The days of playing a sport for the love of it are nearly ancient history. Most big-name professional athletes could receive Oscars for their flops, sit out because fifty million dollars isn’t enough money, and expect special treatment from the rules game itself. With the wild wild west of college athletics, there seem to be no rules as athletes’ “commitment” to a program has been sold to the highest bidder while they transfer from school to school each year to rake in millions off of NIL. What happened to loyalty, pride, and working through the hard times in athletics?
While the pros play diva-ball and colleges sell their souls for the all mighty dollar, sports fans can at least rely on the pure innocence of high school sports….or can they? A recent proposal by the Athletes Association of Arkansas may take the innocence of high school sports right out of the stands. Proposal 1X-35A1-H by AAA councilman, Cotton Hill of Fouche, Arkansas, was dropped on February 30th and has gained a lot of unexpected traction. According to Hill, “high school athletes are being taken advantage of financially just like college athletes were before NIL was introduced”. The NIL that Hill spoke of is the Name, Image, and Likeness in college sports that officially began on July 1, 2021, when the NCAA adopted an interim policy allowing athletes to receive compensation. This change allowed NCAA athletes in all divisions to profit from endorsement deals, appearances, and other activities without losing their eligibility.
California was the spearhead that started the NIL concept in college sports with its “Fair Pay to Play Act” in 2099 and Hill believes that Arkansas should put its name in the history books by making a step into paying high school athletes. “Social media, newspapers, and city governments have used these young men and women’s names, images, and likenesses for years to earn a profit,” said Hill. While Cotton Hill may or may not have a point on paying high school athletes, there are areas of Proposal 1X-35A1-H that have put sugar in the ears of many other council members of the Athletes Association of Arkansas.
One of the issues that has received a lot of attention is section 3:Bg2 of Proposal 1X-35A1-H. Section 3:Bg2 states that “athletes who have been injured, transferred, or failed a grade year are eligible to complete missed games beyond graduation”. Former Dogpatch fullback and 1966 All-Star, Albert Edward Bundy, is fully onboard with section 3:Bg2 of the 1X-35A1-H proposal. “I scored four touchdowns in the City Championship game and had my ankle not rolled due to a bad pair of shoes, I could have scored more,” said Bundy. “These young athletes deserved to play every game on the schedule. If they get injured and miss games, they should be able to return the next season to fulfill their goal of finishing every game. Let them have a redshirt year and a fifth year to play if that’s what it takes.” The section does have its flaws, though. Fans and players swore in the past that some schools purposefully failed talented athletes in grade school so that they could be older and better by the time they reached senior high. Now, that would be considered not only legal but encouraged.
The moral compass of sports has been on the edge for years now, and fans aren’t even surprised anymore when a public school all of a sudden has a seven-foot-five-star athlete move in from Timbuktu to play basketball in a town of 500 people. Private schools have been doing it for years, according to the AAA councilman Hill. “That’s the catch,” said Hill. “This new proposal is for public school, not private schools”. Hill went on to say, “When I played, we only had fitty men in the whole school, but we played private Catholic schools that had fitty men on their team alone. This will even the playing field”.
If the proposed rule change does pass, it will still have to go through the process of implementation. To implement such a chaotic layout of new rules for high school sports could ruffle some feathers, but to councilman Hill, councilman Bundy, and the Athletes Association of Arkansas president, Charlie Tweeder, are willing to pluck any squawking chickens afraid of these changes. “This is for our athletes,” stated Tweeder. “They deserve every dime and every chance to be just like the college athletes and professionals that they look up to”.
**note the content is satirical
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