COMMENTARY: Coaches are to blame for Absentgate

The punch line that the Sunrise Region basketball playoffs turned into this week sort of makes you wonder:

What happened to the good ’ol days of real salacious prep controversy, of eligibility issues that surfaced amid secret meetings in lowly motels and devious deals between cheating coaches and overzealous handlers, er, boosters, er, parents?

Does it really take “Friday Night Lights” to provide a truly memorable high school sports fiasco?

Instead, we get a mess best defined locally as laziness.

Nevada education might receive the least amount of stimulus dollars, but I’m guessing there will be enough spare change to distribute a few more clipboards, paper and pens. It seems some basketball coaches around here are in need of them to keep track of their players.

That’s where this blame lands, by the way — on the coaches. Not on the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association. Not on a principal’s desk. Not on an administrative assistant. Not on the conscience of cowardly anonymous callers who squeal on offending schools. Not even inside the office of an athletic director, assuming that person doesn’t also coach the team in question.

I didn’t major in molecular biology, so it took more than a fleeting glance at district rules to understand why the Desert Pines boys team and Eldorado’s boys and girls had to forfeit league games the past few days and make the playoff brackets more of a puzzle than anything The New York Times ever created.

But when you get past any potential shades of gray — what constitutes an unexcused absence, how long a student has to present documentation that would pardon missing class on the day of a game — you come to the same simple conclusion:

This is on coaches.

It’s true that they put in countless more hours than their paychecks could ever compensate. One minute coaches are teaching proper footwork, the next they’re imparting life lessons. They are always underpaid and often underappreciated.

But there’s a reason this particular rule hasn’t in the past influenced a playoff bracket as it did this week:

It’s ridiculously simple to follow.

In the case of basketball, how difficult is it for any coach to take about 45 seconds a day to look every player in the eye and ask whether he or she attended all their classes.

Those players who didn’t could then explain their particular situation. Those who didn’t and insist they did should face much tougher discipline than a one-game or one-week suspension anyway, because any coach whose players would lie to their face has bigger problems than different types of absences.

You can’t leave it to specific teachers to monitor athletes. Or the players themselves. They’re kids. Of course some are going to try to skirt rules. You also can’t blame those who don’t have the backbone to call you out publicly when reporting possible violations.

If a head coach takes care of business and is diligent in following rules, he need not worry about whistle-blowers, whether it’s a fellow coach or some opposing fan.

If coaches take care of business, we aren’t left with the chaos of the Sunrise playoffs, and a team like Silverado isn’t suddenly placed on a much tougher tournament road.

On Wednesday, the Skyhawks hosted the biggest offender on the boys’ side of Absentgate and lost to Desert Pines 78-70 in a quarterfinal.

“You would think (the rule) seems like something that should be taken care of by everybody,” Silverado athletic director Mark Parantala said. “Hopefully it won’t be an issue after this, that every single school will do its checking and that will be it.

“The way I looked at it was no matter how far we went in the (playoffs), at some point we were going to play Desert Pines. Instead of a (semifinal) on a (neutral court), we got to play them at home.”

Desert Pines coach Chancellor Davis said: “Coaches and everyone else have to step up, along with players. We have to set up a system for all coaches and all sports — not just at Desert Pines — to (better monitor attendance). This is pretty much at all schools. We have to be better as coaches ... (But) this isn’t on just coaches. This is on everybody.”

No it isn’t. Davis is likely correct in suggesting the rule has been violated in far more places than those that forfeited games this week. No way are Desert Pines and Eldorado the only offenders.

But everybody Davis speaks of is a fringe participant in this mess.

It’s all on the head coaches.

If they are diligent in taking care of their business, this mess never occurs.