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Guarding Secrets

February 8, 2013

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January was a bad month for some sports heroes, but it was an instructional time for those who paused to connect some dots.

  • Two of Major League Baseball’s most prolific performers became eligible for baseball’s Hall of Fame, but we learned in January that neither came close to earning enough votes for election to that prestigious shrine.  Each has seen his star-power descend in a cloud of legal problems surrounding his suspected use of performance enhancing drugs.
  • After seven Tour de France titles and seven times seven denials of using performance enhancing drugs and various blood doping techniques, Lance Armstrong “came clean.” Sort of.
  • A Heisman Trophy candidate went from a broken-hearted soul mate to the victim of a cruel hoax to a contributor to the weirdest story college sports has witnessed.  From duped to duplicitous.
  • And all this with Penn State’s scandal still fresh in our minds.

How fatiguing it must be and, ultimately, how futile it is to try to keep secrets. That’s always been true; it’s just more obvious in a world where everyone’s access to social media renders investigative journalism too little and too late in uncovering the secrets that heroes harbor.

How any of these people ever thought they could guard their secrets beyond the grave would be beyond belief if it just didn’t keep happening so often.  There must be something we’re doing wrong in the upbringing of prominent athletes (like too many politicians) that makes them think they can get away with sordid secrets . . . that they’re too big to fail. 

The truth is, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.  No secret is beyond discovery.

Engagement

October 31, 2017

In addition to daily calls, texts, emails and old-fashioned mail delivery, Michigan High School Athletic Association staff engaged face to face with its core constituents in these ways from August of 2016 through July of 2017:

  • More than 350 local school visits, including:
    • Approximately 120 to attend regular season local contests to evaluate officials for MHSAA tournament readiness.
    • More than 60 to support or evaluate MHSAA pre-Final tournament events.
    • More than 60 to speak at or support MHSAA CAP sessions (plus 25 CAP sessions at the MHSAA building).
    • 12 for MHSAA.TV, NFHS Network or School Broadcast Program.
    • 6 for Second Half website features.
    • 6 for new school orientation.
    • 5 for Battle of the Fans (each involving 3 MHSAA staff).
    • 5 for officiating classes.
    • 2 for Reaching Higher (each involving 4 or more staff).

  • More than 60 local officials association visits, including:

    • 45 for rules meetings/presentations.

Plus 8 visits to officials camps,
         5 presentations to college officiating classes, and
         9 officiating recruitment events.

  • More than 50 coaches association meetings.
    • 24 for MHSAA rules meetings/presentations.
    • 6 for CAP programs.

Plus the Coaches Association Presidents dinner at the MHSAA office involving 9 MHSAA staff.

  • More than 50 league meetings, including:
    • 8 to conduct student leadership or sportsmanship events or for team captains clinics (usually involving multiple MHSAA staff).
    • 8 to provide event marketing assistance.
    • 7 to provide MHSAA information/updates.
    • 6 to provide MHSAA rules meetings/presentations.
    • 3 for ArbiterGame training (usually involving 2 or more MHSAA staff).

Plus the League Leadership Meeting at the MHSAA office involving most MHSAA staff.

  • More than 15 MIAAA meetings.
    • 10 MHSAA staff at the March conference.
    • 2 MHSAA staff at the summer workshop.
    • 2 to 4 MHSAA staff at most board meetings.
    • At least 1 staff at multiple committee meetings, strategic planning, etc.
  • More than 50 standing committees, task forces and ad hoc study groups convened at the MHSAA office, and several did so multiple times.

What is abundantly clear here is that the MHSAA staff does not operate from an ivory tower or information vacuum.