OFF THE MARK
PSAL adults fail kids by giving lesson in fraud
THAT SPECIAL place in hell will be too crowded to remain special. Now what? The PSAL top-tier boys basketball finals have been canceled due to adult corruption and moral corrosion.
But where is the outrage? The angry condemnations? The sorrow-filled follow-up coverage on our TV and radio news broadcasts? The scolds of sports radio hosts who otherwise would holler over a dropped pass or a throwing error?
Where are the famous PSAL progeny to publicly express their dismay?
Or is this the way it is, and shall remain? Our sports, starting with children at play, are now so hideously disfigured by shameless adults that it’s hardly unexpected or unusual when the once unthinkable makes brief, sowhat? news.
The PSAL, founded in 1903, is now, officially, just another con posed as sports.
Its annual gem — the top boys basketball championships — last week was found to be a fake. The finalists were aided by fraud, as in ineligibility and academic fraud — the stuff that awaits those headed for college, on or off the school’s payrolls, to do nothing more significant than extend their ballplaying careers until it’s time, or too late — to actually wake up.
In the highly unlikely case that the high school coaches and ADs didn’t know the rules and “kids” didn’t realize they were too old to be and/or too academically deficient to be eligible for their high school teams — note the word, “school” — this year would be different. The PSAL had mandated random inspections of rosters be resumed to curtail rampant fraud.
But bad habits die hard. Several finalists were ruled to have committed flagrant offensive fouls.
NYC’s Schools Chancellor David Banks put it plainly and painfully: “In simple terms adults put the longterm future of young people second for momentary high school glory on the court. These adults are not helping students. They are only helping themselves.”
Noting that there is now a “special commissioner of investigation” — how proud schools must be to need such a paid position — Banks added, “we will not shy away from taking appropriate disciplinary action against any staff who chose to cheat in our athletic contests.”
But it’s all a con and it flows from the top.
In 2014, when Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West Little League team won the LLWS U.S. bracket and was celebrated as America’s darlings — even posing with pictures in the White House with President Obama — the team would soon be stripped of its title as it was loaded with ineligible players from throughout Chicago.
Some Little League coaches knew it before and during the Little League World Series but chose to lay low as the national media, especially ESPN/Disney, had already declared these poor kids from mean-streets
Chicago to be extra special. Why should they risk the hatred of telling the truth?
When the whistle was finally blown, it might have served these kids as a valuable life’s lesson on fair play, especially in view of namesake Jackie Robinson’s deeds.
Instead, Rev. Jesse Jackson, without even a flake of evidence, declared the kids to be victims of blatant racism. And the media, rather than refute such a charge as Jackson choosing to ignore fairplay rules, ran for the hills. Or seconded his nonsense.
Well, Chancellor Banks is black as are many of the kids whose PSAL programs were revealed as corrupted in order to win basketball games — for crying out loud! — plus the favored attention of sneaker companies, merchandise-enriched AAU teams and ask-no-questions college recruiters.
How would Rev. Jackson explain Banks’ call to legal, fair-play order? Racist?
It’s all a con, no longer a matter of wrong or right but too often a matter of black or white. Who does that help? Not a soul.
But the PSAL boys basketball championships will not be contested this year as a matter of Banks and his inspectors choosing right over wrong.
Now back to the NCAA Basketball Tournament, so many of the “college” programs predicated on academic fraud, financial fraud and now above-the-table payola that opens wide crosscountry transfer portals.
It’s all a con. Yet we still generously call it sports.