Former Manatee County superintendent Roger Dearing retires as FHSAA executive director

Dr. Roger Dearing’s slogan upon becoming the Florida High School Athletic Association’s executive director involved the M&Ms candy on every person’s desk at the FHSAA’s offices.

“To stand for mentor and monitor, not just monitor and penalize,” the 67-year-old Dearing told The Herald. “We’ve done that.”

The 67-year-old spoke with the Herald at length as his tenure with the FHSAA — and likely his lengthy career as a coach, teacher and an education administrator — draws to a close. Dearing’s last official day with the FHSAA is Thursday.

George Tomyn was hired earlier this year to succeed Dearing and formally started with the FHSAA last month. The FHSAA is a non-profit organization that governs high school and middle school athletics in the state.

Dearing became executive director in 2008 after serving as Manatee County’s school superintendent. And Dearing’s work while holding the FHSAA post left an impression on Palmetto High athletic director Kenny Ansbro.

“I respect Roger Dearing tremendously,” said Ansbro, who has been Palmetto’s AD for the last eight years and served in various roles at the school for more than 30 years. “... I like someone who is firm and makes decisions, and sticks by it. They get it done in that fashion. I like someone like that. What he says, goes. I think he has a lot of knowledge and a lot of common sense as well mixed in with that.”

Dearing’s tenure with the FHSAA was filled with new challenges — whether it was getting creative in battling the Great Recession that wreaked havoc on America’s economics nationwide, generating different sources of revenue for the association, the latest overhaul of the football playoffs or new recruiting rules becoming a state law. He reflected on some of them.

The Great Recession

It was 2008 when Dearing became the newest FHSAA executive director and the United States was in crisis. So Dearing and the FHSAA acted to cut travel expenses for various sports, which meant a reduction in games.

Football, though, wasn’t included.

That led to a group of parents alleging Title IX, the federal law preventing gender discrimination, was violated.

“Football only had 10 (games) to begin with,” Dearing said. “They threatened a Title IX lawsuit, so we went to mediation and settled that through mediation and didn’t actually go to court.”

Dearing said to him it wasn’t an equity issue.

Sponsorships/TV revenue

Membership fees cost upward of $1,400 for the biggest schools in the state, while penalty fees and fines skyrocketed to $780,000 in total for schools throughout Florida prior to Dearing taking over.

This past school year, penalties and fines totaled $74,000.

“There’s a lot of schools that couldn’t afford some of those fees,” Ansbro said. “And we were one of them at one time. ... He looked at things administratively that were going to affect the overall mood of things. ... I thought that he made it a little bit easier to navigate, a little bit easier to get things done for schools and almost kind of evened the playing field for all of us.”

To offset the FHSAA losing that revenue stream, Dearing helped the 805 member schools and the association seek new revenue.

Only football’s championship games were televised before Dearing took over, and the FHSAA had a contract for only $75,000 a year in TV deals.

Now?

Multiple sports championships are aired either on television or online through different partnerships.

“We needed to have greater viewership,” Dearing said. “My thinking was if we could get the high school championships on TV, we would draw an interest base that would create an interest for high school interscholastic athletics.”

So in Dearing’s second year in charge, he orchestrated a contract between the FHSAA and Bright House Sports Network, now Spectrum, for 60 games over the first two years of the deal.

“Their viewership for high school games was three times for these Division III university games,” Dearing said. “After two years, they came back and said, ‘We want more.’ ”

The basics of the new contract — 10 years at $500,000 per year, and Spectrum has the rights to 120 events.

During Dearing’s tenure, the association reduced its membership dues for schools significantly and eliminated almost all sanctioning fees.

Concussion protocols

As safety concerns grew in sports at every level, including examining how detrimental concussions and head injuries are, the Dearing-led FHSAA took action, too.

“We were the first of five states in the nation to adopt a complete concussion protocol,” Dearing said. “But at the same time, we started seeing there’s other problems besides concussions. There’s also hydration and heat acclimatization.”

Pulling private school football teams back

The Sunshine State Athletic Conference and other independent leagues siphoned FHSAA member schools away from the FHSAA state playoffs in football in recent years. Locally, Bradenton Christian, Out-of-Door Academy and Saint Stephen’s joined the SSAC. The Falcons won the SSAC championship last year.

The trio are again scheduled to compete in the SSAC, but Dearing and the FHSAA created a new football playoff structure that should allow more teams to have a chance at playoff football.

That, in turn, prompted some SSAC programs to rejoin the FHSAA as district — or in the case of the lower classifications, region — competitors.

“When we saw this independent trend in football ... that change in how you get to the championships ... it gives more schools, these smaller schools, 1A-4A, a more equitable way across the board for them to have the chance to make it to postseason championships,” Dearing said.

Though the playoff format changed to a point system that increases the playoff chances for teams within talent-loaded districts, Dearing said there wasn’t any plans to separate the public and private schools as other state associations such as Texas and New Jersey have.

Recruiting changes

On July 1, high school athletics is entering the unknown in Florida. A state bill that Gov. Rick Scott signed into law essentially opens transfer rules for student-athletes. Of course, there is a provision that schools must not be at capacity.

“I think there’s some worry and trepidation on what effect it will have,” Dearing said.

Dearing said individual school boards will handle the new transfer bill differently. For example, he cited Lee County, which has a rule stating schools can’t accept transfers if they’re at 90 percent of their capacity.

“I don’t perceive a lot of school district hopping,” Dearing said.

The next chapter

As he looks ahead to retirement, Dearing said he plans to travel, spend time with family and tackle some projects.

He has a strong interest in genealogy, having traced his father’s side of his family back to the mid-1700s in Virginia, and his mother’s side back to the mid-1700s in Switzerland. It’s been an interest of Dearing’s for the last 15 years.

He’ll travel a bit, too, with his wife, Candace.

“I’ve only been west of the Mississippi River probably five times in my life,” Dearing said.

And he’s still got a soft spot for Manatee County.

“Manatee County was just a fantastic opportunity,” Dearing said. “I met so many school board members and school teachers. ... I’ve been very fortunate, very blessed and very honored to do all those jobs that I’ve done.”

This story was originally published June 13, 2017 at 5:24 PM with the headline "Former Manatee County superintendent Roger Dearing retires as FHSAA executive director."