Boring Impartiality
January 6, 2017
Some people – like our U.S. President-Elect and, apparently, like the NCAA Division I Football Playoff Selection Committee – seem to believe that all publicity, no matter how negative, is good publicity. If it draws attention to your candidacy or championships series, no matter how embarrassing, it’s okay – even good.
That’s not the belief of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. As an organization that must too often do unpopular things, like enforce rules that others don’t and impose penalties that others won’t, the MHSAA prefers to avoid creating controversy where there are options to do so.
The structure of MHSAA tournaments provides some options.
Tournaments which exclude no teams or individuals provoke less controversy than those with a limited field. Tournaments which favor no teams through a seeding scheme cause fewer arguments.
If our only purpose were to increase revenues, there is much we could do to gerrymander MHSAA tournaments in order to shorten, smooth out and straighten the tournament trail for the teams with the best records and biggest crowds during the regular season, like the NCAA women’s and NIT men’s basketball tournaments do.
But if fairness – blind, boring impartiality – is more important to us, then we will not force the teams with the poorest regular season records to face off in bracket rat-tails and we will not provide the teams with the best regular season records a tournament trail that avoids similar teams for as long as possible.
This approach opens us to criticism that we are dumb to be different and stupid to reject the revenue-generating practices of major college and professional sports organizations. But no one can claim we are unfair.
It’s not unfair to treat all schools the same. The unfairness begins – and real controversy follows – when an organization tries to favor some teams over others.
Show of Hands
July 12, 2017
Four dozen years ago, my boss, the executive director of the National Federation of State High School Associations, expressed to me his disappointment that one of the characteristics of NFHS national meetings was the much too frequent “show of hands.” That is, someone from one state would rise to ask for a show of hands on a topic: “How many states do this? ... How many states don’t? ... How many do that?”
My mentor’s point was that the time would be much better spent on a qualitative analysis of the topic, rather than a quantitative one ... a discussion of the merits of a particular policy or procedure, rather than a head count.
His message to me is recalled every time a proposal comes to the Michigan High School Athletic Association to change this or that policy and is accompanied by the meager rationale that it’s what 25 or 35 or 45 other states might do. That stat holds only mild interest for me.
Before we do anything here to be like anybody elsewhere, we need to measure the pros and cons in our place and time ... how it fits our culture or our climate, for example.
When we consider change in the start or end of seasons; or the number of interscholastic scrimmages or contests in a day, week or season; or the number of exceptions to the transfer rule or the length of ineligibility when no exception applies; or the number of classes or divisions for tournaments; or the existence or extent of seeding for a tournament; when we consider any of these things in Michigan, we need much better rationale than a show of hands.