According to the Dallas Morning News<\/a>, the organization\u2019s highest-governing committee denied 61 of 71 of student eligibility appeals during the 2025-26 school year.<\/p>\nWhen it comes to the Houston area specifically, Chronicle research showed that 11 of 13 athletes who appealed to the state executive committee were denied eligibility. The other two who appealed won their cases after the committee determined they did not move for athletic purposes.<\/p>\n
According to the Chronicle\u2019s survey, 46.5% of participants said PAPFs are \u201csomewhat effective\u201d at discouraging athletic-driven transfers. But 25.6% disagreed, saying they were \u201cvery ineffective,\u201d and another 23.3% said they were only \u201csomewhat effective.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important to remember, and this gets lost, that our rules are not made by any UIL staff members,\u201d UIL athletic director Ray Zepeda said. \u201cThey\u2019re made by our member schools for our member schools, and I\u2019m reminded every day in the execution of my job that my personal opinion about those rules really doesn\u2019t matter. It doesn\u2019t matter at all. And I think sometimes when we start to utilize our personal opinions in the adjudication of the rules, that\u2019s when we start having inconsistency of process.<\/p>\n
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\u201cRight now, our member schools have a two-way go when it comes to eligibility, and that\u2019s residency, and then also the measure of changing schools for athletic purposes. Whether it\u2019s a UIL official or a coach who maybe might not believe in those standards is really immaterial because those are the rules that our member schools have set. If they\u2019re not serving us well, then the right thing to do is to change the rules through official action in the legislative council process, and I think that\u2019s important to remember in all these conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harrison said between 17,000 and 18,000 PAPFs were processed through the UIL\u2019s system during the 2025-26 school year, a statistic he described as \u201cstaggering.\u201d He noted that while less than 1% of those cases advanced to the state executive committee appeal process, those are the ones that make the most headlines because of the public nature of the hearings and, oftentimes, the notoriety of the athletes involved, such as Meredith or Nussmeier.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to demand that coaches and schools stay true to the rules, adjudicate the rules as they\u2019re written,\u201d Harrison said. \u201cThat when they\u2019re completing any form\u00a0\u2014 the Previous Athletic Participation form or PAPF has talked about quite a bit in the media. When that form is being completed, it needs to be completed with great fidelity and great honesty, and if it\u2019s not, then we have an input that is flawed. And when you have flawed inputs, you may end up with flawed outputs. So we in no way suggest that our system is perfect because it\u2019s not. It\u2019s a human-based system, and any human system is not going to be perfect. But we think it\u2019s a very, very good system that is working very well for the vast majority of cases. When you have a case or two or five that gets some attention, people lose sight of the forest for the trees.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it comes to flagging transfers on the PAPFs, several Houston-area coaches say it\u2019s easier said than done. Many athletes transfer for legitimate reasons\u00a0\u2014 including family relocations, custody changes, academic opportunities and other personal circumstances\u00a0\u2014 and identifying sufficient evidence of an athletic-drive move can be challenging.<\/p>\n
For other coaches, the idea of holding a player \u201chostage\u201d who no longer wants to be part of their program is not something they want to get involved with, so they\u2019ll sign off on the PAPF for that reason. Several coaches expressed frustration that some athletes and parents seek \u201cthe path of least resistance,\u201d transferring when faced with competition or adversity instead of earning playing time or helping build their home programs. Nearly 41.9% of survey participants said transfers do not make it difficult to maintain their culture, but that\u2019s certainly not the case for all. Many coaches worry about the disruption of competitive balance within their districts and across the state.<\/p>\n
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\u201cTransfers are destroying community-based athletics and team culture for a lot of average to struggling teams,\u201d one Class 6A Houston-area coach said in the survey. \u201cAthletics is about all student-athletes and the character, morals and life lessons that come from that. If we keep creating all-star teams, what happens to all those average to bad teams and their culture and morale? Some will move on, but kids and teams are fragile. We don\u2019t need to widen the gap between the haves and have nots.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, at least 10 states are now allowing athletic-driven transfers with immediate eligibility.\u00a0During the 2025 Texas legislative session, House Bill 619 proposed allowing high school students to have a one-time penalty-free transfer<\/a> for athletic purposes. The bill, which had been proposed twice before, was authored by Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins of San Antonio and drew stark opposition from the Texas High School Coaches Association and the Texas High School Athletic Directors Association. Their stance has been that any type of relaxation of the transfer rules would fundamentally alter the community-based model of Texas high school athletics. The bill ultimately failed for a third time, however.<\/p>\nWhen asked about a one-time penalty-free transfer rule, 65.1% of participants in the Chronicle\u2019s survey said they would be opposed. But another 32.6% said they would be in favor, while one coach said he would need to see the proposal in writing to decide.<\/p>\n
For now, the UIL rules remain the same, but several Houston-area coaches said cracking down on athletic-driven transfers is an uphill battle. They noted that players are connecting with each other more and more through social media, shared trainers, 7-on-7 club teams and other avenues, which is helping to fuel the rise in transfers. Some also pointed to open-enrollment school districts, which allow students to transfer to schools outside their attendance zones, either within the same district or from neighboring districts.<\/p>\n
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While some coaches advocated for stricter enforcement or changes to transfer rules, others argued the issue is bigger than any policy. As transfers have become more common, several said schools also have to look inward at why those decisions are made.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot control what people want to do,\u201d Mayde Creek coach Mike Arogbonlo said. \u201cThey will find a way around the rules. The pressure should be put on coaches to provide an environment where kids and parents don\u2019t want to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flower Mound Marcus quarterback Colton Nussmeier (13) warms up before a District 5-6A high school football game against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-380818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}