Anastasia: Proposed law unenforceable, flawed
A largely unenforceable law might look good on paper. It might sound good to folks who think high school sports is wandering too far down the road paved in fool's gold by the professional and major-college ranks.
A largely unenforceable law might look good on paper.
It might sound good to folks who think high school sports is wandering too far down the road paved in fool's gold by the professional and major-college ranks.
It might feel good to legislators and educators and anyone else who wants to do something - anything - to curtail the culture of corner-cutting and rule-bending and system-gaming and look-the-other-way-ing that is putting down roots in youth and school sports.
But a largely unenforceable law still is a largely unenforceable law.
And that's the biggest problem with legislation proposed by State Sen. Richard Codey (D., Essex) and backed by Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D., Gloucester) to penalized athletes who repeat a middle-school grade to gain an athletic advantage in high school.
Although it's not the only one.
Codey has announced plans to introduce a bill later this fall that would limit student-athletes who repeat sixth, seventh, or eighth grade - despite being on track academically to advance to the next grade - to three years or six consecutive semesters of athletic eligibility in high school.
Burzichelli said Thursday in a telephone interview that he likely will cosponsor a companion bill in the Assembly.
"I have concerns about this situation," Burzichelli said of the practice of "red-shirting" in middle school.
Burzichelli sees the practice as "connected, although not in a straight line" to a larger trend in youth and school sports.
"It's a matter of time before ESPN announces a high school channel," Burzichelli said. "My concern is that high school sports is on the verge of becoming big business, like college sports is big business.
"This is part of that."
Burzichelli is right: Youth and school sports get more sophisticated and dollar-driven every year, and it's high time for some hard and frank discussions about some of the trends in these games.
But this new law might be more trouble than it's worth.
Problem No. 1: How do you enforce this? With a pared-down staff, the NJSIAA struggles to enforce its transfer rules and has wrestled (pun intended, Bound Brook fans) with the athletic implications of the school choice program and tuition students.
And those are issues directly related to the organization's 430 member high schools. There must be five times as many middle schools and grammar schools in the state, and they are not under NJSIAA jurisdiction.
Trickier still is the question of how the NJSIAA will determine which students were held back for "athletic advantage" and which were held back because parents felt the child needed to "mature" - either emotionally, socially, or physically.
This strikes right to the heart of perhaps the biggest problem with this law: intrusion into a family decision.
Nobody outside a family knows what happens inside a family. It's none of their business, either.
The decision to have a child repeat a grade is private and personal and often is made in conjunction with school guidance counselors and/or physicians. Good luck trying to weed through the different scenarios that lead families to hold students back to find the clear-cut evidence of the pursuit of "athletic advantage."
And good luck with all the legal fees, too, when families start filing lawsuits.
Codey told NJ Advance Media this issue has been "digging at me" for years.
Burzichelli has legitimate and heartfelt concerns about the state and direction of youth and school sports.
They mean well.
But a law whose enforcement will prove monumentally complicated and costly likely will create more chaos than it curbs.
@PhilAnastasia
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