In a world of sports where sneaker companies sign five-year-olds to multi-year endorsement deals and where baseball players pump themselves full of steroids, fans everywhere should be used to these sickening stories. Yet, in Louisiana, in the midst of the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, there’s one story that would make even the numbest of fans downright queasy.
Imagine your favorite game, your school and your home being swept away by a stage-five hurricane. Desolation and despair mark your neighborhood, and even your beloved New Orleans Saints are forced to move away. So you go too. Not because you want to go to a different school or because you want to play football. You move because you have to.
That’s what quarterback Randall Mackey did when he transferred from Port Vincent to his new high school 400 miles north, Bastrop High. Randall adjusted nicely to his new setting—on the gridiron, at least. He threw for over 2,000 yards and 27 touchdowns as a sophomore, was named first team All-State and led Bastrop to the 4A state championship for the first time since 1927.
Sounds like a heart-warming story right? Well not if you’re the Louisiana High School Athletic Association. The LHSAA is erasing Bastrop’s state championship under the allegations that Bastrop assistant coaches illegally recruited some of the team’s best players, like Randall Mackey, to come to their school to play football after their old schools had been washed away. These are allegations supposedly made by rival high school coaches still bitter about Bastrop’s shiny trophy. The LHSAA is also revoking the eligibility of the players in question. This would likely ruin the chances of Blue Chip prospects to get recruited to Division I schools and maybe wipe away the chance of a lucrative NFL career.
After Katrina, by rule, players could transfer and play anywhere within the state and retain their eligibility. Just about every high school team had evacuees come play for them. So would any team that had a player who helped them win a championship be under scrutiny for violating the residency transfer rule? Probably, because coaches will do anything to make sure their team ends up in the books. And that’s what should make stomachs everywhere turn.
The thing is, how do you recruit illegally when the area you are recruiting was just hit by the worst natural disaster this country has ever seen? Who cares if coaches traveled hundreds of miles and went into shelters to offer these kids—kids, not athletes—housing, clothes and money? Doesn’t that sound a little bit more like aid than illegal recruitment? You cannot punish the kids. You can’t take away their title, never mind their chance to play the game they love. Football is what keeps these kids going, and it’s what gives their families the hope of an otherwise unaffordable, first-rate education. You can’t take that from Randall Mackey who, as a 16-year-old, could be the next Michael Vick. Who knows? Now maybe no one ever will.
If the coaches took these kids from Katrina’s waste and used them for their own personal gain then shame on them. But taking kids out of poverty and bringing them somewhere they can play a game that they love and helps distract them from the horrors of home: that’s a good thing no matter what the motive. We should all have been so kind as to find six or seven kids from New Orleans and give them an easier life.
