LHSAA may be seeing its end

The 11th hour is here, and in the next 24 hours, the future of the Louisiana High School Athletic Association will be set – at least we think.

This morning in Baton Rouge, principals and athletic directors from around the state will conduct a special meeting to consider four proposals that could possibly govern the association’s future rules in regard to the hotly controversial topic of postseason format.

Of course, if this sounds like a reprint of a previous column, that’s because it is.

The association’s principals voted in January at the LHSAA Annual Convention to split all of Louisiana’s major sports under the public/private banner – a vote that carried with greater than a 60 percent margin.

But since that time, Louisiana private schools have partaken in a five-month petition, centered around threats that if the vote wasn’t overturned, they’d make their own league – one with open enrollment for anyone free to join.

Those threats caused the LHSAA’s Executive Committee to converge in the spring to consider scheduling a special meeting to reconsider the association’s future format, while also hearing other ideas about how the future should unfold.

So that brings us to the present – the calm before the storm that’s about to ensue. How will the votes fall? I honestly couldn’t tell you. I’d be paid much more than I am if I could definitively answer that question.

But one thing is for certain – no matter how things align, Wednesday, June 8, 2016, will be a historic day for the century-old LHSAA, which has been under attack for the past several seasons, dating back to the inception of the public/private split in football.

To me, the situation is frustrating, because as an outsider looking in, I think the entire ordeal is much ado about nothing. Coming up with split proposals and ways to make the association fairer and more balanced are not necessary.

All the association really needs to do is get firm, grow a backbone and enforce the policies it maintains in its own rulebook.

Failure to do that consistently is why we’ve seen this problem get to the point which it is today.

Failure to punish the rule-breaking minority is why in August, the association’s membership may be crushed under the boots of the new league that may form.

Go to www.lhsaa.org and flip open the organization’s handbook, which is located on the top-right toolbar that sits above the banner.

In it, one can easily see that the association knows right from wrong and fair from unfair.

The association outlines in its rulebooks that recruiting is prohibited and that any effort to sway a player is a violation that can result in fines, loss of practice time, forfeiture of games and much more.

OK, that’s good.

But also within the rulebook and through precedent from previous cases, it’s established that allegations of recruiting are handled on a case-by-case basis, but no investigations will ever be started on he-said, she-said cases.

That, to me, is where the problem lies.

The burden of guilt and innocence in these cases should be changed, and the association has to do a little more to tighten its clams on allegations of violations. Right now, it’s virtually impossible to be caught doing anything wrong.

That, of course, means that the hoodlums have free reign to run the asylum, which has created and enabled some of the factory programs that exist around the state today.

I’m not calling for witch-hunts, nor am I saying that any phony claim should result in action.

But I am calling for common sense. If a kid transfers and there’s a little smoke on the fireplace regarding the circumstances, investigate it. If there’s a lot of gossip going on about certain people and programs, don’t assume that it’s all lies, assume that there’s some truth to it all and take a look.

Hell, just make an effort. The current system of “you can only be caught if you’re caught red-handed” is lazy, inept and 100 percent the reason why the association has been slowly burning to the ground in the past few years.

And look, I don’t want my comments to make it seem like I’m anti-private schools. That’s not the case. I’m anti-cheating and pro-fairness.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that all private schools cheat. Hell, I think the Houma-Thibodaux area has four private high schools that all run solid athletic programs that are free from the violations.

Likewise, I’m also not naïve enough to believe that the only rule breakers come from the private school system.

That isn’t true either. Public schools bend and twist the rules, too, when necessary, to try and gain a competitive advantage.

So with all of that said, it’s time the association gets out of the planning stages and gets into execution mode.

Pick a plan – any plan, and put rules on the table for the schools to live with.

And from there, enforce what’s in place and punish the heck out of rule breakers.

Because that, folks, is where the state’s true problem lies.

We don’t have a postseason problem.

We have an enforcement problem.

And until it’s fixed, any plan voted into place will fail. •

Follow Casey on Twitter for more. 

Username: @casey_gisclair​