Crime and Punishment
August 17, 2012
In my previous posting I identified three criteria that have helped the MHSAA decide what its responsibilities should be, which is worth re-reading in the context of the widespread debate about what the NCAA’s role should be in the wake of the Penn State tragedy.
In essence, my last posting stated that the MHSAA has neither the legal authority nor the resources to be involved in protecting young people at all times and in all places. It is in the area of sports, and especially within the limits of the season and the boundaries of the field of play, that the MHSAA has a role and rules.
So obviously, if I had been asked about what the NCAA should do about Penn State, I would advise the NCAA to look at its Handbook. If its member institutions have adopted policies and procedures to be followed and prescribed penalties to be enforced that apply in this matter, then by all means, follow the rules. But if not, stay out of it. You’ve got enough to do that’s not getting done where you have the requisite expertise and responsibility.
Clearly, the NCAA leadership took a different position, apparently preferring to absorb criticism for going too far rather than suffer criticism that it did too little in response to horrific behavior at one of its member institutions.
Unfortunately, in stating publicly that the severity of the penalties was intended to send the important messages that football should not outsize academics and that success on the field should not be at the expense of the safety and nurturing of athletes and that coaches should not be treated as larger-than-life heroes, the NCAA misses the point that the system the NCAA itself has created or allowed is much at fault for such excesses.
Any system that allows such lavish expenditures on the sports program and its personalities the way it is allowed in NCAA Division 1 football and basketball will continue to have serious problems, every year and at multiple institutions. Penn State is not the first university to have screwed up priorities; it just has the most recent and tragic victims.
For its part, the MHSAA has rules designed to position athletics secondary to academics, keep the pursuit of success secondary to safety, and maintain administrators’ authority over coaches, whose pay may not exceed the supplementary pay schedule for teachers and may not flow from any source but the school itself. We are striving to have policies now that will make it unnecessary to impose penalties later for sports programs that are out of control.
Tracking the Transfer Rule
September 19, 2017
We are not the first generation of school leaders to be concerned about athletic transfers in secondary school sports.
Lewis L. Forsythe, in his 1950 book Athletics in Michigan High Schools, described his era and earlier this way: “... there were enough who transferred for advantage, as they thought, in athletic opportunities to give wide currency to the term ‘tramp athletes.’ These were usually students who became ineligible in schools in which they had first enrolled, or became otherwise disaffected in their home situation and went elsewhere to continue school. It was possible, for example, for a boy to play football at Ann Arbor one season, drop out of school until the next March first, and then enter Jackson High school. Here he could make himself eligible for baseball and track by merely ‘passing’ in ten hours (later twelve hours) of work from time to time according to the reporting methods of the school, and then leave without taking final examinations. The next semester he might enroll in Detroit High School, and, by satisfying eligibility requirements for the current semester, play football in that school. With no age limit and no required check-up on eligibility in another school, this could go on for at least five years.”
Mr. Forsythe, writing in 1950, cited concerns as early as 1901, which led the state athletic committee to adopt the first transfer rule for school sports in Michigan. It required a student going from one secondary school to another to present a certificate from administrators of the school left that the student was eligible under the athletic rules of the time. The issue of the time was that students who were performing poorly in the classroom of one school would attempt to escape ineligibility due to academic deficiencies by transferring to another school
Two years later, a rule was adopted to address undue influence (recruiting) that required all schools to sever all relationships with a school that attempts to influence any athlete to change schools.
A year later (1904), this proposal was debated: “A student who has played on a football team, or on a baseball team, or who has taken part in any track events, going from one school to another, shall be ineligible to enter any secondary athletic contest for one year, unless the parents of such student move from one school district to another ...”
It took 20 years for a rule change to actually be made in this direction: “No student who has been enrolled as a high school student in any high school shall be permitted to participate in any interscholastic contest as a member of any other high school until he has been enrolled in such school for one full semester, unless the parents of such student actually change their residence to the second school district. In the latter case, the student will be as eligible as he was in the school from which he withdrew.”
There, in the first code of rules promulgated by the Michigan High School Athletic Association in 1924, is the core of our 2017 rule ... ineligible for one semester, with the exception for an actual change of residence.
Today we debate that the period of ineligibility is too short and the residency exception is too lenient.
As for the period of ineligibility, across the U.S., one year is more common than one semester. As for the residency exception, it exists everywhere. In fact, in some places the “transfer” rule is referred to as the “residency” rule.