Do We Really Need To Pass A Tim Tebow Law

Virginia is considering passing legislation based on Florida’s Tim Tebow Law. What is the Tim Tebow Law?

Basically it is answering the following question with a YES.

 

• Should home school students be allowed to join public high school sport teams?

 

Back in 1996, Florida passed such a law allowing home school student athletes to join public teams.  One such athlete to take advantage of this law that year was Tim Tebow. And the rest is history.

Obviously Tim’s success is a strong argument for the law.  Another argument is that home school families pay taxes just like everyone else, and therefore should be granted the same opportunity to such activities.

Not everyone is in favor of the law.

Ken Tilley, executive director of the Virginia High School League states: The fact that a family pays taxes that support public education does not automatically mean they are entitled to try out for a place on a high school sports team. Plus, “There are 13 individual eligibility requirements for participation for our programs, and under Delegate [Rob] Bell’s bill, the homeschoolers would meet only six and part of a seventh.”

The Virginia Association of School Superintendents is opposed, as is the Virginia Education Association, which represents more than 60,000 public school teachers. Another foe is the chairman of the House Education Committee, a Republican from Virginia Beach named Robert Tata, who was a successful high school coach and a University of Virginia athlete who played briefly for the NFL’s Detroit Lions, the Associated Press reported.

Tata opposes allowing homeschooled students to play on local sports teams in part because he worries that coaches will game the system by recruiting top players. Other opponents say that allowing homeschoolers to play for local teams would devastate eligibility and participation requirements and would be unfair to full-time students and teachers.

My initial take on this is no.  But I am old school. Every experience I have had with high school sports, both public and private has involved full time students attending the school.  If one wanted to play for the other, regardless of taxes, you transferred.

And just to throw another wrinkle into this whole mess, what about online education?  With technology being what it is today, one could conceivably take online classes from home for a fee of course, still pay taxes and then demand entitlement to try out for the local high school football team.

So, What do you think?

You can do something amazing…

Like become Miss America

or

Win the MVP award in the Pro Bowl.

Yup it sure was a good weekend for Virginia students, athletes and universities!

First, Caressa Cameron from VCU won the Miss America pageant.

And to think that she thought her only talent was singing…

Caressa worked hard to perfect her chances in the pageant and successfully navigated her way through grueling questions like the one which stumbled Miss California Carrie Prejean last year.

And I did read somewhere that she is a ‘Goofy Foot’ which means that most pageant contestants lead with their right foot but she leads with her left. Now, this is not goofy at all! After all any good sports coach will tell you that if you are a righty, you lead with your left.

I think all the other contestants are ‘goofy’.

She does have good advice for all the young kids out there and surprisingly enough, it is not to go to school, study, work hard, or even do well…

“We need to get our kids back outside, playing with sticks in the street like I did when I was little,”

Gee, I hope she was talking about hockey…

The other big winners this past weekend came from the the pro bowl. The ACC takes the trophy for most players in the pro bowl this year. All in all there were 23 ACC players in the pro bowl.

3 of them came from Virginia.

D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Heath Miller, and Matt Schaub.

Matt Schaub had a 98 passer rating this year with 4770 yards passing and 29 TD’s.
And he won the MVP award in the pro bowl.

Congratulations Matt!

So, does Caressa have any advice for Matt?

Well, as any good communications major should, she does appear to be working on her delivery, release point, and of course she is leading with her left !!!