The Goldilocks Solution
December 2, 2014
Somewhere I read that there’s little to gain by trying to bring simplicity to what’s complex or sanity to what’s crazy. But we keep trying.
Last month we compiled results of a survey through which 513 MHSAA member high school athletic directors provided information about the out-of-season activities of their students and coaches and offered opinions regarding ideas to modify the rules that control those who want to do so much that it would force others to do more than they believe is sane for school-sponsored, student-centered competitive athletic programs.
A nearly equal number of schools from each classification were included in the 513 schools that responded to this opportunity to add more information and insight to this year-long look at MHSAA out-of-season coaching rules.
Some preliminary number crunching reveals (without surprise) that there are differences between large schools vs. small and more populated areas vs. less – differences both in the amount of organized out-of-season sports activity in which students engage and in the openness of their athletic directors to new ideas for regulating out-of-season activities by students with their school coaches. Generally, larger schools and/or schools in more populous areas see students participating in more organized out-of-season athletic activities, and they are more open to changing how those activities are regulated.
And so it continues ... finding that sweet spot that fits the perspectives and problems of a very diverse membership that supervises a wide variety of sports. The “Goldilocks” solution that doesn’t do too much, or too little.
The results that I’ll be looking for as we continue to gather information and facilitate discussions is no specific set of rule changes, but rather, to move MHSAA policies and procedures toward these two goals:
- Rules simpler to understand, follow and enforce. Even good rules are bad if they are too cumbersome.
- Rules that do not add pressure on students or coaches to focus on a single sport year-round. There is plenty of data that informs us that parents do too much of that already.
Transfer Culture
March 14, 2017
It is rare when a problem of major college athletics doesn’t eventually become a pollutant of high school athletics. A current issue demonstrates the point.
In 2015, NCAA research reported that about 40 percent of Division I men’s basketball players who had entered an NCAA institution directly from high school as freshmen had departed that institution by the end of their sophomore year.
Approximately 44 percent of the transfers were to other Division I programs, 33 percent to Division II programs, one percent to Division III, and 23 percent to non-NCAA colleges. Nearly 90 percent of all transfers said they changed schools for athletic reasons.
At the 2016 Men’s Final Four, NCAA President Mark Emmert stated that the issue of transfers is one of the most hotly debated in NCAA men’s basketball and football.
The culture that contributes to this is created in youth programs, starting even before students reach high school. There are no rules that govern players’ change from one non-school team to another, year after year. Players, parents and handlers talk with each other about where players can find the coach or team that will give them the best shot for a college scholarship or to fulfill their dreams of a professional career; and they will drive any distance from their homes to connect with that non-school team or coach.
This culture has infected high school sports, as witnessed by what appears to be increasing numbers of students who change schools for reasons more related to their non-school contacts and their college dreams than their high school experience, either athletic or academic.
These pressures will only increase under the current model of major college sports that treats superior athletes as if they were superior human beings and lavishes publicity and perks upon them. Until the major college sports experience is disincentivised, those colleges will have transfer troubles. And so will we.