The Complaint Department
May 26, 2015
The MHSAA office is one of the few places of business a person can telephone and still be greeted by a real live person.
Our real live person, Laura Roberts (no relation), has become a favorite of many MHSAA member school employees and registered officials because of her friendliness and command of facts. However, I recently overheard Laura say that the most frequent way she is greeted by other callers is, “I want to register a complaint.”
What is frustrating to Laura, and to the rest of the MHSAA staff, is that the caller’s complaint is so often about something the MHSAA is without authority and responsibility to fix. For example ...
- Complaints about coaches’ decisions regarding who makes the team and who gets playing time or who is playing what position are misdirected to the MHSAA. The MHSAA does not hire or supervise any coach, and has no authority to intervene in such matters as these; yet the parents’ complaints of this type come often to the state level when they should never ascend above the local school level.
- Complaints about officials’ decisions during the regular season are misdirected to the MHSAA. The hiring of contest officials outside of MHSAA tournaments is outside the authority of the MHSAA.
- The same is true regarding the days and times that regular-season contests are held.
- The same is true relative to the facilities utilized for regular-season events.
- Complaints about student conduct or training rules are misdirected to the MHSAA. Local boards of education jealously guard their sole authority to determine and enforce rules related to drinking, smoking and good citizenship.
- Complaints about all-state teams are misdirected to the MHSAA, which has never named a single all-state team in any sport. Sometimes it’s a media group which names these teams; sometimes it’s a coaches association; but it’s never the MHSAA which does so; and neither the media nor coaches associations answer to the MHSAA on such matters.
On these and other topics, the MHSAA is the misdirected target of daily complaints from those who want to better understand why things happen as they do in their niche of school sports. Because there are new constituents to school sports every year, it will be a never-ending test of our patience and professionalism.
No Rules?
February 6, 2018
We like to say that school sports is “educational athletics,” but this does not mean athletics and academics should be treated exactly the same.
Competitive athletics is not like the composition or algebra classroom. Competitive athletics requires two opponents playing by the same rules that govern who can play and how they can play.
In 1907, William James put in writing a series of lectures he had given in Boston the year before titled “Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking.” Included in the third lecture is this gem:
“. . . the aim of a football team is not merely to get the ball to a certain goal (if that were so, they would simply get up on some dark night and place it there), but to get it there by a fixed machinery of conditions – the game’s rules and the opposing players;”
This to James was a given, cited to help him make a more profound point.
But the point here is profound enough for us. Without rules, and opponents playing by the same rules, there is no validity in moving the ball to the goal. Without rules, there is no value in sinking the putt, making the basket, clearing the bar, crossing the finish line. Without a regulatory scheme adhered to by all competitors, victory is hollow.