Valdosta is banned from the 2021 football playoffs unless it wins an appeal of Georgia High School Association penalties Monday, but the Wildcats aren’t the first football team to face postseason penalties.
The most recent was Grady High in 2014. The GHSA, under then-executive director Ralph Swearngin, forced the Knights to forfeit their 2013 victories and banned them from the playoffs after an Atlanta Public Schools investigation found that at least 14 football players used falsified residency documents to attend the school. Grady’s 2013 record went from 8-3 to 0-11.
As in the Valdosta case, the forfeits stemmed from the ineligible players’ participation in the previous season’s games.
Cedar Grove in 1995 also was banned from the postseason, but the Saints’ penalty didn’t entail forfeits from the previous season. Cedar Grove went 6-4 that season and would’ve played a first-round playoff game at home.
In 1976, four South Georgia schools – Tift County, Irwin County, Appling County and Perry – were fined $500 apiece, placed on probation and banned from the state playoffs for having a four-team preseason scrimmage in August. Those scrimmages now are legal, but were not in ’76.
Ruled on by GHSA executive director Bill Fordham, it was big news at the time because Irwin County was the defending Class A champion, and Tift County coach Gene Brodie had just won a state title himself as head coach at Central-Macon. He was in his first season at Tift County, a school that he would lead to a state title in 1983.
“We were in the wrong, and we’ll accept the penalty,’' Brodie told Gazette sports editor Gary Shelton. “What probation means is that if we do anything else wrong, we’ve had it. We aren’t going to do anything else wrong, though. It was our first scrimmage and our last.’'
Of the four teams, only Irwin County would’ve made region or state playoffs. The Indians finished 8-2 overall and 6-0 in its subregion, but Clinch County got the bid to play in the region championship game against Vidalia. Irwin County had beaten both teams in the regular season.
The most memorable postseason bans have taken place in boys basketball.
Southwest-Macon, coming off a state title in 1979 with a team some considered Georgia’s best in history, played in a postseason tournament that violated GHSA rules and was forced to sit out the 1980 playoffs. Milton, a 2012 champion, was banned from the 2013 playoffs because of recruiting violations.
Valdosta has appealed the penalties, which include $7,500 in fines. The GHSA cited Valdosta for recruiting players and lack of institutional control and declared five players ineligible.
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