Perfect Season Ended Early
Earlier this fall, a high school football team was under investigation for violating recruitment rules by their respective section. This high school football team was turned in for recruiting players from surrounding high schools by the coaches and offered a place to live so in order to be considered residents of the town. Once the news was heard by the section’s athletic council and investigated, the high school eventually pleaded guilty to violating the section’s recruitment rules. Now the athletic council had to make a decision on what the penalty would be for the violation.
This decision may seem easy, but for the athletic council this was the not the case. To make things harder for this council, this certain high school team was undefeated and scheduled to play in their sectional championship game in the upcoming weekend. This would be the first time this high school has made it this far in nearly a decade. Here this decision can be looked at in terms of game theory.
The athletic council has two choices they can make. Their first choice is to suspend the team and cancel the remainder of their season (the sectional championship game and the possibility of an appearance in the state tournament). This would lead to penalizing not only the coaches but also the students on the team, who have nothing to do with these violations, since none of the students that were recruited actually played on the team. The second choice is to allow the team to finish the season and then penalize them in the upcoming season, not allowing them to participate in competition. For the first option, the payoff is both positive and negative. On the positive side, the athletic council maintains the rules they have in place for this violation and make a statement to other high schools in the area. On the negative side, they are penalizing the kids on the team that have nothing to do with this violation and they take away the chance of winning a sectional title. For the second option, the positive is allowing the kids to play but on the negative side, they send the message that this is acceptable for teams to do. Here the council has to decide which payoff is better for them and can be set up in a matrix.
Unfortunately, the athletic council ended this high schools season the day before their championship game and after several appeals. There are several articles on this case discussing the options and the detailed information of the schools violation. This is the best article on this issue and gives the most background information: