You may have heard about HB 7137 before you picked up today’s paper. You certainly have if you work in high school athletics, or if you’re involved with them in another way.
HB 7137 would have overhauled the FHSAA by neutering the organization. Student athletes would have been able to choose what school to attend based on the athletics program, and home schooled and Florida virtual school would have been able to attend the school of their choice for athletics, rather than be limited to attending the school in their attendance zone.
I’ve talked to athletic directors, coaches and more about this bill, analyzed all 30-something pages, and at the end of the day, I still don’t understand the need for this.
What’s the point of fixing a broken bone with open heart surgery?
I knew this was going to be a fiery issue when Durant athletic director Todd Long called me last Wednesday evening to talk about the bill. Normally one to stay out of politics, Long was so concerned about this bill he’s written several letters to our representatives about it.
He called it the “death of high school sports.”
I’d call it more of a “transformation.”
Luckily for Long and others, the bill was killed in the Senate after it adjourned without voting on its version of the legislation Friday, May 1.
Don’t get me wrong: There really is a need to fix the Florida High School Athletic Association. I’m not the biggest fan of the governing body, myself, after witnessing several awful management procedures that had a direct effect on an on-field product. If I can’t convince you that the FHSAA can, at times, have a maddeningly large blind spot where it should see common sense, go have a chat with Meg Jordan and anyone who was a part of the Plant City girls golf team in 2013, when a player was disqualified for signing the wrong scorecard, dropping the team out of state championship contention.
What we could have gotten was a model that, in a way, mirrors that of college sports. It was actually more player-friendly than college sports, in that the transfer requirements were far more lax, but there are some problems with using this model in high school that do not apply to college.
This bill’s relaxed stance on transfer requirements meant that there would almost certainly have been an open high school recruiting scene. It’s not that recruiting doesn’t happen already, but that it will become much more visible. This, of course, could have led to what Long calls “mega-teams” forming for certain sports. What talented, possibly overlooked football player wouldn’t want to play for Plant or Armwood if he felt he wasn’t being given a chance to shine on his sub-.500 team? With a no sit-out clause like the NCAA’s, such teams could have formed quickly.
It would have benefitted some school sports — perhaps even Durant’s vaunted baseball and volleyball squads — and kneecapped others. I could see a bill like this doing more harm than good, and that’s not even counting the effect that having three or four great teams per sport in the county would do to the overall level of parity.
It also would have let players remain enrolled in their current school while playing a sport for another, so long as their current school does not offer that sport. Simply put, if HB 7137 passed, Plant City student Maddy Middie could have joined Durant’s lacrosse team, changing nothing about her curriculum but her after-school drive.
Again, that was potentially good news for some students. But since Durant’s lacrosse team is no longer a club team and now a full-fledged school sport, the school would not have received the FTE money it normally would if a student were to transfer. That would make upkeep tricky.
The bill seemed to be far more favored by state reps than coaches and athletic directors. I could practically hear the sigh of relief being breathed by the FHSAA, though it is possible that an altered version of the bill could be introduced sometime in the future.
I recognize that some athletes would truly stand to benefit from a bill like that, but I also know that it would hurt many more. I’d be willing to bet that many of our younger readers would have had a heck of a time trying to make the final cut on a roster.
Let’s find a way to fix the FHSAA and its inconsistencies, but let’s not go for something as extreme as HB 7137 was.