Arkansas Activities Association member schools have passed two new policies that double the punishment given to student-athletes who fight during games.
Those policies include:
Proposal 8 – Ejection Policy – Fighting Penalty, which passed by a 236-39 vote, states that a football player ejected for fighting for the first time must sit out the next two comparable events or eight consecutive football quarters. If ejected for fighting for the second time, a player must sit out the next four comparable events or 16 consecutive football quarters
Proposal 9 – Ejection Policy – Seniors, which passed by a 254-7 vote, states that seniors who are ejected for fighting in their last event of a sport will serve their ejection penalty in the next sport participated in during the school year.
AAA assistant executive director Bobby Swofford said the fight that broke out between players and fans from England High School and Barton High School during the 2026 Arkansas High School basketball playoffs wasn’t the reason for implementing these new policies, but it did play a part.
“Was it the reason? No. Was it involved? Absolutely, because that was a black eye for the entire state of Arkansas," Swofford said, as reported by NBC affiliate KARK in Little Rock. "Everybody across the country saw that incident, and we can’t have that. But what’s growing across the country is we’re seeing that happen all the time, whether it’s girls’ soccer, football, basketball, having these incidents way too often. We’re having it in football probably more than any other sport, and we’ve got to get it out of our game.”
Sheridan Yellowjackets football head coach Kevin Kelley said he agrees that there should be an emphasis on discouraging athletes from fighting during games but doesn’t feel that the two- or four-game suspension impacts all sports equally.
“Two games is not equal in all sports. In baseball, you might play 40 games. In football, you play 10 regular season (games). Basketball, you can play 30, so two games is 20 percent of a football season,” said Kelley, according to KARK's Blake DeJarnatt. “I think you may see some feedback on that, because it should be the same percentage of games in a football coach’s opinion, right?”
Swofford maintains there has to be a stronger deterrent to prevent fights from breaking out on the field.
“Athletes at any level — high school, college or professional — are public figures. There’s an elementary kid that’s looking up to that basketball player saying I want to be like him one day. We can’t have them acting inappropriately or acting unsportsmanlike on the floor,” he said. “There is no place for fighting in education-based athletics. If there’s one player that’s been suspended, that’s one too many. If there’s one altercation, that’s one too many. That’s not teaching our young people what athletics is supposed to be about.”
