What the hell has happened to high school sports?
Every day, I open X and see another high school kid posting a professionally designed graphic announcing that he is transferring from one school to another.
Not committing to a college. Transferring high schools.
Maybe I’m old-school, but I remember when you played for the school you were zoned to attend. You represented your classmates, your neighborhood and your community. If the team struggled, you worked to make it better. You didn’t hold a press conference and take your talents across town.
Today, I was told something even more disturbing: that some kids are allegedly being paid to transfer into certain “funnel schools”—programs with connections to colleges that want particular prospects developed and steered in their direction.
I don’t know whether that is true, and I’m not presenting it as fact. But the fact that it even sounds believable should tell us how far high school athletics have drifted.
It reminds me of the worst days of AAU basketball, when shoe-company money, handlers and favored programs sometimes had more influence over a young player’s future than his school or coach.
High school NIL is now legal in most states, but NIL was never supposed to mean paying kids to change schools, recruiting players away from other programs or quietly building feeder systems for colleges. If money connected to college programs is influencing high school transfers, that needs to be investigated immediately.
And even if no money is changing hands, this culture is getting ridiculous.
We have taken the transfer-portal mentality from college football and handed it to teenagers. Instead of teaching young athletes commitment, perseverance and loyalty, we are teaching them to leave whenever another program offers more attention, better exposure or an easier path to winning.
Not every transfer is wrong. Families move. Academic situations change. Some kids genuinely need a fresh start.
But transferring strictly to build an all-star team, chase social-media attention or improve recruiting visibility is something entirely different.
High school football is supposed to belong to communities. It is supposed to teach kids how to fight through adversity alongside the teammates they grew up with.
It was never supposed to become college football’s minor-league transfer portal.
We had better get control of this now, because once money, handlers and college influence completely take over high school sports, we will never get the innocence of Friday nights back.
