Football Week in Michigan
November 24, 2017
One of the best and most influential friends of school sports I know from outside the field of school sports is Greg Hammaren, senior vice president and general manager of FOX Sports Detroit.
Greg has observed his children participate in school sports and has taken special interest in treating educational athletics with first class efforts when producing MHSAA Finals in football and basketball for many years. He has been respectful of what we value and how we do things in high school sports.
About one year ago, Greg observed that his network and most other well-known names in live cable or over-the-air video sports production were abandoning the high school level. He felt that FOX Sports Detroit should not join that trend. But he had to convince the parent company in southern California that we were valued by Michigan’s consumers and advertisers. He has done just that.
The Michigan High School Athletic Association Football Playoff Finals dominate the schedule for FOX Sports Detroit’s first annual Football Week in Michigan this November. Over eight days, the best high school, college and professional football involving Michigan teams is being featured on a variety of FOX video platforms – FOX Sports Detroit, FS1, FOX Sports GO!, Big Ten Network and FOX over-the-air television.
MHSAA championship football games provide 10 of the 13 games during FWIM. The prep schedule began on Nov. 18 when the two divisions of the 8-Player Football Finals were shown live on the FOX Sports Detroit Facebook page from the Superior Dome in Marquette. Delayed telecasts of both games were aired on FOX Sports Detroit on Nov. 21.
This weekend, seven of the eight 11-Player Football Finals on Nov. 24-25 are being shown live on FOX Sports Detroit-PLUS, the exception being the Division 4 game tonight which will be shown on a same-day delayed basis on FOX Sports Detroit this evening at 11:30 p.m. All of the 11-player Finals will be available live on FOX Sports GO!
Over-the-air FOX television affiliates in Michigan also have the option to carry 11-player Final games being shown live in their markets if they have a local team participating in a game. Participating affiliates are: Alpena – WBKB-DT2 (11.2); Cadillac – WFQX-TV (32); Detroit – WJBK-TV (2); Flint – WSMH-TV (66); Grand Rapids – WXMI-TV (17); Lansing – WSYM-TV (47); Marquette – WLUC-DT2 (6.2); Sault Ste. Marie – WWUP-DT2 (10.2); Vanderbilt – WFUP-TV (45). Check local listings for games to be shown locally.
Football Week in Michigan – Greg’s brainchild – was officially recognized in October in a Proclamation by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.
FOX Sports Detroit’s MHSAA Football Playoff coverage began Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. with the announcement of the pairings for the 2017 playoffs on the Selection Sunday Show on FOX Sports Detroit-PLUS. Each week throughout the playoffs leading up to the 11-player Finals, the FOX Sports Detroit Prep Zone featured four games viewed live on FoxSportsDetroit.com and FOX Sports GO! – with one game also available live on the FOX Sports Detroit Facebook page.
Seeding Questions
April 6, 2015
The more I hear people speak with absolute certainty that seeding MHSAA tournaments would be a good thing for more sports to implement, the less I’m certain that adequate wisdom accompanies those words. And I’m particularly concerned with the condescending attitude of the advocates toward those who question if seeding is practical or fair for MHSAA tournaments.
Before seeding is adopted for additional MHSAA tournaments (and it appears ice hockey is on the fastest track), there are many practical questions to address for each sport, including who decides, how they decide and when they decide. Seeding in school sports is a much more difficult task than it is at higher levels where there are many fewer teams operating in much less diverse settings.
Any successful proposal for seeding in school sports must be able to give an informed “No” to these questions:
- Will the plan cause the “rich to get richer,” the successful to be even more successful?
- Will the plan add fuel to the public vs. nonpublic school discord?
- Will the plan create additional travel expenses for schools and loss of classroom instructional time for students?
Furthermore, any successful seeding plan must also provide an informed “Yes” to these questions:
- Will the plan promote the tournament among schools, media and the public?
- Will the plan increase tournament attendance?
And it is of most importance that every advocate of seeding acknowledge that opponents of seeding pose the right questions when they ask:
- Is it fair and is it right to ease the tournament trail for teams based on their regular season performance?
- Is a brand new start in the postseason bad, and if so, by what educational criteria?
When people boast that “the seeds held” in the NCAA basketball tournament or in our own MHSAA Tennis Tournament, we have to admit that this is exactly what ought to have happened when we gave the top seeds the easiest road to the trophy.
It is not wrong to question if that’s the right thing to do.