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Why encourage football corruption earlier than we have to?

Posted By Scott Warnock On In sports,virtual children by Scott Warnock | 7 Comments

I walk the line of liking (and, I guess believing) in youth sports while feeling that big-time sports structures in our culture are broken. What can we do? Well, stop watching. I never watch college football or basketball, on principle, for instance. Feeble gesture, indeed, and I don’t chastise friends (too much) for their viewing preferences, especially in light of my addiction to the violent, shameless NFL. But when I read a recent piece by Philadelphia Inquirer high schools spots writer Phil Anastasia about out-of-state high school football games, I was dismayed.

(Note: for best results, read this first: “Out-of-state football games: An in thing?” [1].)

I appreciate Anastasia’s regular coverage of South Jersey sports, but I was troubled by his January 26 “Out-of-state” piece. In that article, he makes a thinly veiled argument that out-of-state high school football games are the, well, up-and-coming “in thing” to do, particularly advocating that a school he writes about a lot, St. Joe’s in Hammonton, travel to Ohio. With the scandals that are a regular part of collegiate sports, I wondered how a high school sports writer could advocate anything that smacks of similar excesses.

The out-of-balance nature of what he’s advocating is evidenced by the very existence of the piece itself. Plain and simple, it’s not football season right now. Even though 90 high school basketball games and wrestling matches were contested on January 25, the Sunday, January 26 Inquirer dedicated almost as much space to this out-of-season-football piece as to its coverage of all of these events combined – even including a piece Anastasia himself wrote about a boy’s basketball game.

The article doesn’t come right out and support travel to Steubenville, Ohio for St. Joe’s, but it is loaded with references about how great it would be to do just that. Steubenville football itself is built up plenty, described as one of the most “fabled programs in Ohio.”

Oddly, buried in the midst of the fanfare is this sentence about that “fabled” program: “The Big Red football team also was in the middle of a rape case that drew national attention in 2012” (that rape case is a pathetic tale [2]). Where did that line come from? Did an editor feel a pang of guilt and insert it, as it appears out of context and is completely erased with the next sentence, in which Anastasia reaffirms that “this out of state stuff” could take St. Joe’s “to another level.”

Interestingly to me, Anastasia has written about this particular program before, most recently a few months ago when he all but taunted public school football teams that don’t want to play St. Joe’s – ignoring, mostly, that these public school teams, for better or worse, are forced to play by a different set of rules as to who can be on their team. They are bound by their districts.

I do wonder why  Anastasia has written numerous pieces, often out of season, about St. Joe’s football. I guess I’m annoyed that in the micro world of high school sports, maybe the only time in a youth athlete’s career to get a little press, while all these actual high school stories unfolded that Saturday, the Inquirer chose – and it was a choice – to run a long piece arguing that an out-of-season sports team play a program from another state with a sordid history. I know, I know: But it’ll be fun!

I’m more frustrated about the main point of the piece itself. To Mr. Anastasia, I say this: If the people who pay tuition so their kids can get an education at St. Joe’s want to support their football team’s travels for interstate games, that indeed is their choice. But at a time when the lens is increasingly focused on the pure corruption and greed of big-time collegiate sports – darn, even Sports Illustrated is coming to its senses –  I think it’s irresponsible for the Inquirer to promote these excesses at the high school level.

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Scott Warnock [6]

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.
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