Conduct Unbecoming
December 21, 2012
We had some of the most exciting games ever – and a couple of “instant classics” – but as I watched the MHSAA Football Finals at Ford Field in late November, I sensed a loss of something schools have successfully preserved until now. It is this:
While first the NFL and then the NCAA have allowed showboating behavior on the field, high schools have not ... until recently, it seems.
At the high school level we have penalized sack dances and end zone prances ... until now, apparently.
I am so disappointed – embarrassed, really – that coaches and officials are allowing players to strut and point after touchdowns and tackles and to demonstratively wave their arms to signal incomplete passes. Drawing attention to themselves. Disrespecting opponents.
Such behavior has no place in educational athletics; and it’s time we address it. Before it’s so much a part of school sports culture that we cannot.
Ideas, Not Events
November 17, 2015
U.S. Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover is credited with the statement, “Average minds discuss events, while great minds discuss ideas.” Perhaps that’s so.
In any event, what I would like to see from MHSAA sport committees is less talk about events of the past and more time discussing ideas for the future. Less time on MHSAA tournament details and more time on the sport itself, and particularly on ideas that will make the sport not just safer, but also healthier for participants with respect to its demands in-season and out.
Less focus on results, and more attention to process. Day in and day out, how does the sport help and how might it hurt the student in a holistic sense, seeing the child not just as an athlete but also as a student and a person with activity interests beyond sports?
What are the ideas we need to develop and advance that will more assuredly cause student-athletes to develop habits for a healthier life precisely because they participated in school sports?