High School, Part 2: Less Serious

Following up, from today's P-J, an article on a bill in the State Legislature to amend the way schools participate in statewide championship tournaments. It appears the "problem" (perhaps you can sense my bias by the quotes) is that schools in some sections have more teams than others. In a system where only the top team advances, a district with 40 teams is at somewhat of a disadvantage compared to a district with 3 teams.

My first thought was "the Legislature has time for this?", thinking of Last Comic Standing contestant Ty Burnett's riff on the search for King Tut's killer. With more reading, though, this may just be an attempt to force the association which runs the tournaments into action. Countering that, though, is the inertia in Albany, which quite often leads to "one house bills" that are pet projects in one chamber and never go anywhere.

Even so, I still don't see a need to legislate in the absence of some quantifiable damage. Show me that topflight wrestlers (which seems to be the main concern of the bill) aren't getting scholarships, WWE developmental deals or Olympic tryouts, and then I'll think it worthy of corrective legislation. Otherwise, I'm in the apparent minority that thinks high school sports should be about learning sportsmanship, discipline and getting some exercise as a complement to education.