Sometime this afternoon, the 12-member Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association Board of Control will gather at Murfreesboro’s Siegel High School to hear an eligibility appeal from a South Pittsburg High School student who the TSSAA banned a week ago from all athletic competition at the school for a full year for what was termed an “improper benefit.”
Never mind that any organization with half a heart that had done its due diligence on this matter would have handed down a far less draconian penalty.
After all, we’re not talking about the school’s Quarterback Club buying this kid a car, an iPhone, an Old Navy gift card or even a Happy Meal at McDonald’s (not the UT recruiting kind, of course).
Instead, hearing that the young man’s family was down on its luck in the midst of COVID-19, the club – a 501(c)(3) organization, which means it’s a nonprofit – secretly paid their December rent in a subsidized government house. That was it. One month. Period. And the family had zero knowledge of the identity of the Good Samaritan who did this, nor did anyone at the high school.