Commentary : National TV Hits Low With Prep Basketball

Oh, they give assurances that this modest proposal will honor the value of education. They say this plan to put high school games on nationwide cable television will not further pervert high school sports.

Both sides promise.

Well, file that with other famous disclaimers, like the check is in the mail and, of course, I’ll respect you in the morning.

It’s an outrage. A perversion of what high school and high school sports are about.

Don’t think for a moment it will stop where they promise. It never has.

The National Federation of State High School Associations, composed of 51 member bodies, has been offering itself and has found a buyer in SportsChannel America. The deal is still in the formative stage, but it will happen because both sides want it to happen.

For a lot of money, SportsChannel America would televise 20 to 25 game-of-the-week high school events, largely basketball.

The federation says its members are strongly opposed to a national championship basketball tournament, but SportsChannel America programmer Mike Lardner, in a revealing slip to The New York Times, said a “natural conclusion is a Final Four.” Of course it is.

To think it can be otherwise is, as NCAA Executive Director Dick Schultz put it, like trying to put the genie back in the bottle.

What they’re talking about borders on child pornography. Making high school sports more big-time is directly contrary to putting the student back into the student-athlete. The mind reels.

“I think it has everything we don’t like in college and professional sports,” said Dr. Sandra Scott, associate director of the New York State association. “It knocks the perspective of sports in education out of whack.”

Being able to make a jump shot would be that much more important than being willing to approach a geometry problem.

Big-time television will create that much more fawning and coddling of the athlete, who already has more than his immature ego can handle. School will be that much less important for the star who struts his stuff before the whole nation. He will know he can have or take what he wants because his basketball skill is important to the adults who are supposed to guide his life and help him grow. How many parents will be able to tell him he needs to finish his English paper Sunday when he scored 20 points on television Friday? How many of them will care?

“We are wrong when the same parents who come out to see Johnny play basketball don’t come to the Parent-Teacher Organization meetings,” says Frank “Bishop” McDuffie, vice principal and basketball coach at Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina.

“In the small town (and big city) they’re so proud of the athlete; he’s carrying the banner for everyone so everyone is trying to help,” said Tom Sanders, former associate director for the Center for the Study of Sports in Society and now director of player programs in the NBA.

Of course there are high school games televised already, but they are in relative privacy; this is going to the next dimension.

There are no national standards for making grades. Texas has a no-pass, no-play law; the New York State association, which does not include New York City schools, leaves it to the individual schools. You can already hear the noise if the star is going to be ineligible for the TV game because he’s in danger of failing civics.

The TV people in Woodbury, N.Y., and the federation people in Kansas City say TV won’t make schedules, but will pick from the existing schedule. Ah, but we already have the abomination of USA Today’s Top 25. Will it occur to DeMatha of Washington and Mater Dei of Los Angeles that they ought to meet next season?

Maybe they ought to play at midnight, which would be prime time on the West Coast.

Think about the coach who thinks he can climb to a big job if his team looks good in a TV showcase. What pressures would he pass down?

“We have to be awfully careful,” said Richard McGuire, president of the New York State High School Athletic Association. “If basketball is incidental to the process of education, it’s fine. If it becomes the other way around, we have a problem.”

Think of what it would be for a 15-year-old to take two free throws with 10 seconds remaining, his team behind the top-ranked team by a point, and the white light of the camera burning down.

Ultimately, those USA Today top darlings would have to meet, and is there any doubt that Las Vegas would have a line? It would be worth something to some people if that 15-year-old taking the free throws missed.

Think how much national playoffs would mean with the likes of Lew Alcindor going against the likes of Alonzo Mourning. But Warren Brown, assistant director of the federation, says there just won’t be national playoffs.

He cites the reasons why the members oppose playoffs: overemphasis on high school sports; loss of class time; extension of the season, which would prevent many athletes from playing a second sport, and the difficulty of choosing a representative from a state with champions in several classes.

But then the genie would already be out of the bottle. An Adolescent Final Four would be a matter of time.