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June 17, 2016
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June 17, 2016
Last Wednesday was not a good day for the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, nor its future.
And that’s me being as nice about the situation as I’m allowed to be inside the confines of a newspaper setting.
I attended the association’s special meeting last week at the Crowne Plaza in Baton Rouge – a day designed to discuss the postseason format which would govern the LHSAA’s future.
It all started with promise. There was a lot of energy in the room to start the morning, and people seemed fairly hopeful that we’d leave the day with a solution that worked for all involved. There were four proposals on the agenda – each with unique, fresh ideas for how the association could stay united and move forward amidst rumors of a select-school breakoff in the future.
But it never panned out.
From promise, the tone quickly changed to confusion, as folks started to ask questions about the proposals.
From confusion, it changed to chaos, as a lot of the questions being asked didn’t have concrete answers.
From chaos, it changed to embarrassment that after planning a meeting and inviting all of the schools in the state to attend, no one on the podium representing the LHSAA had any idea what the heck was going on.
Throughout Wednesday’s meeting, authors of the proposed agenda items were invited to discuss their proposals. The idea was for discussion. The author was to explain his/her plan, while lobbying for why each was good for the state’s future.
OK, sounds reasonable.
After each recruiting pitch was heard, principals were then invited to pepper the authors with questions about the plans and how they’d be enacted, if voted into law.
And that’s when the trouble started.
For questions that didn’t have definitive answers, members of the LHSAA’s leadership regime interrupted the discussion in an attempt to clarify.
But those attempts often fell on deaf ears and led to more confusion than there was before.
Several times throughout the meeting, LHSAA President and Central Catholic principal Vic Bonnaffee was puzzled by questions and needed help from those around him to generate an answer.
That’s understandable to an extent, considering the complexity of the plans on the table. But when it happens two, three, four or even five times in a two-hour meeting, it made the association look like a Mickey Mouse operation.
Bonnaffee said initially that any proposal passed would go into effect immediately, meaning the 2016-17 athletic years would be impacted. He then corrected himself shortly thereafter to say that nothing voted into law would be in place until the 2017-18 athletic year – which confused the proposal’s authors who were under the assumption that change was possible right away.
“It was my understanding that this would go into effect immediately,” said Mandeville principal Bruce Bundy, the author of a private school multiplier plan. “That was my understanding of it all.”
Once that was established, the tone shifted and folks became annoyed. The consensus around the meeting room was that if change couldn’t be enacted until Aug. 2017, then why was there a meeting being held in June 2016 to discuss the issues?
“Why are we here?” a principal asked after learning that the plans weren’t effective until 2017.
We couldn’t get his name, because it was drowned out by the applause, which followed the statement.
Bonnaffee explained that he called the meeting after being urged by the LHSAA’s Executive Committee to do so amidst the chaos surrounding the state’s playoff format debate.
That’s not the case.
Shortly after making the statement, several members of the Executive Committee took to the microphone and said they didn’t demand a meeting, but that it was Bonnaffee’s doing to have everyone together for the vote.
Bonnaffee laughed as the committee members chimed in, before thanking them for the clarification.
The confusion was a turn-off to people making the decisions.
If the folks in power don’t know how proposed plans will work, then why should principals vote for them?
The discussion phase for each plan sealed the deal and ensured that the select/non-select split would stay – simply because no one else had any idea what the heck any of the other plans were, nor how they’d work.
Now, let’s talk about Executive Director Eddie Bonine.
Bonine didn’t say a word at the meeting. Literally nothing.
He didn’t take the microphone once, and during the question phase, he offered nothing in the way of explanations.
Throughout the meeting, Bonine sat on stage and shuffled furiously through an iPad, often staring downward as speakers gave their thoughts.
Folks, that’s bad business.
The LHSAA is in a world of hurt.
No one WANTS a split, but everyone concedes that it’s a necessary evil until rules are enforced and change is created.
So for the association’s leader to be a spectator during a major meeting about the future is telling – it’s a sign of the ineptitude that’s existed for years, which has allowed things to get as bad as they have in the state.
If our association’s executive director can’t address his constituents in a time of crisis, how can we expect him to investigate rule breakers in Louisiana and curb recruiting?
If our association’s president and his colleagues don’t know the rules, nor how to answer basic questions about the future, then how can we expect the future to be bright?
You just can’t.
Last Wednesday was an eye-opener for me. I knew the situation was bad, but I didn’t know how deep-rooted it’d all become.
It’s time the LHSAA looks in the mirror and gives itself an honest evaluation.
Doing that will allow them to see just how far they’ve sunk.
No. 6 Split widens in Louisiana prep sports
The Louisiana High School Athletic Association got even more divided in 2016.
State principals voted in January to expand the state’s football-only public/private split to now include all major sports – a move that ruffled the feathers of private schools around the state so much that studies were done to consider an alternative league.
School officials met again over the summer to discuss new ideas, but each presented plan failed again in favor of the split expansion – by an even wider margin than it did in January.
In 2017, the LHSAA will crown both public and private school champions in several sports for the first time in its history.
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