Lipscomb Academy's arrogance got the best of it, leading to this astonishing playoff ban

Re: TSSAA issued a two-year playoff ban for the football program after it ruled Lipscomb Academy violated the recruiting rule.

While a long-distance subscriber to my hometown newspaper, I have not submitted a letter in many years, but it saddens me to see what Lipscomb University's high school has lapsed into.

I'm both a graduate of the then college (June 1983) and of Goodpasture Christian School (h.s. 1978). When in high school, there was no keener rivalry for me than the one with Lipscomb, and it was one with a certain integrity born of perspective and purpose with both schools that was appreciated by all their supporters. It's now time for the University to take a step back and reassess where it is now and what it's about.

That Lipscomb Academy finds its high school athletics program under TSSAA probation is astonishing enough, but that the University and its supporters would immediately threaten legal action against the TSSAA in response exposes a certain arrogance that their students are above the rules.

(Editor's note: The school later decided not to pursue an injunction).

Brentwood Academy had that same bright idea until the U.S. Supreme Court put them in their place. Such defiance only emphasizes the baseline institutional problems there and not just in the high school.

Lipscomb would be far better off taking pause and making that agonizing assessment of how it represents itself, what it has now become, and what it would take to restore its identity and its reputation.

Football is not the essence of a Christian school.

Robert Brandon, Moberly, Missouri 65270

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Lipscomb Academy playoff ban shows arrogance supplanted good judgment