Commentary: In support of snitches exposing cheaters in high school sports

In case you haven’t noticed, Municipal Section Commissioner Vicky Lagos has received numerous emails and phone calls revealing the violation of CIF rules during the football playoffs, resulting in five teams, and possibly a sixth, withdrawing.

Yes, some people have been holding on for weeks to news about athletes playing in outside leagues in violation of CIF Rule 600, which is not good. If you know something, say it immediately, because entire teams have been affected by withholding information until the playoffs.

This delay until just before the playoffs or during the playoffs has been going on for years. People wait to see if their favorite team is directly affected by a playoff loss, and then they spill the beans. This is wrong on so many levels.

But the only way to expose corruption and cheating is for insiders to speak out, and that is surely necessary these days in the world of high school sports, where rumors of school promoters paying tuition, arranging housing and finding jobs for parents are commonplace to induce switching schools, known as undue influence.

The usual response from those caught cheating is “it’s for the kids,” “everyone does it,” or “the ends justify the means.”

Absurdity. The last defense against cheating is the director, who is supposed to have had enough training to understand the difference between right and wrong and who has the courage to follow the rules and get rid of people who place ambition and victory over right and wrong.

In a perfect world this would happen, but it’s not a perfect world, so rumors of wrongdoing continue and the only way to catch cheaters is for people to come forward with evidence to prevent someone from filing a lawsuit to defend their cheating.

It doesn’t matter now who to blame. Some criticize the media for not investigating or publicizing who wins year after year among transfer students. Some accuse the section commissioners of supposedly having a bias in favor of the great powers in order to make money from them. Some accuse the rules themselves of being outdated in an era of change at the college level, even though it is the high schools themselves that approve the rules.

It’s a balancing act that’s been going on for years. I’ve been writing about transfers since the 1980s. There are many more now – more than 17,000 statewide last year. Most transfers are legal and do not require recruitment. Parents have school choice and can transfer their children to any school of their choice. It’s when they try to evade or break the rules without a legitimate change of residence that problems arise.

The coaches know the rules. Excuses that they don’t know are not acceptable. They undergo training in many areas before being hired. And if they don’t view Rule 600 regarding playing in an outside league as not being legal during the season, then they are wrong.

Most of the time, the municipal section is where violations are discovered, as most schools are in the Los Angeles Unified School District. This makes it easier to investigate and take action than in the southern section, which has to rely on individual schools to police themselves.

So we are in a difficult situation. People who come forward are called narcissists, gossipers and snitches. Too bad if you don’t like it. Sometimes we need brave people to clean up existing messes. And there’s a big mess that needs to be cleaned up in high school sports.