The Georgia High School Association (GHSA) State Executive Committee conducted its annual Spring Meeting on Monday, April 17 at the Marriott Macon City Center. Twice per year (Spring and Fall) the 75-person executive committee convenes to rule on high school athletics matters.
Executive committees in the past have served as a catalyst for GHSA rules – guiding their creation and overseeing their corrections. Under their rules, the 465 public and private GHSA member schools compete. So, it’s a committee that matters.
“The GHSA operates under a Constitution and By-Laws which outlines the scope and purpose of the Association. It contains the standards of eligibility to be met by high school pupils for attaining the privilege of participation in interschool contests, and rules controlling the participation among schools,” says the GHSA website.
Control is the primary function. Unrelated to that control, we’ll have to rely on the published meeting minutes to know what took place. No streams. No audio files. You know the drill.
A glance around at the statewide media coverage coming out of the meeting early in the week could lead one to believe instant replay (now in State Championship football games) is the biggest piece of news. Within those six pages are statements that carry weight. It’s contents include weighty topics and contentious ones.
Then there are the mundane changes. Ones like football games between teams in different classifications don’t have to play overtime unless agreed upon prior to the game. Interesting? Sure. Important? No.
Replay could, maybe, possibly, impact a few teams per season. It could fix one call here, another there. Comes out only once per year. Etc. Etc.
That doesn’t qualify as important in my book. If you read the meeting minutes, and you think instant replay is what’s most impactful? Well then, you might just be reading this from a Marriott in Macon.
The minutes are structured as a numbered list of items, presented by the GHSA Board of Trustees (14 people) to the executive committee. At the end of the document, the Director’s Report summarizes what GHSA Executive Director Robin Hines said to the 73 executive committee members in attendance.
A few portions to highlight …
NAME, IMAGE, LIKENESS (NIL)
Despite the fact that the issue of NIL was never brought to the committee, Hines spoke on it during the “director’s report” portion of the published minutes. It notes that 28 states have official rules in place regarding the limits and legality of NIL. For now, the GHSA Constitution does not say much about NIL, one way or the other. There is only bylaw 1.92c, which prohibits athletes from ‘’capitalizing on athletic fame by receiving money or gifts with monetary value, except college scholarships.”
Hines has said that any GHSA proposal would not allow for collectives, as they’re known in college sports, to gather and disperse money to athletes. He has said he would not support changing rules regarding undue influence and recruiting to accommodate NIL. The meeting minutes summarizing his Monday thoughts on the issue? “Any form of recruiting or undue influence remains illegal…”
Well, yeah. That all seems like a given, right? The entire reason NIL guidelines are needed is because the slope is so slippery. And who is suggesting that Hines and his GHSA would ever advocate for recruiting through NIL? I haven’t seen that column yet.
“At some point, we’re going to be challenged on this,” Hines said Monday.
My response to Hines? He and the GHSA have been “challenged on” NIL and undue influence for several years now. Did it take this long to realize it?
GHSA ATTORNEY: ‘TRANSGENDER MATTERS’ UP TO SUPREME COURT
GHSA Attorney Alan W. Connell spoke Monday, and the Thomaston based attorney sided with Hines on the NIL issue, while also warning of another polarizing item potentially facing the committee in the months and years to come. According to the minutes (page 5-6), Connell “shared NIL concerns over collectables and boosters,” during his time on the mic.
The minutes state: “(Connell) said the GHSA may be subject to Georgia legislation if (it doesn’t) explore an NIL policy for the GHSA. He also shared information concerning ‘transgender’ matters and said he was waiting on decisions by the Supreme Court to see how the GHSA needs to proceed.”
I don’t know what was said in this portion, so I won’t speculate about Connell’s “information concerning transgender matters.” But, I will remind you, dear reader, that the GHSA did not wait on any court rulings to decide on this issue. Less than 12 months ago, on May 4, 2022, a proposal to adjust By-Law 1.47 was brought to the committee by the GHSA Office itself.
It was simple and it was easy to understand. It passed by a margin of 61-0-1 to adjust wording in By-Law 1.47, which now reads: “A student’s sex is determined by the sex noted on his/her certificate at birth.”
No question as to where they stand on that one, right? They felt passionate about the issue and they took their collective stance by voting into existence an emphatic guideline. Now, put that up against what the GHSA and Hines are saying about things like NIL and rules regarding recruiting from the middle school level.
MIDDLE SCHOOL CAMPS SAFE, DEFINITELY NOT RECRUITING…
While they are experts in such things like transgender legislation, the GHSA leaders seem to be stumped by topics like NIL because, as Hines whined, “the GHSA will need more education on NIL” before it does anything.
When reached by email on Friday (April 21), Hines told me he was “in Indianapolis at the NFHS Legal Meetings” and would not be back until Tuesday.
Also puzzling for the GHSA to solve is the issue of recruiting and undue influence. It’s working its way into the middle school level with football camps being held more and more often by high school teams over the summer.
The basic scheme is this: High school coaches or teams host a “middle school” or “youth camp” and the camp’s “counselors” are usually current players, or former players who volunteer, or people who otherwise “get eyes” on the best and biggest seventh- and eighth-graders in the area for the purposes of hopefully getting him to your campus come high school.
But, on Monday, when a proposal to implement a mandatory two-year (9th and 10th grades) sit-out period for middle school students going to high schools where the student attended camps or at high schools represented at any those camps, was tabled by the committee. Jim Finch, the President of GHSA and leader of the Board of Trustees, couldn’t understand why.
“This body has got to do something,” he said. “We’ve got to start policing ourselves. You need to call out people in your own regions, in your own buildings.”
Call out the people in your own regions … what a novel idea.
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This article appears in Apr 1-30, 2023.
