What is a professional football player?

That seems to be the question.

From the time kids first put on a helmet, football is a filtering process. They begin in Pop Warner, the YMCA, or another youth league. From there, they move on to junior high, then high school, then college, and for the very few who are good enough, professional football.

That progression didn’t come from a rule book. It developed organically over generations and became ingrained in American football culture. Each level is something you advance to, and once you advance, you don’t go backward.

Do we allow a high school player who can’t make the JV team to go back and play for his junior high team? Of course not.

Why not?

Safety is one obvious reason, but there is something else that is nearly as important: the culture and integrity of the game. We understand instinctively that junior high football belongs to junior high players, high school football belongs to high school players, and college football belongs to college players.

We could fill books describing what football means to schools, towns, universities, families, and communities across this country. These distinctions matter because they are part of what gives each level of the game its identity.

So the question of what constitutes a professional football player cannot be answered simply by finding a loophole in a rule book. We, as a society, have spent generations defining what amateur, college, and professional football mean.

And now Lane Kiffin has decided that because he can exploit the technicalities separating those levels, those distinctions no longer matter.

In doing so, he isn’t merely challenging a rule.

He’s taking a dump on a culture that took generations to build.