Half Empty or Half Full
December 11, 2012
After an absence of decades, eight-player football has been reintroduced to Michigan high schools during recent years. When enough schools sponsored the program, the MHSAA responded with a four-week playoff in 2011. The number of schools sponsoring the sport grew in 2012, and more growth is expected for the 2013 season.
Like almost everything that occurs in life, what has benefited some schools is not seen by others to be in their own best interests.
Advocates of the eight-player game include those schools whose declining enrollments couldn’t support the eleven-player game. Football has returned to some communities and has been saved from the brink of elimination in others.
However, as two and soon three dozen Class D schools opt for the eight-player game, the remaining Class D schools that sponsor football find themselves in disrupted leagues and forced to travel further to complete eleven-player football schedules; and they must compete against larger teams in Division 8 of the eleven-player MHSAA Football Playoffs.
In fact, the growth of the eight-player game among our smallest schools has resulted in more Class D schools qualifying for the MHSAA Football Playoffs than ever before. In 2012, an all-time high 44.0 percent of Class D schools that sponsor football qualified for either the single division eight-player tournament or Division 8 of the eleven-player tournament. This compares to 42.2 percent of Class C schools, 44.9 percent of Class B schools and 41.6 percent of Class A schools that sponsor football and qualified for the 2012 playoffs.
Some see the eight-player game as the savior of the football experience in Class D schools. Others see it differently.
The Measure of Success
February 17, 2017
In January of 2016, my counterparts in the statewide high school associations across the U.S. came together for about nine hours of professionally facilitated discussion.
We were challenged to tell our story, to say what we believe about high school sports and describe the values of educational athletics. We worked together to craft the narrative of school sports, the message of educational athletics and the meaning – the “why” of our work.
We were challenged to clarify what success means in school-sponsored sports – to distinguish our definition of success from that of sports on all other levels by all other sponsors.
On Jan. 11 of this year, during the meeting of the Classification Committee of the Michigan High School Athletic Association, one of the committee members – an active coach and athletic director – chastised and inspired us. He said (and I paraphrase):
“We spend so much time on MHSAA tournaments when that experience can be just one month or one week or one day. Half the teams are eliminated in their first day of the baseball, basketball, softball, soccer, volleyball and other MHSAA tournaments.
“We need to move our focus from MHSAA tournaments to the regular season, to the 9- or 18-game regular season, and to the 100 to 200 practices that occur over three or four months of each season.”
The Classification Committee was discussing the future of 8-player football and the effect of its growth on the 11-player game. He said:
“It doesn’t matter if it’s 11-player, 8-player or any other number. The values don’t change. The lessons aren’t altered. The purpose isn’t modified. In everything, we are helping young people become better adults.”
That’s how we measure success.