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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.

Eight-Player Options

March 10, 2017

Put this in the category of “No good deed goes unpunished.”

In 2011, the MHSAA provided an additional playoff for Class D schools sponsoring 8-player football. This helped save football in some schools and helped return the game of football to other schools. But now that the number of 8-player programs has expanded from two dozen in 2011 to more than 60, there are complaints:

  • Some complaints come out of a sense of entitlement that all final games in both the 8-player and 11-player tournament deserve to be played at Ford Field.

  • Some complaints come from Class C schools whose enrollments are too large for the 8-player tournament. Class C schools which sponsor the 8-player game have no tournament at all in which to play, regardless of where the finals might be held.

  • Some complaints come from Class D schools which protest any suggestion that Class C schools – even the smallest – be allowed to play in the 8-player tournament.

There are now three scenarios emerging as the most likely future for 8-player football:

  • The original plan ... A five-week, 32-team tournament for Class D schools only, with the finals at a site to be determined, but probably not Ford Field.

  • Alternative #1 ... Reduce the 11-player tournament to seven divisions and make Division 8 the 8-player tournament with 32 Class D teams in a five-week tournament, ending at Ford Field.

  • Alternative #2 ... Conduct the 8-player tournament in two divisions of 16 Class D teams, competing in a four-week playoff ending in a double-header at the Superior Dome on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

The pros and cons of these options are being widely discussed. Sometimes the discussions have a tone that is critical of the MHSAA, which comes from those who forget that it was the MHSAA itself which moved in 2011 to protect and promote football by adding the 8-player playoff tournament option for its smallest member schools. That Class D schools now feel entitled to the Ford Field opportunity and Class C schools want access to an 8-player tournament is not unexpected; but criticism of the MHSAA’s efforts is not deserved.