re: Louisiana Bootleggers will no longer participate in IMG events

Except that when Southern Lab played IMG it was sanctioned and they got the power points for it... the only thing IMG doesn't do is play for Florida state championships. Other than that they're fully sanctioned

I bet you would not think about elevating your kids if they left your high school and went to IMG. It would probably upset your team a lot.

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Fully sanctioned? Uh, except for the part where they have to follow the FHSAA rules of eligibility....which is exactly why they can't make playoffs.

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LHSAA schools shall be permitted to engage in interscholastic athletic competition against high schools from outside of
Louisiana with the following stipulations:
1.
The school shall be a member in good standing with its state high school association that is a member of the NFHS.
2.
The school is not a member of the state high school association but is permitted to compete against member schools
of the association.
3.
The school is not a member of the state high school association but is recognized and considered to be in good stand-
ing with the association

not sure where IMG falls under, but it's one of these because otherwise Southern Lab couldn't have played them

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They don't, and good for him for going to a situation where he can find that

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So the people who grew up with Moses don't have his best interests at heart, but a bunch of people who:

1) have never met Moses
2) abandoned their own friends and family to try and improve their own chances of landing a professional football career, and
3) are in direct competition with Moses for roster spots, playing time, exposure, recruiting ranking and college scout attention

do have his best interests at heart?

That is a bizarrely illogical suggestion. Other than the highly suggestive insistence of personal experience by an alum defending their school, can you offer any evidence whatsoever that the kids he would be playing with at IMG would be any more supportive of him than the people he grew up with? Maybe some examples of selfless acts of personal sacrifice by IMG players for the benefit of their teammates, like countless thousands of kids across the country do for their friends in high school?

On another note, who goes to IMG's games? I mean, do they fly in all the players' families for their games? And even if they do, that's what, a few hundred fans to play in front of? It's not like there's a hometown to represent, or a "school" community to come out and show their support. Do all the IMG employees have to bring their families as some sort of job requirement, so the kids can play in front of crowds?

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If IMG checks the box, then it seems like a reasonable decision for the player that has the opportunity.

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I'm pretty sure we decided as a society several decades ago that some kids having better opportunities than others just because of how they were born is a bad thing. Something about "separate but equal", iirc.

I mean, how is this different than saying, "okay, we're going to put all the rich, smart kids into the few best schools in town, and leave all the poor kids with uneducated parents in the shitty schools. Then, when all those kids have children, they can pretty much all end up going to the same schools their parents went to, and start the cycle all over again."

On a more philosophical note, how is this high school football? Who do these kids play for? This is not even an NFL we're-the-team-representing-your-city kind of organization. This is something out of a dystopian, corporate-society future portrayal where people are just drones of whatever corporation owns/employs them, so they watch the corporate broadcast to cheer for their corporate team, regardless of whether they have any geographical, familial, cultural or other social relationship to the team or its players.

Basically, it sounds like the answer to the question is that the kids are playing for themselves, which is directly contrary to one of the most essential (and well documented) goals of team sports among youths -- teaching them the value and rewards of working for something greater than your own self-benefit and self-advancement.

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Moses is already as high profile a HS athlete as it's possible to be. Being at IMG won't get him any more exposure. And to think that academics at IMG are anywhere close to U High is laughable.

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It isn't about being high profile. It is about him receiving the best training possible. Clearly he sees IMG training him better on the football field than UHigh.

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We do send the smart kids to better schools if they choose to go to them.

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And there is a lot of criticism of that from many parts of our society (usually to the left). The idea of taking the "better kids" and promoting their welfare and interests to the exclusion of the "lesser kids" has always met with some pretty strong resistance. I'm just curious to see how consistent that resistance is when we redefine "better".