TSSAA staff member speaks out about recruiting violation enforcement

Matthew Gillespie shares the TSSAA vision on policing recruiting

By Clayton Carroll

NASHVILLE, TN (WLAF) – The TSSAA recently published a four-tiered recruiting violation chart with potential penalties. I spoke with Matthew Gillespie of the TSSAA regarding the enforcement of these rules.

“I don’t think the approach is really any different than what it has been with any other violations. We tend to get our information and evidence from reliable sources and through our schools’ self-reporting,” said Gillespie.

However, he did mention that things may be slightly different when it comes to enforcement of recruiting violations specifically. “We hope schools self-report recruiting, but obviously that might not always be the case; and we don’t have boots on the ground to enforce these rules. We have 17 full-time staff members, which is why we rely on self-reporting and information being turned into us,” Gillespie added.

This is the first year that the TSSAA is implementing the one-time transfer rule, which, in principle, would create many more recruiting violations. “That’s one of those things where you can ask me in a year, and I’ll be able to see a lot more how that goes,” Gillespie mentioned. “Hopefully having the rules written and published in black and white will curtail some of these programs from committing these violations,” added Gillespie.

“We can’t hand down punishments based on rumors…that’s why we have to have solid, concrete evidence, then communicate with school administrators to begin an investigation,” Gillespie said.

One of the violations on the new chart is that there can be no “liking, commenting on, or sharing a prospective student’s social media post before enrollment.” The punishment for this is the potential ineligibility of the player, with no punishment coming to the coach. As written, this would create numerous problems, such as a former coach liking a post of a former player who happened to transfer to another school, a coach being a family friend of a player, or a player from another school attending the same church as the coach in question, as well as many other scenarios in which a punishment regarding a player being ruled ineligible would be extreme.

“If we see something happen in that manner, we’ll begin our investigation with the administration and the coach. It’s not necessarily check a box and boom you get the penalty…we’ll do some investigation on that,” Gillespie concluded.

It will certainly be interesting to see the level of which the TSSAA will police these penalties. Will the schools follow the TSSAA’s wishes to self-report? Will the TSSAA have to hire more “boots on the ground” to help enforce the rules? Or will everything go according to the TSSAA’s plan? The fact of the matter is that recruiting has become a problem in the area and other heavily populated areas such as Nashville and Memphis, and something needs to be done to solve or at least shrink the problem.

Time will only tell if recruiting will continue to run rampant in high school athletics, or if the TSSAA can rein in some of the culprits. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED 7-29-2026 6AM)