Is a Future Possible?
September 8, 2011
While interviewing candidates for a staff position, we posed the question: “What will school sports look like a generation from now?” And we followed up with: “What will the MHSAA need to do to be of relevant service in that future?”
In a follow-up interview with one of the leading candidates, when I invited questions, that candidate turned the tables and asked me what I thought school sports and the MHSAA would look like in 10 or 20 years.
These exchanges, and all that has been changing as school districts chop away at school budgets and programs, has me wondering if a future is possible for school sports. But the answer is almost certainly “Yes.”
School sports have survived two World Wars, the Korean War and Vietnam, as well as the Great Depression and multiple recessions. School sports has existed before and after interstates and the Internet, before and after suburban sprawl and space exploration, before and after television and Twitter, before and after . . . well, you get the point.
Will school sports change? Certainly. But if history is a good indicator, it will change more slowly than the society around it. And many people will cherish that gap.
Prep Prose
January 27, 2017
Mick McCabe retired in December after almost five full decades at the Detroit Free Press.
When Mick agreed with me, he did so boldly. When he disagreed, he sometimes did so brutally.
He was at his best, and did most for school sports in Michigan, when he told the stories of coaches and athletes in the cities, suburbs and small towns all across our state. Especially when he told the stories of those who would never coach or play a game beyond the high school level. Especially when he found and focused on an unknown person in a low-profile sport who raised our spirits by reminding us of how good educational athletics can be.
Mick may have written more words about high school sports in Michigan than any person ever. And that's saying a lot when one remembers Jack Moss and Bob Gross and Bob Becker and Jane Bos and Del Newell and Cindy Fairfield and a dozen other retired sports writers in our state whose substantial bodies of work promoted prep sports.
School sports usually has been well-served by such media professionals who were allowed by their industry to take the time necessary to know the people and the policies that served school sports, and were allowed the space to develop stories that went beyond headlines, tweets and texts, with fuller facts and closer truth than is the norm today.