Better Adults

Today’s post is not about medicine or HumorMD Jr. (more to come I promise). I saw something on the news that I wanted to highlight today, as it is a local story here in South Carolina. For those of you that don’t know, the best high school football team in the state this year was Goose Creek High School. They were undefeated and nationally ranked. They had already won their first round playoff match up with Conway and were headed to the next round tomorrow night.

This week, Goose Creek High school officials discovered that a student might be ineligible. He had transferred in this year and had been to several schools in the past few years, making the task of gathering all of his grades a bit onerous. He had appeared to be eligible at first but ultimately was not after getting all of his records. To the credit of Goose Creek High School, they did the right thing. They self reported to the SCHSL (high school sports governing body here in SC). They also applied for a waiver from being disqualified as there was no ill intent and had not gained any competitive advantage. This has been done several times before and has been granted before.

It is here that this story takes a terrible turn. In an amazing display, the SCHSL voted to disqualify Goose Creek from the playoffs. To make matters worse, they actually got a second chance to vote on it and again voted the same way. The SCHSL will not release details, of course, but they state that a “clerical error” is to blame for the player initially being declared eligible.

Really? Is that what the SCHSL is about? A group that is designated to oversee the integrity of high school sports is going to disqualify a team, end the seniors football careers, over a clerical error that gave them no advantage and had nothing to do with the kids? Mentally, I draw a line between blatant cheating and clerical errors. Disqualify them if they were intentionally looking the other way to let star players still be out there, but don’t hand out the same punishment for a paperwork error with no ill intent. There are different levels of punishment in our legal system for a reason. You have to make the crime fit the punishment.

All of this reminds me of a great saying by Coach Bobby Knight. His temper may be famous, but most of the players that played for him swear that nobody cared more about them than him. On the David Letterman show he was asked what he thought about “kids these days” that are too entitled. His answer was spot on. He said, “It’s not a problem with the kids. It’s a problem with the adults.” As adults (thought I am a young one), we are responsible for happens to our kids. South Carolina high school sports does not have a kid problem. It has an adult problem.