I'm not sure what's behind this comment. Could you please explain why you say this?
A situation where private schools suddenly become unbridled on their athletics opens the door for many public schools (and their student-athletes) to lose an arms race [on secondary education <-> next-level opportunities] against the privates.
No rules whatsoever for privates, since the isolation of privates from the current HS sports arena against publics means there’d be no point in following the current rules on recruiting + athletics emphasis in marketing? Can easily see a situation where privates across all strata (from the “Big 6” boys schools, to the inner-ring Catholic co-eds, even out to the rural/exurban privates) all of the sudden market themselves as being tickets to subsidized college (athletic-driven scholarships/financial aid.) Get a football game between Moeller vs Ed, as an example, or Hoban/Walsh hoops, where you have rosters complete with GPA’s/test scores that can be given to recruiters.
Simplifies the recruiting process for tons of college programs, cuts out a significant hassle that currently comes with recruiting out of the summer and through the internet = invariably gets schools’ a better crowd of recruits on the academic profile with the retention to follow (big deal for plenty of colleges.)
There may be some pockets of public schools (e.g. the MAC, middle/upper-middle suburbans) that can roll with those punches… but inner-city schools, rural schools with little reputation academically/athletically and ones that generally serve less-well-to-do student populations writ large? They don’t have the resources nor wherewithal to overcome that. Not for themselves, and not for their kids.
