Default Setting
January 25, 2012
In the computer world we’ve become accustomed to the “default setting,” a place our computer returns without any intervention on our part.
It is not too long a leap to apply this metaphor to school-based sports. To suggest that with major college and professional sports programs crashing with scandals and strikes, the safe setting in the world of sports is interscholastic athletics.
With the absence of gaudy glitz and glamour, school-based sports has reduced possibilities for “operator error.” It is almost as if school sports is fresh out of the box, pre-installed with policies and procedures that allow coaches and administrators to operate with a minimum of moves, motivations and messages.
I said during MHSAA Update Meetings last fall that our current theme is “cheap and simple” – that is, doing what we can to keep costs down and procedures simple during these days when school personnel have reduced resources, including time, to devote to school sports. Increasingly, I see the challenge as providing the MHSAA membership fresh from the box services. For example . . .
- This was the primary motivation for the MHSAA moving to online rules meetings for coaches and officials that has saved them countless hours and miles to fulfill their meeting requirements in recent years.
- This has been the primary motivation behind the digital broadcasting program by which member schools have a safe, reliable place for streaming school productions of both athletic and non-athletic events.
- This is the primary motivation for the ArbiterGame electronic management tools being developed for member high school athletic departments fully integrated with MHSAA policies, systems and data.
In a world of increasing costs and complexities, ours is a difficult challenge to keep things cheap and simple in school sports; but we’ll be trying.
Site Lines
April 17, 2017
It appears that everyone is talking about where the championship rounds of the Michigan High School Athletic Association basketball tournaments should be played.
This has become a topic because our traditional site, Michigan State University’s Breslin Student Events Center, is not available to host the Semifinals and Finals of the girls tournament in 2018 and 2020 or the boys tournament in 2019, in both cases because the facility must remain open for MSU’s women’s basketball team should it earn the privilege of hosting first and second round games of the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament.
It is important that the people listening know that most of the people talking have little knowledge of what facilities are actually available in 2018 and beyond.
For example, The Palace of Auburn Hills, Little Caesars Arena in Detroit and Van Andel Arena are not available in 2018, nor is a sentimental favorite for the girls tournament, Central Michigan University.
By mid-May, the MHSAA will have announced decisions for 2018, and likely for that one year only. Between now and the end of 2017, the MHSAA will be evaluating site options for both tournaments, boys and girls, as well as potential scheduling changes for both the regular season and MHSAA tournaments that could alter what facilities are needed and when. This could increase opportunities to use NCAA Division I institutions, and/or this could reduce or eliminate the need for those facilities.
It would be unfortunate if we turn ourselves inside-out and upside-down to avoid NCAA conflicts. Some of the scheduling scenarios being studied would seriously stress District and Regional tournament sites and management as well as overwork the ranks of our tournament-ready basketball officials. Other scheduling scenarios would adversely affect other winter sports or increase overlap with fall sports or spring sports. We need to move carefully, and with broad consensus.
There is a desire to host the championships of the girls and boys tournaments at the same venue, but there is no legal obligation to do so. There is a desire to build on traditions established at Michigan State University, but conflicts and costs make that unlikely to continue. There is a desire to please everyone, but that won’t happen.