Garden City’s Jeff Sims comes out strongly in favor of out-of-state juco football change

Garden City Community College football coach Jeff Sims isn’t going to make many friends the next few weeks with his stance on the proposal to increase out-of-state roster limits in the Jayhawk Conference.

Sims, who is in favor of the increase, simply does not care.

“At some point, it became that on one side of it, if you were for the increase then you didn’t care about Kansas kids,” said Sims, who is in his second season. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. We will always keep promoting Kansas kids and will always be all about Kansas kids.

“What hasn’t been put out there yet is that maybe this would help Kansas kids. That maybe this rule wasn’t fair in the first place. That the history of the rule shows that it probably never was.”

The Aug. 4 proposal is to increase out-of-state rosters from 20 to 30, with the extra 10 spots coming from Kansas’ four border states, and to increase the number of players that can suit up for home games from 63 to 85.

Last week, Kansas Football Coaches Association president Steve Martin threatened a boycott of Jayhawk schools that voted in favor of the change.

Sims doesn’t seem bothered by the boycott threat.

“The reality is I can go to any kid and recruit them and I don’t have to talk (to the coaches),” Sims said. “In 2016, in this age of social media, it’s not that hard to do. I thought what (Martin) said was disrespectful, and it was throwing us under the bus without having all the facts.”

Sims led Fort Scott to the NJCAA championship game in 2009, where it lost to Blinn College and quarterback Cam Newton in the last minute. At one point under Sims, the Greyhounds had future NFL stars Jason Pierre-Paul and Lavonte David on the same defense. He’s also been an assistant coach at Indiana and Florida Atlantic.

Last season, Garden City traveled to El Dorado with a 1-7 record and upset No. 1 Butler — one of two Jayhawk schools, along with Hutchinson, that have been most vocal in opposition to the increase.

“This program was built on Kansas kids,” Butler coach Tim Schaffner said. “Those kids are the ones that we need to watch out for and make sure their opportunities aren’t taken away by this vote.”

Garden City, Dodge City and Coffeyville are in favor the increase. Highland, Independence and Fort Scott are the Jayhawk’s other football-playing schools. Jayhawk presidents voted down a proposal to do away with out-of-state limits in the spring.

“What Butler will say is ‘Oh, you’re hurting Kansas kids,’ but guess what, Kansas kids were already hurting,” Sims said. “And what they’ll do is change the storyline to say you don’t want to compete, but last time I checked I was 3-1 against them the last four times we played and they should be embarrassed that I beat them with the team I went in there with last year.

“Butler is screaming they want to keep their competitive advantage, and if the rule changes they won’t get Kansans. That’s ridiculous. They’re still going to get the best Kansas kids, and I work 365 days a year because that’s what it takes to beat them. God bless their setup, but don’t make it look like we’re sore losers because we think it might be better to have a kid at Coffeyville who is from Tulsa, which is an hour-and-a-half away, instead of one that is from Kansas and six hours away.”

Northwest’s Martin didn’t buy Sims’ reasoning.

“I think (Sims) kind of proves our point, that there’s a disconnect with the Kansas kids and the coaches,” Martin said. “… It’s an asinine statement. The blue bloods in the conference, the teams that win consistently, know how to treat the Kansas kids and coaches. What we said wasn’t disrespectful, it was in response to an attack on Kansas kids.”

Sims’ argument for changing the rule has two parts. The first part goes that there aren’t enough quality Kansas high school players to go around. Because of that, Jayhawk teams are forced to either use players that would instead benefit from a redshirt year or recruit players that have no business playing college football.

The other side of that — and the basis of Martin’s argument — is that with traveling rosters set at 63, there would be 30 of those spots reserved for out-of-state players, and 33 for Kansas players. As many as 80 fewer Kansas players would have spots on traveling rosters.

But Sims said Kansas players could benefit from more out-of-state players.

“I have a kid, Alec Wetig, who is a Kansan and he is fantastic … he is hard-working, dedicated to the sport and does everything I ask of him,” Sims said. “And last year, he came here as a freshman and I had to play him at 162 pounds. He had no spring football in high school and he had limited offers out of high school.

“Now, one year later he’s 175 pounds and will probably get some good NAIA and smaller Division II offers after this year, because he does all the right things. Let me get five kids from Colorado and five from Nebraska, I’m still going to recruit Alec, but now I’ll redshirt him and give him a better opportunity to get a better scholarship and play at a higher level, which Butler does every year on a regular basis. Which is what this should all be about, anyway.

“It shouldn’t be about just getting kids to fill up your dorms, which some schools are doing right now.”

The out-of-state rule originated in the mid-1960s, when several teams filled their rosters with mostly out-of-state players, violating a gentleman’s agreement to limit out-of-state players. That led to the first out-of-state limit of 15 players in 1965, reduced to 10 in 1967. The league voted to increase that number to 12 in 1999, then to 20 before the 2013 season.

The other part of Sims’ argument is that the out-of-state rule’s origins are so antiquated that they may even be illegal.

“The rules date back to the 1960s and 1950s and the problems they were having back then,” Sims said. “People can go back and do the research and find out why they were put in place, in the first place, and draw their own conclusions. But they’re only for football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball. I’ll leave it at that.

“I don’t think anybody is racist now, and that’s not their intent with this rule whatsoever. But I also don’t think they can stand up and say that trying to remove a rule that was put into place in 1965 is wrong.”

Sims cited a court case from last year, where junior colleges in New York forced the NJCAA to rescind its rules on international recruits. The dispute was over the NJCAA’s rule that tied eligibility to at least three years attendance at a high school in the United States, limiting such athletes to three per team. The NJCAA stopped enforcing the rule when New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched an investigation with the state’s Civil Rights Bureau.

“What that says to me is that you can’t discriminate about where somebody is from,” Sims said. “(The NJCAA) got pressed on it, and they immediately removed the rule … I think (the NJCAA) knows it’s illegal, just nobody has challenged it very hard. I don’t see how you can limit opportunities for someone to go to college because of where they’re from … we’re from Kansas, but we’re also from America, aren’t we?”

This story was originally published July 26, 2016 at 5:38 PM with the headline "Garden City’s Jeff Sims comes out strongly in favor of out-of-state juco football change."