The news on the SB 684 bill has been out for over a week. For those who missed it, the bill was approved by the Florida Senate after our last issue had went to press.
The “choice in sports” bill was approved unanimously and with little discussion. It allows parents to enroll their children in any school in Florida — as long as there’s room — regardless of where they live, so long as they’re involved in a sport or other extracurricular activity. And it wouldn’t be called the “choice in sports” bill if not for the fact that it gives great power to the programs.
Sure, there are some benefits from the passing of this bill. It allows students that can maintain at least a 2.0 GPA to switch athletic programs as they wish, and I’d be naïve to suggest that athletes all over Florida haven’t been stuck in situations they wished they could leave. This will allow the state’s most talented athletes to easily join programs that will give them the most exposure, leading to better collegiate opportunities.
Perhaps there are parents out there that truly want their kids to get a better education at another school, even if it means going to school in another zone, without having to jump through too many hoops. And the bill also accommodates homeschooled students, allowing them to play for whichever FHSAA-governed school’s teams they wish.
But there are plenty of reasons why athletic directors hate this bill, as I learned when the bill was brought up last summer, and I spoke at length with Durant’s Todd Long.
It does make the process of recruiting athletes from other schools easier. It doesn’t necessarily make it legal, but there’s now little to stop the coaches that are only concerned about whether or not they get caught.
“A student who transfers to a school during the school year may seek to immediately join an existing team if the roster for the specific interscholastic or intrascholastic extracurricular activity has not reached the activity’s identified maximum size and if the coach for the activity determines that the student has the requisite skill and ability to participate,” the bill says. “The FHSAA and school district may not declare such a student ineligible because the student did not have the opportunity to comply with qualifying requirements.”
You’re stripping the FHSAA and school administrators of roughly all of their power with this move, transferring it to the coaches. There is no way that this power will not be abused by someone, somewhere.
Likewise, giving students the opportunity to jump to another school on a whim can hurt the students that are suddenly out of playing time, or even a roster spot, because of it. The obvious answer is for those students to switch schools and join another team, but that’s not always a realistic option for the families.
A Hernando County colleague of mine recently touched on the fact that, should too many of a school’s best athletes go to one school while much of the rest go to another, you could be looking at underfunding and understaffing. I’m not sure this is something that would happen right away, or at a large enough scale to wreck an entire school, but it could spell doom for many athletic programs around the county. We already see golf, wrestling and other programs struggling for participation, and this is not going to help.
In fact, the way the bill is currently worded, students can join programs “immediately.” So, a student could play football at Plant City, basketball at Strawberry Crest and baseball at Durant in one year, and then start over again for the following year. Did the Senate just create another AAU system?
While it’s likely that no student will actually do that, the fact that loophole language like this was approved with no Senate discussion is mystifying.
Many homeschooled students participate in athletic leagues specifically created for the purpose of giving them an organized sports experience, such as F.I.S.H. Now that they’re able to join public schools’ programs, I wouldn’t be surprised if some Florida-based homeschool leagues eventually have to fold.
An optimistic acquaintance of mine, with no connection to prep sports, said that he’d like to see the bill drive schools to compete academically to attract students and parents. Maybe I’m just pessimistic about it, but the chances of that both happening and actually working on a large scale are about as good as Wile E. Coyote’s chances of catching the Roadrunner.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the FHSAA needs to make a lot of changes, but murdering it with this bill is not the right solution.
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.