Conventional Wisdom
August 9, 2016
The conservative columnist George Will is a baseball junkie who recently hit a homerun in his commentary just prior to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He wrote that the show in Cleveland would focus on style and trivia more than the substantive trends of the world’s circumstances.
Mr. Will speculated, and was proven correct, that the Cleveland circus would miss altogether serious developments in the South China Sea that are nearly as threatening as Hitler’s advance across Europe prior to the United States’ entering into what became World War II. He was referring to China’s aggression through the construction of islands and the conduct of military exercises in areas that the World Court has determined do not belong to China. This war on a pristine aquatic environment is upsetting the geopolitical order as well.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with sports except to point out the absurdities of our talking about trivia in one place while near tragedy goes unaddressed elsewhere ... which happens routinely in sports. For example:
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In pro football, the talk is of “Deflategate” more than domestic violence. Or, as the most recent owners’ meeting reveals, on commerce more than concussions.
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In college football, the talk is of billion dollar broadcast deals more than the broken bond between universities and the “students” they send far and wide to compete on television at any hour of any day.
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And in school sports right here in Michigan, stakeholders perseverate about football playoff expansion more than football players’ health and safety. Or on end-of-season basketball tournament seeding more than out-of-season basketball insanity.
Our challenge is to listen to all concerns but to expend leadership capital only on the matters that really matter.
By The Book
January 16, 2018
The Michigan High School Athletic Association is unfairly criticized by the uninformed for inconsistently administering the Transfer Rule.
That some students are eligible and others not after a change of school enrollment is the result of 15 stated and necessary exceptions within the Transfer Rule that can cause some students to be immediately eligible while others have to wait about one semester before they become eligible to participate for their new school. The rule, as written, with 15 pretty cut-and-dried exceptions, is consistently applied.
Some students have their ineligibility extended from one semester to two because an athletic-motivated transfer was alleged by the student’s previous school and confirmed by the MHSAA, OR because one of the listed athletic-related links was found to be present by the MHSAA without any school needing to make a written allegation of an athletic-motivated transfer. Some students have their eligibility extended further – up to four years – because they transferred as a result of undue influence (athletic recruitment).
So, if you read that one student transferred without any loss of eligibility, and another transfer lost one semester of eligibility, and another lost two semesters of eligibility, and another student lost even more, it is a function of the specific rules involved and their application to the specific facts of the different students’ situations.
It’s not bias, but the book (the Handbook that all member schools adopted); it’s not favoritism but how the rule applies to the facts of each case.