So, you’ve heard about this whole football-recruiting-CIF cluster, right? Teams suspended, seasons ended, coaches resigning?

I can’t get past a soundbite (Rich Ibarra reports video) I heard on the news the other night. One student, lamenting the team’s suspension, said the students love to play and that football is the onlything that keeps them off the streets and now that’s being taken away from them.

The tone to me implied that CIF’s sanctions were a sentence on these players. No football = back to the streets: to drugs, violence, dead ends. No, buddy. You know better. You don’t have to resort to the worst of street vices. You were unfairly screwed out of your sport by the grown-ups. But you have tons of options. Coaching younger kids? Volunteering? Focusing on school work? I dunno, get creative.

I really dislike that sort of mindset. It’s a fine line between crediting a program with giving kids positive alternatives to less desireable activities and buying into the mindset that without activity x there will be no choice BUT gangs/drugs/etc.

These kids know there are positive things they can do with themselves. And eventually, high school ends, so learning now to take charge of one’s options is as good a lesson as any learned on the field.