Hoops transfers: It's a joke

By Ed Piper

Actually, it's obscene.

But in today's world of the Internet and social media, everything is linked, passed on, quoted from, exaggerated...

So, to avoid sounding alarmist, I titled this piece, "It's a joke."

The count of almost 50 San Diego high school basketball players transferring to a new school this year is ridiculous. One school, Christian High, has four transfers who didn't even attend the school last year. That's in a sport that only puts five players out on the court at a time.

Morse's coach is comical. Carl Fisher is quoted as saying, "I'm surprised by it all." He is on the dumbfounded receiving end of three transfer starters. Oh, give me a break.

Regular readers of this column know my heart-felt convictions. As a long-time public school teacher, now retired, and a citizen intensely interested and concerned for the welfare of our young people, I have spoken out against the professionalization of college (and high school) sports, as I see it.

I am for interscholastic and youth sports to be a healthy avenue for young people to participate, grow in skills, experience competition, and play with their friends.

I am against the massive amounts of shoe, agent, and other untoward money flooding into amateur sports at all levels to gain undue influence or to warp the nature of those sports; the over-specialization in sports by kids whose parents hire personal coaches, have highlight videos made, and shop their progeny around to colleges--all increasing the intense pressure already on teens from academics, other extracurricular activities, family obligations, and just the challenges of growing up.

When I began writing for my college newspaper in 1973, the Chico State Wildcat, I wrote pieces assailing the mistreatment, as I saw it, of amateur athletes, whether it came from racism, misguided coaching actions, or an overemphasis on big-money college sports programs at the expense of intramural sports, healthy non-organized sports involvement, etc.

Alongside all this, I have always enjoyed sports, growing up playing them as a child and teenager, and enjoying spectating throughout my adult life. So I'm not an anti-sports guy; I'm an anti-bad sports guy.

My new poster boy of the present insane state of high school athletics (in this case, basketball) is Lawrence Edwards, some poor chap who has transferred, not once, but twice: from O'Farrell, to Christian, to Morse.

Jaylen Hands, my previous poster boy for this abuse, as I see it, of prep sports eligibility, graduated last June and is now playing as a freshman at UCLA. He similarly played for three high schools in four years.

The root cause for all this silliness: parents willing to hire a lawyer to sue CIF so that their child can play at another high school. Isn't that ridiculous? A dad or a mom, or both, would get an attorney to take the interscholastic sports organization to court.

And what's driving these families willing to call a lawyer at the drop of a hat? Loss of perspective, a view that "my Jimmy" or "my Janie" should be the centerpiece of the team or the favored part of the puzzle. It's a very "me-me-me" and "my son/my daughter" culture in many respects.

I don't blame CIF for throwing up its hands. All 10 sections of CIF in the state couldn't continue to pay for lawyers to respond to every parent's legal challenge in favor of their son or daughter.

So now the only limitation on a teen student-athlete--and I use the term loosely for boys and girls who shop with their parents from school to school--is moving into the attendance area of the particular school they desire to move to. Otherwise, they have to sit out the first 30 days of the season. Big deal.

For Morse's coach, I guess he gets payback after losing seven-footer Brandon McCoy to Cathedral Catholic two years ago.

Would I take a different tack if the basketball and football teams at the school I cover received a lot of transfers? I don't think so. I have felt pretty strongly about high school and youth sports being for the kids since I was a nascent journalist in college and before. It's the adults who mess things up.

Unfortunately, the kids who learn to leave their present circumstances for "greener pastures" elsewhere grow up taking these attitudes into their adult life, probably passing them on to their own kids eventually.

Here's to homegrown, stay-at-home talent.