High School Sports Feature: The WIAA is just plain money-hungry

No, not the Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association but rather the Wisconsin organization that does the same thing. Except they're a bunch of money-grubbing buggers.

The problem with high school athletic associations is that they're bureaucratic, unwavering to their ridiculous policies and largely driven by money. Look at the sponsors at the state tournaments. Guess who sees the money from that? The associations.

Taking advantage of kids? I'd say so.

No the WIAA has just ratcheted it up another notch. They tried to sue a newspaper corporation for webcasting one of their sanctioned games AT PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS. Hmmm. Well now the Newspaper corporation is filing a countersuit, because well, the WIAA are a bunch of douchebags.

The Wisconsin Newspaper Association and Gannett Co. filed a response and counterclaim in federal court in Madison on Tuesday against the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association.

The WNA claims the WIAA is violating newspapers' rights under the Copyright Act by granting exclusive contracts to private companies covering tournament events

WIAA spokesman Todd Clark declined to comment, saying he hadn't seen the WNA's counterclaim. Jerry O'Brien, an attorney representing the WIAA, said he had a chance to scan the filing but would need time before he'd be able to comment on specifics of the case.

The WIAA filed its lawsuit in December against the WNA and Gannett, which owns The Post-Crescent of Appleton, after the newspaper's Webcast of a high school playoff game Nov. 8.

The WIAA says one of its contracted private partners owned the Webcast rights to the event and is owed a fee. But WNA lawyers contend that the host schools, all public, didn't object when The Post-Crescent streamed the game and three others over the Internet.

Dan Flannery, executive editor of The Post-Crescent, said reporters used the schools' press boxes to work in and provide audio for the Webcast. But Gannett newspapers did not receive permission and did not use a streaming Internet report on four other games it wanted to cover.

So now you can't cover events unless you pay the WIAA a contract to do so? Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the worst sports organization in the entire country. I've been reading quite a few stories for months now about how the WIAA really restricts access to their events (largely photography) and even tries to censor stories coming out of the tournaments.

Yep, this is high school athletics. At it's worse.

Honestly, the WIAA has no right to privately contract out the coverage of their tournaments but that's business I suppose. (Oh wait this if for the kids right) And what cracks me up is with this "contracting" they usually contract out photographers as well to sell photos to parents. The photographers that they usually contract out that can take exclusive photos for sale are some of the worst out there. If you want to get a blurry, out of focus picture of your kid, go to any state basketball tournament and these scourges of society with their bulging beer guts will be prancing around like their god's gift to photography charging you 30 dollars for absolute photography crap.

They're the same guys that show up to your child's soccer games and try to sell you photos of your kid. Same guys. Creepy. Lazy. And the only thing on their minds is making money, not trying to take good photos.

And in general that's what the WIAA is trying to do, make money. They're not worried about the well-being of the kids or running a smooth tournament. All their worried about is the color green. Shame on them.