If we didn’t know any better we would have thought this story in the Erie Times-News about Iroquois football facing a PIAA District 10 disciplinary hearing for wearing white uniforms at home was a story that originated in The Onion (a satirical news website for those who haven’t heard of it).
The cliff-notes version of the story goes like this.
Iroquois and Greenville were playing a Thursday night football game in early October. Iroquois, in an attempt to drum up support for the game among the student and local populations, decided to hold a “White Out” game ala Penn State.
As part of that, Iroquois decided it wanted to wear white uniforms instead of the traditional dark uniforms.
Greenville was fine with this and wore its dark uniforms. Game officials were fine with this. The game went off without a hitch.
After the game, someone – and you really have to wonder who took the time to even care about this – allegedly contacted the PIAA and said that Iroquois wore white uniforms at home against NFHS rules. Why this rule even exists you would have to ask a rules committee that has nothing better to legislate at this point.
PIAA executive director Bob Lombardi then allegedly told PIAA District 10 chairman Pete Iaccino to handle the matter, according to Erie Times-News story.
Iaccono contacted Iroquois, according to the Times-News, and told Iroquois that it had to “self-report” on itself for violating PIAA/NFHS rules.
Iroquois, probably thinking this was some sort of sick joke, declined.
Whoops.
District 10 then held a subcommittee meeting where six people – all six people on the subcommittee – thought that this rose to the level of needing to hold a District 10 committee-wide disciplinary hearing for Iroquois, which will be held Dec. 13.
The more we write this the dumber we feel.
In a day in age when people wonder why kids aren’t participating in high school athletics, wonder why people won’t coach high school athletics, wonder why no one wants to be a part-time athletic director in high school athletics, wonder why no one wants to officiate high school athletics, and wonder why fans won’t show up at high school athletic games, the PIAA District 10 committee is holding a disciplinary hearing on uniform colors agreed upon prior to a game by both teams.
This hearing will be held at the same District 10 committee meeting in which the D10 committee will be considering a request from Farrell to leave District 10 in part because Farrell doesn’t believe the D10 committee has acted at all on a number of racist incidents over the years directed at Farrell. If only Farrell’s opponents would have just worn the wrong uniform color maybe Farrell wouldn’t want to leave District 10. But we regress.
Absurd doesn’t even fit the definition of this.
Ludicrous might not be a harsh enough word.
Commonsense has been lost.
At WORST what should have happened is a letter should have been sent to the school telling it something to the effect of hey we understand why you did it, we applaud you for thinking outside the box to get people involved but the rule says you needed to come and get permission before doing so. We just wanted you to know so you don’t do it again.
At BEST, it should have been ignored. Bob Lombardi should have ignored it. Pete Iaccino should have ignored it, and the District 10 subcommittee should have absolutely ignored it.
Instead, the busy folks in the Iroquois administration now have to take time out of their day to explain to District 10 why they shouldn’t be punished for something that had no bearing on anything at all.
