COMMENTARY : Playoff Offensive Game Plan: Litigation

Students at Huntington Beach High School should have been in class Monday.

Students at Savanna High School should not have been in tears Tuesday.

Students at Fountain Valley High School should not have been given false hope, booster clubs should not be holding car washes for legal fees, and quarterbacks, not judges, should be deciding who wins Southern Section football championships.

The day the Southern Section office always feared finally happened Tuesday, the day the adults went wild and turned a game for 17-year-olds into a legislative football.

Because an ineligible player was found on the football rosters of Huntington Beach, Savanna and La Puente high schools this week, three teams were forced out of the playoffs--promptly, sending two of them into the courtroom.

The scoreboard, so far:

Huntington Beach: 1-0. Tuesday, the Oilers received a temporary restraining order against the Southern Section, preventing their disqualification from the Division I tournament and reinstating them as a playoff team.

La Puente: On deck. Encouraged by the Huntington Beach ruling, La Puente is planning to enter the same legal arena. “This gives us a lot of hope,” football Coach Rick Kunishimi said.

Savanna: Idle. But probably taking notes.

The fallout has been widespread. When 8-2 Huntington Beach was barred from the playoffs, 5-5 Fountain Valley replaced the Oilers and was matched against the division’s top-seeded team, 10-0 Fontana. Now, Huntington Beach is back in, Fountain Valley is out and Fontana is none too pleased about the upgraded quality of competition.

Next, maybe Fontana and Fountain Valley can pursue restraining orders to restrain the Huntington Beach restraining order.

“There’s a joke going around the office,” says Dean Crowley, the Southern Section’s beleaguered associate commissioner. “Next year, we’ll have a 15-week season. Ten weeks for the regular season, a week off for litigation and then four weeks of playoffs.”

Funny, but nobody’s really laughing.

The situation has spun ludicrously out of control-- What’s your record? Six-and-two and two games pending --but the blame belongs with neither the high schools nor the Southern Section.

Of course the high schools are distraught. Huntington Beach is making only its third playoff appearance in 23 years. Savanna had just won its first league title since the school opened in 1961. La Puente hadn’t qualified for the playoffs in a decade.

Take those accomplishments away and a fight, rightly, should be expected.

The Southern Section, meanwhile, is only upholding the constitution that was approved by its administrative council, which is composed of high school principals. “It’s our job to enforce the rules,” Crowley said. “If they want to change the rule, a vote of our administrative council could change it.”

So change it.

There’s something wrong with a rule that wipes out the efforts of an entire team because of clerical sloppiness, because all the facts weren’t sufficiently checked. Right now, the punishment does not fit the crime, as Huntington Beach students sought to underscore by their three-hour boycott of classes on Monday.

“Even my wife was mad about it,” said Crowley. “We were watching (the report on the boycott) on the news and she got irate. She turned to me and said, ‘You shouldn’t be penalizing the kids. Fifty-five kids go out for football and you punish all of them because of one?’

“I said, ‘Linda, I agree with you. We have compassion, too.”

Compassion, yes.

The right constitution, no.

According to Crowley, the Washington and Nevada high school athletic federations levy fines against schools found with ineligible players. No games, championships or playoff berths are forfeited. Just money.

And that means no pre-playoff litigation.

It seems an equitable, workable system. Since high school principals are responsible for fielding teams of eligible athletes--that’s also in the Southern Section Blue Book, Rule 302--make the principals pay and let the players play.

Southern Section officials say they like the fine system, with one reservation.

“I was talking with one parent who thought a fine was a good idea until he started thinking,” Crowley said. “He told me, ‘Well, suppose you get the booster club to pay the fine. Then you have a situation where schools are going out and getting ineligible players and just paying the fine at the end of the season.’ ”

In a better world, high school athletic programs would be above such chicanery.

But in this one, it’s best to have insurance.

So along with the fine, you:

--Declare the guilty player ineligible for the playoffs.

--Strip his team of the home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

--Force the school to forfeit all gate receipts from playoff games.

--Put the school on probation.

Under terms of probation, the guilty school cannot commit a similar infraction during the next five years. Since such a violation would indicate a blatant disregard for the rules, the principal (and/or coach) would be censured by the Southern Section--in essence, the section would recommend that he be removed.

In addition, the amount of the initial fine would be doubled and the team, for that season, would be declared an “independent”--able to qualify for the playoffs only as a wild-card entrant, regardless of its won-lost record. And the Southern Section designates all wild-card entrants.

In any scenario, the players would still have the opportunity to play.

And before we got buried by the petitions and the legal briefs, that was the bottom line, wasn’t it?