@hammer89 Glad you could at least see the humor in that.
As for whether the OHSAA can or can't reimburse travel, is probably more up to how they're doing it and not that they're doing it. Travel is an expense. If they're paying officials, venues, etc for the playoffs, covering transportation costs to get teams to the games they're putting on isn't exactly unreal. After all, don't they pay officials travel from around the state rather than just their game rates?
And my final point is just that... other states do it and haven't stopped. PA does it. Other states do it. Travel is a cost of putting on the games when the state association is collecting the bulk of the proceeds for tickets, media rights, and sponsorships. Non-profit doesn't mean they're doing things for free and have a whole host of volunteers running things. Which is a classic mistake many people make when thinking about things like non-profits and charities. Or that they have to spend for things like salaries, insurance, benefits, reimbursements, costs, advertising, legal, etc and yammer on constantly about why a non-profit is spending so much money on other things that seem outside the cost of their mission statement.
Part of the OHSAA structure might be that since they take in all revenue (now), they can't just dole it out to their members for reimbursement because it looks like a kickback to the IRS. However, if the schools ran the playoff games under the rules of the OHSAA and collected the tickets and then paid a 'rights fee' to the OHSAA per ticket, then they'd be okay. Which is mostly how other states handle it.
In PA, the districts run the playoffs and the PIAA just oversees it all until the finals. And even then, the state is paying the transportation.
Although, thinking about it just now.... Almost every school in PA contracts out their bussing, rather than having an in-house fleet of buses like you find in Ohio. So, the payment goes to the bussing company and not the school. And any overage would be paid by the school themselves for going above the allotted mileage reimbursement.