Done

An Oklahoma District Judge has decided he is unable to reverse time and replay either part or whole of a previously-played game.

Ruling earlier today, Oklahoma County District Court Judge Bernard M. Jones denied Oklahoma City Public Schools' request for an injunction that would force Locust Grove and Oklahoma City Douglass High Schools to replay their Class 3A quarterfinal game, or to replay the last 64 seconds of the game, starting from when a mistaken rule enforcement cost Douglass a touchdown to which it was by right entitled.

OKCPS has decided not to continue its off-field, in-court shenanigans, for which it deserves only the barest minimum of credit after already delaying the game by a week in order to engage in America's other pastime, suing somebody. Whatever good sense is shown in choosing not to go forward is orders of magnitude less than the bare commonest of sense that should have stopped the mess before a single lawyer was disinterred. It isn't that the argument that the Douglass team wrongfully lost the game is incorrect -- it's just that there is no way to make the wrong right.

Judge Jones himself gets only the barest of credit also. Rather than telling the plaintiffs, "It's a screwup at a high school football game. There's nothing a judge can do about it," he delayed last Friday's scheduled game between Locust Grove and Heritage Hall until yesterday's hearing and today's ruling could be scheduled. It is no great accomplishment to arrive in six days at the decision which should have been reached in less than one.

You, O Fine Reader, being the perceptive sort of person that you are, will probably have noticed that no one is threatening to go to court over Oklahoma City Douglass test scores or building facilities, Or the fact that the statewide testing mark for the school dropped from a C+ in 2013 to a D- in 2014, Or that nobody noticed that school staff had let so many academic requirements slide for the class of 2013 that the discovery only a fifth of them could graduate was not made until November 2012.

None of those things are worth disturbing a judge and packing a courtroom for, apparently. What kind of a lesson is that?