Bottom Lines
May 19, 2017
The cost of everything in everyday life seems to rise every year. Everything, that is, except the bread and butter revenue source of the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
Next school year – 2017-18 – is the 14th straight year that ticket prices for the District level of MHSAA basketball and football tournaments have remained unchanged; and it’s the 15th consecutive year without increase at the Regional level of those tournaments. Five bucks.
Meanwhile, the cost of venues hosting some MHSAA championships is rising rapidly. Even if calendar conflicts were not evicting the MHSAA from Michigan State University’s Breslin Center, steeply increased expenses could have the same effect.
There was a time when universities across the U.S. wanted state high school association tournaments using their on-campus facilities. This was a public service as well as a marketing tool for those institutions.
Today these universities derive much more revenue from higher international student tuition than is paid by the in-state students who first come to the campus to play in or watch state high school championships. Even more important than tuition dollars are research grants, royalties and donations to what is now the big business of higher education.
Where campus athletic facilities are operated outside the athletic department it is even more evident that money trumps the mission of public service, at least as it relates to facility usage and secondary school athletic programs which, to be sure, are less important than the search for world peace and cancer cures by our universities.
People might believe it’s more appropriate for MHSAA events to be on college campuses than in commercial arenas; but frankly, it’s getting hard for us to see a difference. The bottom line drives them both.
Carry On
April 27, 2018
For many years my vocation has been that of executive director of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. My vocation -- not my occupation, which has the connotation of a pastime that merely consumed my days and years, or a space that only my physical presence has been taking up.
No, this has been my vocation, in the sense of the root word “vocari,” which means "to be called.” The MHSAA has not been my job; it’s been my purpose.
Anyone who knows my background would understand.
I grew up at the home of the executive director of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association who was my role model as spouse, father and man. I was a twenty-something staff member of the National Federation of State High School Associations under the mentoring of Clifford Fagan, one of the deepest thinkers in the history of educational athletics. It was he who encouraged me to write about our work.
Anyone who has worked with me, listened to me or read what I've written would understand.
Everything has pivoted on protecting and promoting the core values of school-sponsored, student-centered athletics: policies, procedures and programs that put academics before athletics and attempt to develop the whole child.
For example, I see sportsmanship not as some corny promotion, but as a critical issue of educational athletics. I view good sportsmanship as a precursor to good citizenship. This is not the mindset of a man on the job, but of a man with a mission.
Going forward, those who love and lead school sports in Michigan must avoid doing those easy things that increase the scope and stakes of competition. Instead they must address every day those difficult policies, procedures and programs that enhance the physical, mental and emotional values of interscholastic athletics to students and the value of educational athletics to schools and society.
It's not more competition that is needed in high school sports, but more character. Not more sport specialization that's needed in junior high/middle school sports, but more sport sampling. Less attention to celebrating hype in sports events for youth, but more attention to cultivating life long-habits and good health for adults.
In leaving the MHSAA after 32 years this summer, I will have some regrets ... sad to be leaving the company of great staff and some extraordinary colleagues in our member schools ... sorry that even though we worked so hard and accomplished so much, there is still so much to do to keep school sports safe, sane and sportsmanlike.
There’s lots to do. Carry on.