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.
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).
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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.