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Deepening Appreciation

May 15, 2012

The first phase of ArbiterGame launches May 23.

The creation of these electronic athletic department administrative tools, tailor-made for Michigan high schools and fully integrated with MHSAA policies and procedures, is bridging most of whatever remaining gap that may exist in the MHSAA leadership’s understanding of and appreciation for the job of its member school athletic administrators and their support staff.

The MHSAA is in partnership with ArbiterSports to create the tools; and at each step of design and deployment, MHSAA staff are consulting with local athletic directors.  MHSAA staff have been engaged in training to help answer user questions from athletic administrators and secretaries.  There have been more hours than we can count when our staff has listened to athletic administrators talk about details of their tasks, and even more hours when our staff has talked about how we best respond to even the smallest details.

The process is helping MHSAA staff appreciate the long list of duties required for every athletic event for every level of every sport.  Never before have MHSAA staff talked so much about local scheduling of practices, games, facilities, transportation, workers and officials.  Never have we had a deeper and broader appreciation for all that is required – day after day, week after week, season after season.

As we develop administrative tools to ease the local school administrative burden, we deepen our understanding of the work in which local administrators are engaged.  We started this project to respond to athletic directors’ urgent requests to solve the problems of inadequate scheduling products and related support services from commercial vendors.  An unanticipated benefit has been to enhance our knowledge of their daily duties.  And we will be much better for it.

Continuous Work

July 6, 2015

Since we posted the blog below on May 16, 2014, we have observed that major portions of the NCAA’s sanctions of Penn State have been overturned for being beyond the authority that member institutions have given the NCAA. This reminds us of the need to have our own organization continuously working on rules and penalties, and the authority to make and enforce such rules and penalties, that may become necessary in the future for the ever-growing range of issues we confront in school sport.
We take no comfort when leaders of sports on other levels get embroiled in controversy; but we do try to learn from those situations.
For example, we watched very closely in 2012 how the National Collegiate Athletic Association responded fast and with force to the horrific sex abuse scandal at Penn State. The NCAA may have ignored its prescribed due process and exceeded its penalty authority, winning mostly praise from the public; but now the NCAA is mired in litigation over the legality of its swift and severe actions.
We are currently observing what could be a similar scenario for the National Basketball Association. Its commissioner moved quickly to impose a lifetime ban and other sanctions after racist public statements by an NBA team owner. While most people have praised the speed and severity of the commissioner’s actions, some people note that the recent racist remarks were not something new for this owner and the unprecedented penalties may be the subject of a lifetime of litigation.
The lesson of these situations for leaders in other places and on other levels is to be especially cautious about using power in popular ways. No matter how horrible the transgression, no matter how angry it makes you personally, follow the established rules of procedure and keep within the limits of your explicit authority.
I confess that this can be frustrating and that I have sometimes felt paralysis more than power when performing the role as MHSAA investigator and penalizer. But some of that frustration may be my own fault. If such frustrations are too common, we should be reworking the organization’s Constitution and rules, with the members’ agreement, to streamline process and strengthen penalties.
Significant steps in this direction have been occurring. For example, in May of 2013, the Representative Council adopted the athletic-related transfer rule; and on May 4, 2014, the Council increased the maximum penalty for undue influence from one year to four years for both students and adults.