Kansas junior college football plays in the big time these days.
The Jayhawk Community College Conference made a key change to its player eligibility rules three years ago that drew blue-chip players in from out of state.
The level of play shot up almost overnight, transforming at least one team from a perennial doormat to a national contender.
As the stakes rose, so did the scrutiny. Netflix came to document players and coaches straining to make their way to powerhouse four-year schools and to perhaps set up pro careers.
They also caught ambitious coaching at its worst.
The cameras captured one coach in southeast Kansas berating a player with language crude even by football standards. The same coach later texted a German player that he would be his Hitler. Then he allegedly pretended to be someone else representing a high-profile law firm in threats against the local newspaper.
Hes since quit and been charged with eight felonies.
What a joke, said Steve Martin, the football coach at Wichita Northwest High School. That is a black eye on the coaching profession.
In 2016, the Jayhawk Conference dropped one rule: a cap on out-of-state players for each team. Without the restriction, the game became more competitive. Players with the size, speed and skill to play in the NCAAs Division I schools but whod maybe washed out for discipline reasons or who couldnt cut it in class came to Kansas community colleges from across the country. Netflix turned one teams season into an underdog parable.
Yet the change also brought controversy. High schools complained that community college football was no longer about the community.
The coach at Independence Community College drew as much publicity for those texts and his criminal charges as his teams wins. An investigation was opened into a New Jersey players death shortly after he joined the Garden City Community College team.
And even as the talent level shot up, game attendance dropped. It seems crowds tend to prefer watching local kids play. So the Jayhawk Conference is restoring a cap on out-of-state players but one that still lets a team draw dozens of high-end recruits from beyond Kansas.
Before the change, teams were restricted to 20 out-of-state players. Coaches wanting the rule tossed away had two main arguments.
First, there werent enough Kansas players to make all the teams in the league competitive.
Second, the colleges near bigger population centers had an easier time recruiting that talent. Butler Community College had dominated the league for years and its location near Wichita got some of the credit.
The hope was an influx of out-of-state talent would overtake any of Butlers advantage.
