We tried to tell you in a 2003 report that this trend of blue-chip athletes changing schools to play with other blue-chip athletes would destroy the integrity of high school sports.
By any conservative estimate, more than a hundred of metro Atlanta’s best players have transferred since then to form “super” teams in various sports. South Georgia basketball teams, barring a Hoosiers-like run, have no chance. If the metro transfer trend continues in football, it will be the same story.
What’s next? Twelve-year-olds holding hat ceremonies to tell us where they are going to play high school ball?
It’s a glaring issue that has been given sporadic attention by the GHSA and its 50-member executive committee. Yet, neighborhood schools no longer compete against neighborhood schools. The playing fields are not level.
The GHSA seems to believe that it is powerless to do anything about the issue, especially legitimate moves, where the parent(s) and the athlete actually move into the new school’s district. Make transfers sit a year? Won’t hold up in court.
But here are some suggestions for slowing the trend:
- Hire an investigator. The GHSA’s stance when schools complain about illegal transfers? You go prove it. In 2007, Pike County and McEachern proved it after a coach and booster club hired private detectives to follow high school kids. And recent incidents suggest that the problems have not gone away. Make the parent(s) go to great lengths to prove to this new GHSA investigative officer (not high school principals) that a move is legitimate. Make the transfer process slow ... and painful. And enforce the rules that are on the books.
- Limit booster-club money and eliminate the shoe/athletic apparel contracts. When we last checked, the 20 most successful football programs in the state were funded by booster clubs with annual budgets surpassing six figures, many in the $300,000-$600,000 range. Shoe contracts were bringing thousands in merchandise. And the transfer rich were getting richer.
- Allow only one out-of-state trip for each sport. The “super” basketball teams that have developed in metro Atlanta are playing multi-trip national schedules, backed by booster funding, and the top players are transferring to be part of it.
And if that doesn’t slow the trend, let’s take this step to give my non-metro brethren a fighting chance.
Turn the entire state into a metro Atlanta, and let kids play where they want to play. I want to see Lowndes send its best athletes to Valdosta; Houston County and Northside-Warner Robins send their top players to Warner Robins; Camden County get the best players from Waycross and Brunswick; and Peach County add about 15 football players from Taylor County, Crawford County and Perry.
And then (while Rome burns) we can begin calling this high school thing what it’s fast becoming.
College.
Tim Ellerbee, who manages sports, news and business external-content providers for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, transferred his senior year of high school after being offered a tuition waiver to play basketball for a private school.
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