Full Decade Price Freeze
September 15, 2011
The 2011-12 school year marks the 10th consecutive year of no increase in MHSAA Regional tournament tickets for football and boys and girls basketball; and it’s the ninth consecutive year without increase at the District level of those tournaments. This is noteworthy on at least three levels.
First, it means parents, grandparents, neighbors and friends on fixed incomes or struggling through a fickle economy have experienced no new costs to support their local school teams over the past decade.
Second, it means that what were the MHSAA’s largest revenue sources – gate receipts from District and Regional tournaments of football, boys basketball and girls basketball – have not been used to support the MHSAA’s expanding services.
Finally, when the freeze on ticket prices is combined with the freefall of girls and boys basketball attendance since the change of girls basketball season to the winter (the four-year average total attendance is down 9.3 percent for the girls tournament and down 21.1 percent for the boys tournament), the overall effect on the MHSAA’s operational budget is dramatic.
To compensate, the MHSAA has cut expenses and created new revenue sources. For years, MHSAA tournaments produced more than 90 percent of the MHSAA’s revenue. In 2010-11, it was less than 80 percent. The 2011-12 target is less than 75 percent.
Anticipating Collateral Damage
March 23, 2018
When major college sports sneezes, high school sports usually catches a cold.
Throughout history, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has made changes in response to problems in college sports that have resulted in harm to high school sports.
Who can argue that relieving college coaches from the burden of being members of the instructional faculty did anything but weaken the connection between intercollegiate athletics and the educational mission of the sponsoring institutions? That major college football and men’s basketball coaches are the highest paid employees at many universities demonstrates the disconnection.
Who can argue that the creation of athletic grants in aid – scholarships – did anything but raise the pressures on college programs to win and to recruit hard at the high school level? Who can argue that this process got any more upright and above board when NCAA rules were changed to push most of the recruiting process to non-school venues and corporate concerns?
Who is surprised now that the corruption has moved beyond the NCAA’s ability to control and has resulted in investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigations and indictments followed by player ineligibilities and coach firings?
The worry now is that the NCAA and the National Basketball Association will strike again. Aiming to solve their problems, they likely will add to ours.