From college football to Little League, it's a golden era of court injunctions
· Yahoo Sports
It's one of the last long evenings of summer vacation, and the sun is setting behind a row of houses. In the middle of the cul-de-sac, neighborhood kids with big dreams and wild imaginations dodge the occasional approaching car while they emulate their favorite current sports figures.
The bushy-haired 12-year-old boy plays quarterback. The 11-year-old girl from next door runs routes as a wide receiver. The 9-year-old with Coke bottle glasses is the quarterback's attorney. And his twin brother gets the most important position of them all - the sympathetic hometown judge.
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Across the way, a front porch light flashes off and on, the unmistakable sign to come inside.
"Awww, Mom," one of the 9-year-old pleads. "Just one more injunction?"
This anecdote is pure fiction, but you had to wonder there for a second, didn't you? It was bad enough when legal maneuverings started shaping the College Football Playoff race, and when alleged federal government-level intervention found its way into the FIFA World Cup, or when an interminable investigation by a high-profile law firm threatened to bleed into a second NBA season while keeping two franchises and the fate of a possibly-traded star forward in limbo.
But now we're going to play Little League baseball in a courtroom, too? Really?
Would it be any wonder if the kids in the cul-de-sac started believing that to win the big game, practicing their jump shot was less important than making sure their folks are greasing the right wheels?
Yes, I know, that last part always has had at least a small bit of truth to it. Somehow, the Danny Almonte controversy of the 2001 Little League World Series now is 25 years old. And ever since, disappointed dads and moms from coast to coast have had reason to believe they might be able to get their kids' losses overturned, if only they can prove that somebody else's kid wasn't eligible to win in the first place.
So maybe the only surprising thing about this week's mess involving the 12-and-under boys from Boerne, their counterparts from Tulsa, and a potential trip to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, is that it took this long for Little League absurdity to reach this level.
The Cliff's Notes version, as of Tuesday afternoon: After the Tulsa team was disqualified from the Southwest Region tournament for using an ineligible player in an earlier round of the event, Boerne won what it thought was a game that sent it to the Little League World Series in Williamsport.
But the Tulsa team filed for and received a restraining order in the 414th Judicial District in McLennan County, supposedly allowing it to play Boerne on Tuesday night. Tuesday afternoon, Little League International asked a Texas judge to throw out that restraining order, and allow Boerne to advance to Williamsport as planned. The judge eventually ruled in Boerne's favor sending them to the Little League World Series.
But we are not about to venture into the intricacies of every legal argument here. We're not going to take a position as to which team is right and which team is wrong. The only point here is that it's kind of a shame, but the kids might as well start learning about this stuff now, because it looks like there's no escaping it.
The same day all of this Little League drama was unfolding, there was yet another in a long line of news updates involving a college football player who'd received an injunction to retain his eligibility. This time it was Baylor defensive lineman Hosea Wheeler, who found out Tuesday he was cleared to play a sixth season thanks to a ruling by another judge, coincidentally also in McLennan County.
Wheeler is far from the first. Mississippi quarterback Trinidad Chambliss set off the injunction spree back in February, and there have been plenty of others across the country since then. By the time the playoff rolls around in December and January, college football's next champion might be decided not by who's getting the best pass rush, but by who found the friendliest judges.
And as for those kids in the cul-de-sac?
Of course they were fictional.
The real ones probably were competing at something that required real skill. Like video games.
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There’s more to San Antonio with the Express-News. Subscribe today for just 25¢.This article originally published at From college football to Little League, it's a golden era of court injunctions.