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Committee Work

January 6, 2015

The winter months are the busiest for MHSAA committees, especially for those that must review or prepare recommendations for changes for the following school year.
Each year, up to 20 MHSAA committees consider proposals for Representative Council action relative to MHSAA tournament policies or procedures or Handbook regulations or interpretations.
During school year 2014-15, wherever applicable, the committees are being asked to address health and safety issues as well as policies and procedures relative to subvarsity and junior high/middle school students; and as a result of positive 2014 Update Meeting Opinion Poll responses, each sport committee is being asked to respond during calendar year 2015 and beyond to several concepts for MHSAA tournament seeding.
MHSAA committees are dominated by coaches, but they are not a rubber stamp for proposals that proceed from that sport’s high school coaches association. The difference of opinion often results from the committee seeing things differently than a coaches association leadership that the committee believes is not representative of schools of diverse size, location and demographics.
It is appropriate for committees to ask: Who was not in the room when this recommendation was drafted? Who will not be served well by this change?
When committees go through this process, they tend to reduce the quantity but improve the quality of recommendations to the Representative Council, which increases the percentage of recommendations the Council adopts.

Beyond Fairness

April 11, 2017

One of the lessons I learned decades ago when I was employed at the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) is that sometimes the playing rules are not fair.

The NFHS is the publisher of playing rules for most high school sports, and its rule books govern competition for most of the contests for most of the high schools in the U.S.

But the NFHS doesn’t publish the most fair rules. On purpose.

The rules for the high school level attempt to do much more than promote competitive equity, or a balance between offense and defense; they also attempt – without compromising participant health and safety – to simplify the administration of the game.

Unlike Major League Baseball, where umpires officiate full-time, and professional basketball, football and ice hockey where they officiate nearly full-time, the officials at the high school level are part-timers. They have other jobs. This is their avocation, not their vocation.

So the NFHS develops and publishes rules that minimize exceptions to the rules. In football, for example, there are fewer variables for determining the spot where penalties are enforced.

At the high school level, the rule makers intend that the rules be – for players, coaches and officials alike – quicker to learn, simpler to remember, and easier to apply during the heat of contests.