Roy Exum
I’ve never been a big fan of the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association. I have studied and followed the doing of the state’s governing body for high school athletics for 50 years and, when the legislative council gathered in Murfreesboro on Thursday to renew the argument over the split between public and private schools, it was the same old farce.
The legislative council uses “Russian Rules” to decide issues regarding the public and private high schools in the state.
“Russian Rules” mean that all nine members are from public schools and not only is there not one “private school” representative on the legislative council, the same is true for the nine-member board of control. Everybody with a vote is from the same political party. The public schools hold every card. There is a word for such governance but suffice me to say it is vulgar.
This isn’t to say that Soddy Daisy High principal Danny Gilbert, who is a dandy guy for what that’s worth, doesn’t hold the best interests of such schools as Baylor, Boyd-Buchanan, Chattanooga Christian and other private schools to heart. I think Danny wants what is good for everybody but he’s caught in a tightening vice. For example, Meigs County football coach Jason Fitzgerald is adamant when he says, "At some point they have to listen to what the majority of their members want, and that's a complete split.”
For half a century I’ve hated the public-private split. In Tennessee nobody knows who has the best baseball team at the end of the season because the public winner and the private winner cannot play one another. There are three states in the country like this, the other two being Louisiana and New Jersey. I think that is crummy, not to mention biased and prejudiced, because the real truth is the public schools’ coaches and administrators despise the private schools.
Not only do private schools like Baylor and McCallie have Taj Mahal athletic facilities, the widespread recruiting and hidden scholarships – wink wink – make the public schools shake with anger. Coaches don’t want their “poor kids” losing to “rich kids,” and ever since the Roman Empire there has been visible disdain between the “haves” and the “have nots.”
The TSSAA’s meeting on Thursday was clearly a fiasco. TSSAA head Bernie Childress, in an effort to present “all the information on five proposals,” blundered badly when he allowed the meeting to exceed five hours, prompting Times Free Press sports editor Stephan Hargis to tweet, “I've sat through Pentecostal tent revival sermons that were shorter.”
As is often the case when any gathering lasts more than 120 minutes, the result was total confusion, according to numerous accounts. It was reported 150 pages of “information” was handed out and the only guy who was happy was TSSAA attorney Rick Colbert who bills in 15-minute increments. My heavens, what are these august educators thinking? And you wonder why students across the state are bored and uneducated?
The TSSAA presented “information” that revealed when public schools play private schools in heads-up competition, the public schools lose 63 percent of the time. Childress told the Nashville Tennessean, it isn’t just about establishing a level playing field, it is about state championships and the fact the private schools have an edge. “We think it’s about championships, and who's winning those championships. You can’t say it is not about championships when the next thing out of your mouth is, ‘Look how many independent schools won championships.'”
Jeremy Luttrell, a council member who is principal at Watertown High School near Lebanon, bemoaned the fact the TSSAA cannot make a final decision everybody will like. “My goal is to do what is best for high school athletics – not individual schools, not public schools, not private schools, but what is best for Tennessee and what is best for student athletes.”
If student-athletes is the goal, why does the TSSAA ban kids who get financial aid from competition? What are you going to do about magnet schools, open-enrollment schools, home-schooled kids like Tim Tebow, and a myriad of other concerns?
I am thinking Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam needs to intervene, appoint a blue-chip panel, and study why other state high school athletics don’t insist on throwing daggers, curses, obstacles and turmoil at its membership year after year.
Until that happens, Tennessee’s student-athletes will forever wonder which school has the best football team in the state and why the TSSAA has been allowed for years to govern under “Russian Rules” that shun and shut out every private school across the state. The only thing that is worse is that both the Legislative Council and the Board of Control are school principals. May the Lord save us all.
royexum@aol.com