Classification Comparisons
January 27, 2012
One of the ways statewide high school organizations evaluate their operations is to compare their policies and procedures with similar organizations. We do so cautiously, however, because there are so many variables – like population and number of schools, as well as the size, shape and location of the state.
We find that the most useful comparisons are with states of the upper Midwest and Great Plains and, even more so, with the statewide organizations of that region with a number of schools closest to our approximately 765 member high schools in Michigan.
By these criteria, Illinois, with about 780 high schools, and Ohio, with about 820 high schools, are most valuable to observe, while neighbors like Indiana and Wisconsin with about 400 and 500 high schools, respectively, are less valid measures for our work here.
Recently, to help the MHSAA Classification Committee have a larger view of tournament classification systems, we provided the Volleyball, Football and Basketball Tournament classifications of Illinois and Ohio, as well as our own:
- All three states have four classifications in both volleyball and basketball, and only Ohio equalizes the number of schools in each class/division (as Michigan does in all sports except volleyball and basketball).
- The enrollment ranges between the largest and smallest schools in the classification for the largest schools and the classification for the smallest schools (Classes A and D in Michigan) are much smaller in Michigan than in either Illinois or Ohio in volleyball and basketball.
- In football, Ohio’s playoffs accommodate 192 football schools in six divisions determined prior to the regular season, while both Illinois and Michigan’s 11-player playoffs accommodate 256 schools in eight divisions determined at the end of the regular season.
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.