Texas High School Coaches Association gives football coach a breakthrough award

The Texas High School Coaches Association named Terrell High School’s Marvin Sedberry Jr. as the first recipient of the Texas Coach Magazine Article of the Year Award. His write-up, entitled “The High School Transfer Portal,” looks into Texas high school football, dealing with transfer culture and NIL while programs try to build programs the right way.

A portion of his article reads:

“This mindset has bled into high school sports, contributing to the misuse of mechanisms like the ‘transfer portal,’ raising ethical and legal concerns about its impact on the integrity of the game. Since the implementation of NIL deals at the collegiate level, rogue agents have popped up throughout the communities recruiting players by the promise of a pipeline to a NIL deal at the next level.

Parents have given over guardianship to their children in exchange for the promise that an NIL deal will be returned at the end of their high school career. These agents prey upon the instant gratification mindset, the poverty community, and the entitlement felt amongst young people. Agents guide parents by creating a falsification of documents to beat the system.

Due to the lack of oversight at the national level, it is easy to take a player to another state, play him there, and then return them to Texas and have the PAPF paperwork be sent to the out-of-state school. They are not obligated to complete the paperwork, and if it has been more than a year since the athlete last played in Texas, there is no requirement to send it to the previous Texas school. This loophole allows a player who has transferred for athletic reasons to go unnoticed.”

Sedberry led Terrell to a 6-5 record last season. However, their campaign ended with a 52-14 loss to South Oak Cliff in the Texas Class 5A Division 2 bi-district round.