Reclaiming the Title

It took us a while to see this since we admittedly skip most of the Sports section, but Steve Roberson's article about realigning/rejoining the two high school athletic associations (TCAL and SJAA) is an interesting read. All of us attended local high schools and were pissed that they split the leagues. Mostly because it separated our alma maters from their traditional rival. The sad thing is that you can't even decipher which schools we're talking about because for some God forsaken reason they separated almost every rivalry (Tracy-West, St. Mary's-Lincoln, Tokay-Lodi, Bear Creek-Anybody who would play them).

Now they're discussing a possible recombination of the leagues that would realign them into one huge super-league broken up into two divisions not unlike the way the SEC works. It really seems like the perfect option. Only nobody in the SJAA wants it to happen. Why? It would mean they'd lose to St. Mary's in pretty much every major sport because St. Mary's is a Division 3 school while the rest of the schools in both TCAL and SJAA are Division 1. Plus, St. Mary's is, unless this have changed since I went to school, a private school that's allowed to recruit while the other schools are forced to take what school boundaries give them. Shit, women's TCAL teams only play St. Mary's once because the talent level discrepancy. So much for competitive equity.

So that got me thinking, how could we solve this problem? And the answer seems simple enough only it'll never happen because the rich, white people in this town would set fire to the CIF offices. Oh and because of money obviously. But here goes anyways....

Fuck St. Mary's, tell them to go find their own league of private school douchebags (or a league of D3 teams). Having a high school following a different set of rules than the rest of the league is bullshit. If they want to compete with other area public schools then they should follow all the rules public schools follow. If you're going to ding Franklin for bringing players in from Samoa then ding St. Mary's for having players from Lodi or Morada. It's unfair that St. Mary's boundaries are "Whomever can afford our tuition or received a scholarship from us" while McNair or Ceasar Chavez are stuck with the immediate vicinity of their schools.

High Schools sports for the last few years have been boring as shit. Why? Because all we hear about is either St. Mary's or Lincoln (Which kind of negates the CIF's whole competitive equity argument, you know, more than St. Mary's already has). You don't hear about the big Tokay-Lodi games for the league title anymore because they're not in the same league anymore. You ever been to a rivalry game that fucking means something? It's electric. Now? Nobody gives a shit because it's an exhibition game. They took some of the area's biggest rivalries and turned them into fucking preseason games. If I may channel Peter King for a second, that's the definition of a traveshamockery.

So yeah, reunite the leagues and tell St. Mary's to go fuck themselves on that big ass statue of the Virgin Mary.