LHSAA needs to change its culture

The Louisiana High School Athletic Association had a busy week last week, slapping down punishments to two of its most prominent football programs.

Early last week, Brother Martin’s program was fined $1,000 and placed on one-year of probation for a recruiting violation. The school’s coach, Mark Bonis, was also ordered to take a LHSAA/NFHS online fundamentals of coaching course — a course he has to complete before being eligible to coach a game for the Crusaders.

Before the dust settled on the news at Brother Martin, the LHSAA shook the landscape again an hour later when it announced that Hahnville High School was hammered with penalties far more severe than those given to Brother Martin.

In the penalty ruling against the Tigers, the football program was fined $2,500. Coach Nick Saltaformaggio was suspended for four games to start the 2018 season and senior quarterback Andrew Robison was ruled ineligible for the entire season — his senior season.

Both rulings are under appeal. Final decisions will be made soon — maybe even by the time this newspaper hits your mailbox.

But the events of the past week indicate even further what coaches around the state have long agreed: there is widespread rule-breaking and cheating going on in Louisiana (from both public and private schools). Simply enforcing the rules in the LHSAA handbook would crack down on the violators and would eliminate the need for the public/private split.

The problem is the process by which an investigation is sparked. The LHSAA does not investigate he said/she said accusations, which makes it almost impossible for a school to be caught doing something wrong.

Look, I understand that if the LHSAA had to investigate every, single weirdo’s false accusations that they’d be budgeted out with a team of 100+ compliance officers and that’s just not feasible.

But I also know that some people’s verbal accusations have merit and make a whole lot of sense. I know this because I hear the complaints myself. There should be a better way to police accusations of recruiting and a lower burden of proof to start the ball rolling forward.

Doing this would make it more likely that rules are enforced because there would be a greater fear from schools that breaking compliance would be punished severely.

OK, so now, I have another suggestion — one which would ease the tensions of a lot of coaches locally.

It’s time that the LHSAA looks at banning immediate eligibility of student-athletes who are making “bonafide” cross-town transfers from one school in a parish to the next.

Item 1.12.1 in the LHSAA handbook says that “If a transfer takes place during the sport season in which the student has participated in at least one regular season interscholastic contest at the sending school, the student shall be ineligible in that sport for the remainder of the sport’s season in the receiving school. This would not apply to a student who has been deemed to have made a bona-fide move of a distance of 50 miles or more based on the distance from school to school.”

What this means is that if a season begins, you cannot transfer to a school and remain eligible unless your new school is more than 50 miles away from your old school and you’re moving there because of a “bonafide” move.

This rule should be expanded greatly and should include the offseason.

The LHSAA should look heavily into cross-town transfers around the state and they should study each case carefully and with a fine tooth comb.

Locally, this has taken like wildfire.

Players in several sports have transferred from one school to a neighboring school — without ever having to sit out a day of time. Some have even transferred multiple times without penalty. Some have started offseason training with one school, transferred just before a season began and remained eligible.

We are not just talking average Joe’s. We are talking difference makers — young men or women who are going to greatly change the athletic landscape locally.

The crutch being used is that the student-athletes are OK because they’re making a “bonafide move,” which waives the penalty of having to sit out, thus reinstating eligibility immediately.

In some cases, that’s valid, surely. Life happens and sometimes people need to move themselves or their families to other places. I am not alleging that any specific individual has done wrong.

But let’s be real. There’s a lot of bologna in this soup, too. A lot of these situations are being done for athletic reasons, which isn’t in the spirit of the rules.

In the past 12 months, we have seen some of the most talented student-athletes in our area in all sports move from one program to the neighboring school that’s just 10-15 miles away. Many have not had to lose a day of their eligibility.

I find it hard to believe that this is just a coincidence — especially given that this was never a significant problem until now.

It’s monkey-see, monkey-do and the utilization of a loophole in the process. One athlete does it, then others figure out how it was done, then replicate it.

It’s a growing problem and it’s one that needs to be stopped — now — by the LHSAA and schools in the area.

Coaches will never go on record about this problem, but I’ve spoken to dozens about this issue and they all have my back. The schools aren’t guilty in this. They are just coaching whoever is eligible in their locker rooms. There is no recruiting being done. It’s the student-athletes and families who have figured out how to use the rules to their advantage.

It’s time the LHSAA rules that there is no such thing as a “bonafide move” unless it’s a move that’s 50 or more miles away.

Other states have similar rules, but it’s time that we craft our own.

We need to stop immediate eligibility for cross-town transfers. It’s strongly affecting the legitimacy of the boundary lines in Terrebonne Parish — lines that some allege aren’t even being followed anyway.

But that’s another column for another day.

Louisiana High School Athletic Association Executive Director Eddie BonineCOURTESY

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