Lawmakers want Jerome Singleton gone as SCHSL commissioner. Will he step down?
State legislators are issuing an ultimatum to the S.C. High School League.
Longtime SCHSL Commissioner Jerome Singleton must resign, they say. If not, lawmakers in the S.C. House say they will move forward with a bill to abolish the league that governs middle and high school sports in the state.
The pressure comes as a House bill 4163 moved forward this week in the S.C. House of Representatives . The bill would do away with the SCHSL, which has been in place since 1913, and replace it with the S.C. High School Athletic Association as part of the Department of Education.
Rep. Shannon Erickson, R-Beaufort, is the one of the main proponents of the bill. She met recently to discuss concerns with SCHSL lobbyist William Bowers and Adam Lanford, president of the league’s executive committee.
“The basis of her frustrations were with the tenured leadership at the League and the League’s inflexibility and inability to adapt to changes in the educational landscape of South Carolina,” Singleton said in a memo to member schools this week. “While the Chairlady expressed frustration with the tenured leadership at the League (I assume she is referring to the Commissioner), no examples of actions were shared about the performance of the Commissioner, nor has any meetings been held (other than one over the spring/summer) to discuss the operations and governance of the SCHSL.”
If Singleton — or the “tenured leadership” — resigns, then it’s likely that the bill will be withdrawn, Bowers told members of the league’s executive committee Thursday.
“(Erickson) has said that if current ... tenured leadership steps down, she will pull the bill, which is to say recall it back to committee,” Bowers said.
The legislation got a favorable ruling out of the Public Education and Public Works committee this week and could be voted on by the House of Representatives as early as Tuesday. If is passes in the House, it would need to be passed by the Senate and then signed by Gov. Henry McMaster.
If Singleton resigns, he wouldn’t be owed a buyout on the three years remaining on the contract, according to multiple sources in the athletics community. If he is voted out by the executive committee, then he would be owed a buyout, the sources said.
Singleton has served as the SCHSL commissioner since July 2005, replacing Ronnie Matthews. He was chosen over former Greenwood High football coach Shell Dula. Before that, he served as the associate commissioner with the SCHSL for 10 years.
Singleton also was an assistant principal at Dutch Fork High and played football at Newberry College from 1978-80.
Singleton and the SCHSL have come under fire by the S.C. Legislature over the last few years. The league has met with lawmakers and made changes meant to appease their concerns, including the adoption of a one-time transfer rule for high school students.
Two amendments are being considered that would add two members of the S.C. House of Representatives and two from the S.C. Senate to the SCHSL executive committee. That will be voted on in March at the annual meeting of the state’s athletic directors.
“I was a part of the meeting this summer that we highly asked them to include those four. We want them to be a part of the process,” SCHSL executive committee member David Byrd said Thursday.
The changes haven’t been good enough, Erickson said during Tuesday’s Public Works committee meeting.
A lot of the criticism toward the High School League has centered around what lawmakers say is an outdated structure for dealing with modern-day issues facing athletics such as competitive balance, athlete eligibility and player transfers. How the league has enforced sanctions against member schools for rules violations has also been called inconsistent and sometimes unfair.
In April, Rep. James Teeple, R-Charleston called out Singleton during a meeting of the S.C. House of Representatives Education and Public Works K-12 Subcommittee, saying there’s a massive “leadership and cultural problem” within the SCHSL.
During the same meeting, Rep. Stephen Frank, R-Greenville asked Singleton if he would be willing to step down. Singleton had a simple response, “No, sir.”
Meanwhile, critics of state government running high school athletics have their own concerns. They say legislators don’t realize the day-to-day duties of running such a league, including managing the sports’ playoffs, organizing referees and dealing with eligibility issues — not to mention a need to write a constitution for a brand-new S.C. High School Athletic Association.
“What you think are helping kids, you are going to destroy every competitive thing that involves high school athletics,” Byrd said Thursday. “I get it. We all need to change and make things better, but when you extended the olive branch to have the opportunity to do it, that tells me where you’re going with it. What is intended to help kids is going to be catastrophic, in my opinion.”
This isn’t the first time the SCHSL has come under scrutiny by the state Legislature. Rep. Joe Daning, R- Berkeley, introduced a bill in 2013 to do away with the SCHSL and put it under a division of the Department of Education. That came after the Goose Creek football team was disqualified from the playoffs for playing with an ineligible player.
Under that bill, a 15-member department appointed by the superintendent of education would oversee high school sports and consist of coaches, trainers, athletic directors and principals. That legislation never passed. But out of it, the SCHSL’s appellate panel was created to hear appeals once the league’s executive committee made a ruling.
The current bill, however, would create an 11-member board of directors that would be appointed by legislative groups. Current members of the executive committee would be allowed to stay on but only in an advisory role and without any voting privileges.
“We’ve been dealing with this for years,” Rep. Jeff Bradley, R-Beaufort said on Tuesday. “The upshot of the whole thing is, it’s just time to fix it.”
Members of the SCHSL executive committee said Thursday that if league is dissolved, it could have large-scale consequences. The state would be forced to have “intramural sports” next year, Byrd said.
“I would say that at the earliest that you could do that would take a year’s time,” Byrd said of rewriting the athletic constitution. “In this state, it would be intramural athletics, and I think that’s what you need to push to your constituents, because you’re gonna have coaches that quit. They’re not going to deal with it because they want to compete. Nobody’s gonna compete just for recreational sports, and I think that’s something that needs to be put across there.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2026 at 7:30 AM with the headline "Lawmakers want Jerome Singleton gone as SCHSL commissioner. Will he step down?."
