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Choices & Voices

September 16, 2016

How should a statewide high school athletic association operate?

In a general sense, it should give choices and voices to its membership. It should describe possible solutions to problems that face school sports, and it should provide a forum for members to express their opinions.

As we embark on the 39th year of Michigan High School Athletic Association Update meetings across the state, and 28th year of Athletic Director In-Service programs at many venues, our purpose is to enable this engagement through presentations, discussions, straw polls and formal surveys.

The top topics will again be those that are most important to the fabric and future of school-sponsored sports, even if they are not the fad of the day or the fetish of media. These are:

  • Defining & Defending Educational Athletics
  • Promoting & Protecting Participant Health
  • Serving & Supporting Junior High/Middle School Programs
  • Recruiting & Retaining Contest Officials

Schedule and Registration

Big Ten TV

November 11, 2016

The Big Ten Conference likes to say it "appreciates" high school football within its footprint; but the evidence is otherwise.

First, in 2010 the Big Ten adopted a "bye week" to stretch its scheduling that pushed the final game of the Big Ten regular season – with its great rivalries, including Michigan v. Ohio State – to the day on which the high school Football Finals have been scheduled in Michigan for more than three decades. A periodic problem became an every-year plague.

Now the Big Ten has announced it will play and televise games on Friday nights; and in its first year of this new deal, Michigan State will play at Northwestern in a televised game on Friday night, Oct. 27 – the first night of the MHSAA Football Playoffs all across our state. 

So, in 2017 we can thank the Big Ten for damaging the first as well as the last weekend of our high school Football Playoffs.  

The Big Ten's reaction? "We are only playing six games on Friday nights. It could have been much worse."

I expect it will get worse. The greed of college sports knows no limits.