Commentary: In support of snitches exposing cheaters in high school sports
· Yahoo Sports
In case you haven't noticed, the City Section commissioner, Vicky Lagos, has been receiving lots of emails and phone calls exposing the breaking of CIF rules during the soccer playoffs, resulting in five teams, and possibly a sixth, having to forfeit games.
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Yes, some people hung on to the information for weeks of athletes playing in outside leagues in violation of CIF bylaw 600, which isn't good. If you know something, say something immediately, because entire teams have been affected by witholding the information until the playoffs.
This delay until right before the playoffs or during the playoffs has been going on for years. People wait until they see if their favorite team is directly affected with a loss in the playoffs, then they spill the beans. It's wrong on so many levels.
But the only way to expose corruption and cheating is for insiders to speak up, and it's surely needed these days in the world of high school sports, where rumors of school boosters paying for tuition, arranging for housing and finding jobs for parents is rampant as an incentive to switch schools, which is called undue influence.
The usual answer by those caught cheating is "it's for the kids," or "everyone does it," or "the end justify the means."
Nonsense. The last defense to the cheating is the principal, who supposedly went through enough training to understand the difference between right and wrong and has the courage to follow rules and get rid of people who who place ambition and winning over right from wrong.
Read more:'It's a big mess': City Section soccer playoffs rocked by forfeits
In a perfect world, that would happen, but it's not a perfect world, so the rumors of wrongdoing continue and the only way to catch cheaters is for people to come forward with evidence to prevent someone from filing a lawsuit in defense of their cheating.
It doesn't really matter anymore on whom to place blame. Some blame media for not investigating or giving publicity to those winning year after year with transfer students. Some blame the section commissioners for supposedly having a bias in favor of the powerhouses to make money off them. Some blame the rules themselves as being outdated at a time of changes at the college level even though it's the high schools themselves that approve the rules.
It's all a balancing act that has been going on for years. I've been writing about transfers since the 1980s. There's just a lot more now — more than 17,000 statewide last year. Most transfers are legal with no recruiting involved. Parents are allowed school choice and can move their children to any school they want. It's when they try to evade or break the rules without a legitimate change of residence that problems result.
Coaches know the rules. Excuses they didn't know are not acceptable. They go through training in many areas before being hired. And if they don't address rule 600 about playing in an outside league as not being legal during the season, then they are mistaken.
Most of the time, it's the City Section where violations are uncovered, because most of the schools are in the Los Angeles Unified School District, so it's easier to investigate and take action than it is in the Southern Section, which has to rely on the individual schools to police themselves.
So we're in a predicament. People who come forward are called narcs, tattletales and snitches. Too bad if you don't like it. Sometimes we need people with courage to clean up the mess that exist. And there's a big mess that needs to be cleaned up in high school sports.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.