no means a single entity — just ask Dan Snyder or Jerry Jones.

There was a pause toward the end of yesterday’s pre-trial hearing in Parkton residents’ lawsuit alleging groundwater contamination from a neighborhood gas station.

Judge J. Norris Byrnes broke the silence with a comment.

“I want to know if we signed a .400 hitter or a long reliever,” he said.

The comment was timely for two reasons.

First, the residents are represented by Peter Angelos, also known as the owner of the Baltimore Orioles. The judge’s comment was directed toward H. Russell Smouse, who was sitting in the courtroom gallery. Smouse is the Orioles’ general counsel.

Second, baseball executives and personnel have converged on Indianapolis this week for the annual Winter Meetings, the official start of the off-season wheeling and dealing commonly referred to as the Hot Stove league.

As the lawyers in the courtroom smiled, Smouse replied.

“We’re hoping to sign you,” he told Byrnes.

The judge chuckled. He is retired and specially assigned to the Parkton case.

“I am a long reliever,” Byrnes said.

Yesterday’s ninth-inning comeback from the Red Sox — one night after the Orioles executed a similar feat against them — highlighted what has become a theme for Baltimore this year: you never know which O’s squad you’re going to get.

The Orioles have been streaky this year, to say the least.  Seven-game losing streaks, five-game winning streaks. They blanked the Rays one night then allowed 11 runs the next. They were scoreless against the Yankees on May 8, then touched home plate 12 times the next night. More than half of their wins have come from runs scored in late innings.

I recently heard a radio ad highlighting the fact that the Orioles have been an exciting team to watch because you can’t count them out in the later innings. Last year, the O’s marketing team launched a tongue-and-cheek promotion around the team’s bad luck on Sundays. At that point, the Orioles had a 13-game losing streak at Camden Yards on Sundays and marketers launched a “You Win We Win” promotion on July 6 that promised to give fans a free ticket to a future, non “prime” game to fans in attendance that day if the O’s broke their Sunday streak.

From talking with fans, I get the sense that there isn’t really any ill will about the streakiness because most know it’s just a characteristic of a young squad.  That being the case, can you market this unpredictability? The radio commercial I mentioned touches on it, but I wonder if team marketers can take it a step further and design a promotion around the team’s come-from-behind drama they’ve frequently displayed at home.

For example, they could print up a bunch of $8 off and $9 off ticket coupons and have them ready to hand out after a game for an eighth- or ninth-inning comeback (making it clear to fans that the go-ahead run is scored in one of those innings for the promotion to take effect).

On the other hand, as the manager of a ball club, you want to see your team jump out early and hold on to the lead. Would a promotion like the one I mentioned be a conflict in philosophy?

The NFL released its entire 2009 schedule Tuesday, but it’s eight specific games on the calendar that are the focus of a courtroom hearing in Washington, D.C. this week.

The octet of games will air later this year on NFL Network, which is owned by the league. Comcast has put the network on its premium sports tier, which costs extra on top of the standard digital package, where the league wants its network to be.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, claims it put the network in the premium tier because of high costs associated with carrying the channel; the NFL says Comcast put the channel there so as not to compete with Comcast’s own sports channels. 

An administrative law judge with the Federal Communications Commission will make a ruling that could have implications beyond sports:

It is the first big test at the FCC of a 1992 federal law that prohibits cable companies, such as Comcast, from favoring their own entertainment content over that of independents, such as the NFL Network. …[A ruling in favor of the NFL] could make it easier for independent programmers to gain access to cable systems, experts say.

This case is one of three that will be heard in the next few months by Judge Richard L. Sippel; another one, interestingly enough, involves MASN, the Orioles’ and Nationals cable network. After settling a separate federal suit against Comcast (over “split feed” advertising in the Baltimore and D.C. region) a little more than a year ago, MASN now wants Comcast to carry the channel in several southern Virginia markets.

With all the hubbub lately over steroid use in professional athletes, isn’t it a little surprising that random drug testing is so very rare in high school sports?

States including Texas and New Jersey have legislated the issue, but the programs are very expensive and difficult to implement, said Maryland Del. William J. Frank, a Baltimore County Republican.

Frank, who heads up Powered by ME!, a Towson-based nonprofit focused on steroid awareness in youth sports, said that for those reasons, he won’t bring the issue before his fellow lawmakers.

“You can get away with using substances and no one will catch you,” said Mike Gimbel, a substance abuse expert and consultant to Powered by ME!

Tell us what you think: Should Maryland require drug testing in high school sports?

KAREN BUCKELEW, Business Writer

It was THE perfect night for baseball… temperatures dropping through the 80s, a light breeze, the warm setting sun yielding to a light panoply of stars, and $11 seats three rows back from the field in my favorite stadium.

It’s sure not Oriole Park.

We’re maybe an hour’s drive west, at Frederick’s Harry Grove Stadium, a ninth the size of Baltimore’s purported baseball palace (which I have long bemoaned as grossly overrated, despite my masochistic love for the team in black and orange that plays there). Thursday night, the team that plays in Baltimore was losing 7-6 to the Red Sox in a game devoid of meaning, save for the Boston fans who find tickets easier to get for Oriole Park than for their own Fenway Park But I was in Frederick, with my daughter and son-in-law, for a game that mattered – though you’re unlikely to read much about it in big-city newspapers.

Just try to find news about the lowly Class-A Frederick Keys, who were seeking to sweep the equally lowly Wilmington Blue Rocks in their best-of-three Carolina League Northern Division Championship Series.

Now why blog about this game for THIS newspaper’s Web site? Well, a lot of people say baseball is a business, and we cover business. And the owner of that team down in Baltimore, he’s a lawyer (albeit, an increasingly unpopular lawyer), and we cover lawyers. And that team in Frederick – it’s an Oriole system farm team.

So it makes sense, sort of, to share a few insights gleaned from a starry night in Frederick, where a Keys pitcher with the unlikely name of Chorye Spoone took a no-hitter two outs into the ninth inning before giving up a solo home run. And then he was carried off the field by the team, which took the division championship in a 3-1 victory before an enthralled crowd of some 1,726 fans.

Yup, the stadium was just about one-third filled (or two-thirds empty).

Mary, a 50-something fan sitting with her husband in the second row, explained: “It’s a school night.”

I couldn’t tell you, offhand, who hit the Keys’ decisive two-run homer earlier in the game, or which of the Blue Rocks spoiled Spoone’s no-hitter. The bottom half of the scoreboard that used to have such information went on the fritz last year, according to our new friends in the second row. The field was refurbished this year, and the scoreboard is next year’s project, they said.

But it didn’t much matter. I’m sure it’ll show up on the Keys’ Web site, and in the hometown Frederick newspaper, maybe with pictures of the young ballplayers doing the champagne thing just outside the cinderblock entranceway to their locker room.

(Actually, as I passed by the celebration on my way to the free parking lot, it smelled a little too yeasty to be real champagne… and some of the players looked too young to do more than bathe in it.) They were having the time of their lives.

I had a pretty nice time, too. I was the guy with the loud kazoo, playing the theme “da-da-da-da-da-tah-da!” that leads up to the fans screaming “Charge!” (though what that has to do with baseball has long eluded me). In any case, my cheap kazoo seemed louder than the stadium P.A. system’s version. It was also a keen instrument for playing a funereal theme as the Blue Rocks pitcher was replaced late in the game.

The kazoo notes carried better in the night air than the whizzzzzz sound of the little plastic whistle I used for the Blue Rocks’ swinging strikeouts.

Shame it was a school night out there, in semi-small-town America, where the National Pastime was alive and well and nobody was getting rich.

Just enriched in spirit, the way it ought to be.

-DAVID ETTLIN, Special Correspondent

(Note: The Keys advanced to the Carolina League’s Mills Cup Champion Series, with the first two games scheduled this weekend in Frederick – at 7 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Ticket information here).