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Designed and Delivered

March 8, 2016

The benefits of school sports do not occur by accident. They occur by design and by delivery.

It is the design of policies and procedures to keep the program student-focused, school-centered, sensible in scope, safe, sane and sportsmanlike. All core values of educational athletics.

The value is also enhanced by the delivery system – the quality of coaching and expertise of administration.

  • Just as the teacher is the key to learning in the academic classroom, the coach is the key to learning on the athletic team. This is why the MHSAA has designed and delivers a face-to-face, multi-level coaching education program anytime, anywhere in Michigan.

  • The other key of the delivery system is the local school athletic administrator with a skill set that meets the complex demands of a program that operates in an arena of high emotion and risk of injury. This is why Michigan often leads the nation in the number of high school athletic directors who have completed the highest level of training and certification of the National Interscholastic Athletics Administrators Association, and why the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association and the MHSAA devote so much time and attention to initial and ongoing athletic director training.

Collateral Damage

August 17, 2015

Whenever something unusually crazy happens at the college level that may adversely affect high school athletics, there are calls that the MHSAA do something to stop the stupidity. I can count on these requests whenever a Division I college program offers a scholarship to a pre-teen; and when it happened recently in Michigan, the MHSAA heard more complaints than ever.

What the critics do not appreciate is that the MHSAA has zero authority for NCAA recruiting rules and grant-in-aid policies. If we did, things might be much different. For example:

  • There would be no recruitment in any form allowed before a student has completed 11th grade. There would be no offers or promises of scholarships prior to this date.
  • Then, there would be no in-person recruitment allowed that does not occur at the student’s school and arranged through that school’s administration.
  • When scholarships are offered, they would be for four or five years, irrevocable if the student maintains academic eligibility, whether or not the student plays a single minute. 

All the commentary regarding the cesspool of college recruiting is wasted air or ink if it doesn’t focus on those who have the authority to change that environment. It’s the college coaches themselves, the administrators of those intercollegiate programs and the presidents of those institutions. Any corrective measures they suggest to high schools miss the point that they caused their problems and they alone can solve them. We are just collateral damage.