Commissioner Offers Parting Thoughts

After 23 years as an administrator with the CIF Southern Section, the last six as commissioner, Dean Crowley is retiring at the end of the school year. A 1952 graduate of Alhambra High, Crowley, 64, began his career as a junior high school coach. He later was vice principal at Cerritos Gahr High, where he oversaw the athletic program. Crowley was also a high school and college football and basketball referee and a supervisor of officials for several organizations. Times staff writer Paul McLeod recently had a conversation with Crowley.

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Question: What was the most satisfying moment of your career:

Answer: Getting hired here 23 years ago was a big highlight. After acting as commissioner for a year, it was most satisfying when the executive committee named me commissioner in 1994.

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Q: What were your least-favorite moments?

A: I didn’t like dealing with some of the eligibility issues. . . . The other one that really bothered me was a couple of years ago when we had a black football player strike the [white] official. We had never experienced anything like that before and there were racial implications and overtones.

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Q: The time leading up to your hiring had been a controversial period for the section because your predecessor [Stan Thomas] was fired for financial irregularities.

A: It was a dark time. But out of that we developed strong financial controls and guidelines. When I came in as commissioner we had a deficit of $178,000 and now, for the first time in the history of the organization, we have $1 million in reserves.

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Q: What’s going to happen to that reserve?

A: I’d like the executive council to look at returning a portion of the reserve back to the schools but, in my opinion, we need some reserves to take care of us in case we have a bad situation in football. About 30% of our $1.6 million budget is based on the football playoffs. . . .

We did spend some of our reserves on computers for the office recently and I made a recommendation a year ago to explore the idea of buying a building for new offices. We’re renting the building we’re in now and we’ve out-grown it.

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Q: What about all the sponsors the section has signed deals with to provide funds over the years?

A: We need to continue to involve the corporate community. However, they should be channeled to [the local school level]. I hope the state or section never gets involved again with title sponsors, like “Reebok Shoes Championships.” These are high school CIF championships. Nothing else. Nothing more.

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Q: Any regrets, or things you are leaving behind that you couldn’t get done?

A: We need to take a good look at re-leaguing. When I came on board, we had 460 schools, now we have 516, a 12% increase. But we had 52 leagues. Now we’re at 73, a 40% gain there. . . . I think we still need to look at the value of geographic playoffs.

One of the things that has bothered me more than anything has been open enrollment. To some, athletics is not just a game anymore. We have this mentality that we have to win at all costs. This overemphasis on winning isn’t good for athletics in general. The open enrollment rule has contributed to that. We have so many transfers now and the ones I’m seeing are athletic transfers and that’s not what our kids are in school for.

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Q: What would you like to see?

A: I’d like to go back to what we had in the past. If a youngster transfers without a bona fide change of residence, he/she would be restricted to lower-level play for a year.

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Q: What are some of the critical issues facing high school sports?

A: I’m really concerned about the movement of these “high-profile” athletes, particularly in the sport of basketball. They’re being moved about by high-profile club coaches. They’re moving them to what they feel are the winning programs.

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Q: What issues will the new commissioner deal with?

A: The last three to five years, the organization has been too permissive and has been concerned about litigation rather than strong rules.

As far as legislation, the outside competition rule that says that during the high school season a youngster can’t play on another team needs revision. We’re one of the few states that has that rule. To me, if a youngster plays on a high school basketball team during the week and on Sunday wants to play in a church league and the high school coach doesn’t care and the parents don’t care, why not?

Also, our section coaches can only be involved with kids during the school season or in the summer. Other sections in the state allow the high school volleyball coach, for instance, to work with his kids all year-round. This puts us at a disadvantage in certain state championships.

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Q: Some say the section is too large. Do you see it dividing sometime in the future?

A: It’s obvious that the Southern Section is too large. But I don’t want to see it split up at this time.

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Q: Some say that the luster of playing high school sports becomes secondary to playing for private club programs.

A: A lot of kids play sports year-round now. They just use the high school as a vehicle to participate. Part of the problem is that the NCAA has changed its recruiting period so that most of the prime recruiting goes on during the summer and that has helped the proliferation of club teams and elite summer camps.

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Q: So, if high school athletics aren’t important any more, why play?

A: The beauty of the high school program is that we offer so many levels of competition. . . . We provide a program for a lot of kids of just average ability.