LOSING a football game is bad, but having to forfeit is even worse (Shutterstock ai).

The exploits of the Yorba Linda High School Mustang football team were seemingly legendary for the first part of the season until … they weren’t.

The team started out hot, winning its first four games and looking like a contender in the tough Alpha League along with San Clemente, San Juan Hills and Mission Viejo.

But then, the whole thing came crashing down. The CIF-SS (governing body for high school athletics) has forced the school to forfeit four victories (over Laguna Beach, Long Beach Poly, El Dorado and Esperanza).

So they went from 5-1 to 0-7. The reasons? The CIF-SS claims that “more than one student” and “more than one incident” were involved with “documented deficiencies” in “eligibility verification, communication between coaches and athletic administration, and participation clearance.”

To put it another way, some folks among the school’s coaches, athletic directors and administration “knew or should have known” that they had some ineligible players on their football team.

With those boys off the squad, the Mustangs then lost three in a row and are now 0-7 and 0-2 in league.
It’s a sad story all around. The other fellas on the team – who did belong there– are seeing a golden season turned into a scandal. More personally, those ineligible players might well have taken up starting positions that otherwise should have gone to others.

It’s tough to be a high school football coach. The pay is laughable and the pressure in great. Losing coaches become ex-coaches. The badminton team could sit at the bottom of the league and nobody gets upset. But when the highly-visible football team tanks, things can get ugly.

But not as ugly as what happened to YLHS. Coaches, ADs, etc. who are tempted to bend the rules and turn a blind eye should clip (or print) out the articles about the Decline and Fall of the ’26 Mustangs and put them up on the wall for all to see.

That’s the kind of fame nobody wants.