There's a power struggle currently playing out between the Florida Legislature and the Florida High School Athletic Association, the governing body of high school sports. Earlier this year, the Legislature passed a law that allows any school to join the FHSAA on a per-sport basis. The old rules stated the schools had to join as full members. The association shot back recently by banning those schools from playoffs.
Here is an interview with Kelly Parsons, a Tampa Bay Times sportswriter who has written about this issue:
The Legislature and the FHSAA have sort of been at odds over this education bill for quite some time now. And among other things the law now allows for schools to be opt-in members of the FHSAA, which means that they can choose to be members on a per-sport basis. So for example, if a school wants to be a member for every sport but boys basketball then they would be entitled to do that. Under the old policy, you had to be all in or all out, so you could not choose to be in for some sports and not for others. In the language of the new law, it states that the FHSAA cannot discourage these schools from being a part of other athletic conferences. So, for example, the Sunshine State Athletic Conference, which is a conference that a lot of times private and charter schools join, have their own form of a playoff if they're too small to compete fairly in a district in the FHSAA. So basically the FHSAA is saying, it's listed in a chart on their membership forms for the 2016-2017 school year for charter and private schools, it lists the benefits of being a partial member and it lists the benefits of being a full member. And according to that chart on their membership forms, partial members, which these opt-in schools would be considered, are not allowed to compete in the state playoff series. So according to the Legislature , that's the FHSSA discouraging the schools from being opt-in members and that's the problem at hand.
The new Florida law allows schools to opt into the F HSC per sport. Now the association doesn't like that. Why not?
To be quite honest, I'm not sure why the FHSAA cares about whether a school decides to be opt-in or not. To me it seems like it might give them more members if a school is small and decides they want to opt-in for just some sports and not others. I spoke with [Tampa-area Republican] Rep. Ross Spano and the way he put it is that the FHSAA has been in charge of high school athletics for so long, they've been around since 1920, and that the way he sees it is that perhaps the FHSAA just doesn't like being told what to do in terms of how it runs its organization. And now that they are, they're just sort of fighting back. It might just be, you know, a power struggle. You know it's definitely causing some some major disagreement.
What are lawmakers saying about the recent ban and what could they do about it?
In talking with Rep. Spano, who was one of the backers of the bill, he said that they were in talks with the FHSAA to say trying to get some cooperation to happen over this issue. He said they've been kind of working on it for quite some time and haven't reached anything yet. He said he would let me know if they did and that was early [last] week and I haven't heard otherwise. So he said that basically FHSAA is a state-run body and that if they aren't going to cooperate, the Legislature might have to go in a different direction, which would be a really big deal because the FHSAA has been around since 1920. He [Spano] also mentioned the possibility for litigation. We'll see in the next coming weeks. But I imagine it will probably move fast because you know they're going to want to figure this out before the next school year comes up.
Can schools fight back if they feel like they're being unfairly discriminated against?
I'm not sure where the exact, you know, avenue would be for a school that feels like they're being discriminated against. I think that's kind of why these other associations were formed in the first place, was for schools, particularly small charter and private schools that felt that they couldn't compete fairly in an FHSAA district. Basically if you're small and you know you aren't being successful in a district you can be independent in FHSAA. However, when you do that you're not entitled to a playoff. These leagues like Sunshine State Athletic Association , the conference was formed so that these independent schools could have their version of the playoffs, because I spoke with the president of the SSAA for the story and he said that's the goal of high school athletics - everyone wants to win something, everyone wants to have the chance to compete for a championship. So, you know, aside from looking for other opportunities and other associations, I'm not sure what these schools can do if they feel like they're being discriminated against. I think that was kind of the purpose of this bill. You know Rep. Spano said that he got involved in the bill in the first place because of a relationship he had with someone that worked for the Sunshine State .... and that he just felt every school, no matter what size, it deserves to be treated fairly. And when the law was passed, he said he was hopeful that was finally going to happen. But obviously now there's been some roadblocks.
