Last week, when I wrote that I would comment on high school sports transfers, I anticipated that I would be able to get online and read the Mississippi High School Activities Association by-laws about transfers and eligibility.

That Web site seems to be out of reach. I would need a password in order to access that information. Since there seems to be a significant number of transfers this football season, the MSHAA may want to keep the information under wraps in case there is some litigation.

Anyway, all I could do was look at the Mississippi Private School Association site, which pretty much spells out their transfer rules.

I do understand that athletes can transfer between Mississippi public schools under certain circumstances. The rules seem to be quite stringent, but can be appealed and are decided by the MSHAA Board of Directors (or a committee from that board) on a case-by-case basis.

Without the loss of eligibility both associations are strongly against transfers between schools from the same association. Even when an athlete’s parents have moved into a different private school’s district, a transferring athlete must not play for a week. Under normal conditions, the public school’s rules require a transfer to sit out for a year.

From all I have heard, the recruiting and transferring of athletes during the 1920s and early 1930s were common. Many stories exist about men playing in high school football games at the ripe age of 25 or older.

Most of those were probably not even students at the school they represented. Later in the 1930s when more small Mississippi schools began fielding football teams, the Mississippi High School Activities Association was formed and rules began to be enforced about transfers.

There were still many schools which only taught through the 11th grade, and athletes from those schools were usually allowed to transfer and play at another school until graduating.

I know that rules regarding transfers were enforced in the 1940s. Natchez High School had a couple of players in 1949 who had not been eligible to play the previous season even though their fathers had been transferred to Natchez with International Paper or Armstrong.

There were also a couple of players who had been held out of school the previous spring so they would not graduate. I don’t think the rule regarding only having a certain number of years to play after entering the ninth grade had been passed.

I don’t know the difference but, in the 1950s, a kid played for Natchez as a junior. He had made All Big Eight the previous year as a sophomore at Corinth, made it again as a junior at Natchez High, then moved back to Corinth and made All Big Eight a third time as a senior.

I don’t know more details about that since I was away in the Air Force during those years.

This season there has been a rash of transfers from some private schools to public schools. I don’t know if that had a direct impact, but there are now 10 private schools playing eight-man football.

This is up from six last season, and those teams are now divided into a north and south division. The north division includes Calhoun Academy, Calvary Christian, Kemper Academy, Macon Central and Russell Christian.

The south division lists Ben’s Ford, Christian Collegiate, Mount Salus, Rebul Academy and Tensas Academy. A look at last Friday’s scores reveals that, like last year, those games are high scoring affairs.

And, That’s Official.

Al Graning writes a weekly column for The Democrat.