America at Large: There was some irony in the fact the seemingly draconian ruling from the Louisiana High School Athletic Association coincided with the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastating visit to that state.

Last week the LHSAA stripped Bastrop High School of its 2005 Class 4A state football championship, fined the Monroe school $14,000, and declared three players permanently ineligible after determining that two Bastrop assistant coaches had been overzealous in enticing five Katrina victims to attend their institution.

Katrina displaced hundreds of thousands of school-age children, including tens of thousands of schoolboy athletes whose schools were devastated by the storm. Meeting in emergency session last September, the LHSAA passed special legislation which allowed students "immediate athletic eligibility" at any school in the area in which they had taken up residence.

What the rest of the world saw as a chaotic and tragic situation was evidently viewed as an opportunity for some football coaches, and evacuation centres became the scene of veritable feeding frenzies as coaches and their emissaries attempted to bolster their programmes with the addition of talented but homeless teenaged players.

The LHSAA investigation determined Bastrop representatives had illegally recruited five players from Port Sulphur, whose school had been closed by Katrina, by arranging transportation from various refugee centres in Louisiana and Texas to Bastrop, nearly 300 miles from New Orleans in northeastern Louisiana, and then falsifying documents to cover up the transgressions.

The eligibility of two former Port Sulphur players - defensive end Jody Ancar and wide receiver Jeremy Sylve - expired last year. Three remaining players - All-State quarterback Randall Mackey and running backs Jamal Recasner and James Brown, were declared permanently ineligible to play for Bastrop.

The school was placed on administrative probation for a year, ordered to forfeit all 15 of its 2005 wins, and its state title - its first since 1927 - was revoked. Under the ruling, Breaux Bridge, alma mater of Carolina Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme and the school Bastrop defeated in the state championship game, was retroactively declared the state champion.

The LHSAA determined Bastrop assistant coaches D'Carlos Holmes and Travis Stanley had "coerced" the five former Port Sulphur players into signing written statements affirming they or their parents had arranged for their transportation to Bastrop, while in fact the school had paid for their relocation.

"My kids are crushed right now," said Bastrop head coach Brad Bradshaw. "They are crying. They are hurt that their hard work is being taken away from them."

"Our community accepted not only these kids but hundreds of evacuees from all over the state that came from dire situations," added school board president Kris McKoin. "These kids did not come from homes or schools, but from shelters."

LHSAA president Tommy Henry insisted he was sensitive to the plight of last year's "Katrina Kids".

"If they had furnished their own transportation to Bastrop, we wouldn't be having this conversation," said Henry. "There are no winners in this. I'm not pleased by having to make this ruling."

Representing as it did yet another conflict between the Katrina tragedy and the beauracratic bungling which accompanied it, the cautionary tale merited brief and passing interest in the national media last week. Both the New York Times and Sports Illustrated reported the LHSAA ruling but then dropped the story like a hot rock. There is, however, another side to the Katrina/Bastrop issue, one passed along by my old friend Lance Hill, who is the executive director of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University.

Hill declined to be evacuated during Katrina, remaining instead to assist storm victims in his city, and has functioned as more or less the conscience of white New Orleans over the last turbulent year.

"Since Port Sulphur is a black town, I'm assuming that these kids were all black," pointed out Hill. "The injustice of it is that many white middle-class parents also moved to the Monroe area with their children, claiming to be 'hurricane evacuees.'

"There was little wind damage and no flooding in the neighborhoods they came from, but the rule was that if a child played football at the school that had been temporarily closed, they could automatically be placed on the football team at the new host school.

"The Monroe area schools, West Monroe and Bastrop were powerhouses, so these white middle-class parents played 'storm victim' to get their kids on a championship team without having to go through try-outs."

Hill noted the Katrina-related subterfuge was not limited to football players. Some parents took advantage of the emergency ruling by changing school districts so that their daughters could make the new school's cheerleading squad - a tactic which tended to fuel overall resentment of evacuees as a class in the affected districts.

"Meanwhile," pointed out Hill, "these truly homeless black kids with no private transportation, living in shelters, got kicked off teams and ruled ineligible because they accepted a ride to Monroe."

How much sense does that make?"