MDlaxfan76 wrote:Speaking of Poggi, Soledad O'Brien ran a piece with Biff and the SFA program yesterday.
https://matteroffact.tv/this-football-t ... play-them/
Her program's length does not lend itself to in-depth reporting, but it's nevertheless a shame that the sensationalistic aspect of having been dropped by local schools is still being covered this way as somehow driven by race.
Poggi built, with his money, will, and strong staff, in remarkably short time, a national powerhouse football program. They did so primarily by recruiting many of the already identified top college prospects over multiple states, as well as from the Maryland region and then doing a good job of coaching them. The team is enormously big, fast, and strong, as well as highly talented, the equal or darn close to it of any program in the nation. It's especially good to hear that all participants, according to Soledad, went on to college last year.
That's cool, and we can easily wish them well in their national level football pursuits, but the whining about their former opponents dropping them from their schedules, and especially the attribution to racial dynamics, is immensely inappropriate. Biff has made clear, been quoted, that he'd intended to drop the MIAA next year anyway, but the MIAA moved before he expected, given that the disparity was so pronounced so much faster than perhaps Biff himself had expected.
Heck, Biff's alma mater and former program, Gilman, did not actually refuse to play SFA, only dropping them after SFA/Biff scheduled anther opponent on their scheduled date. And that was after losing to SFA twice the year before by whopping big margins, despite Gilman being the 2nd best team in 2017's MIAA. (and knowing they'd be at best middle of the pack the following year (just 37 total players in the upper school program). And yet the reporting made it sound as if they too had dropped SFA.
Interestingly, the O'Brien piece mentioned that in the 2nd to last game of the current season, 2018, a team actually arrived from Ohio to take on SFA, but half the team refused to get off the bus, and that school forfeited. Reason? Concern about being hurt. Again, SFA's team is huge and powerful, so it's not actually irrational. But pretty unusual to come all the way from Ohio only to decide not to play enroute.
(I think it is reasonable to expect that in 2019 and on, SFA will be able to schedule a national set of opponents that give them a good test. This year, the best any opponent (from Philly) could do was a 35-0 drubbing).
One thing that is disturbing from the reporting was that the MIAA did not provide a spokesperson to go on camera to explain its constituents' views. Nor did any of the schools.
Perhaps they are 'gun shy' having been so repeatedly abused in the press, and were concerned that only a snippet of what they would have to say would be unfairly used to make them look bad. Gilman's co-AD, Lori Bristow, had done a creditable job in earlier interviews, but nevertheless the reporting emphasized the racial accusations as if truly credible. I can certainly imagine not wanting to go on camera and just trusting the media to tell the full story. They did respond in writing, apparently, but not going on camera was made to sound as if they were afraid of answering questions.
But this whole thing was handled weakly by the MIAA, right from the get go.
As we've discussed before, IMO the various recruiting tactics, across sports, deserves an honest review and reappraisal, as they definitely do not conform to the stated goals and rules of the organization. But this would require the league to really look each other in the eye and decide exactly what the standards and policies should be going forward and then provide the mechanisms for enforcement that would be respected.
I'm not holding my breath.