Jousting at Windmills
July 19, 2012
Charles Barkley uttered famously last month that the worst thing that ever happened to basketball was the AAU.
While it doesn’t all occur under the Amateur Athletic Union’s banner, Mr. Barkley is not the first “authority” to offer such a brash opinion and to blame the AAU for much of what is bad about the current state of non-school basketball, where street agents and shoe companies corrupt children and their coaches, and where basketball is played with little emphasis on fundamental skills and team play.
Certainly, there are others to blame, including all who have made college and professional basketball a business lucrative enough to encourage excesses and unethical practices. And all of this is bigger than any one state high school athletic association can change.
Nevertheless, the MHSAA is in its fourth year of quixotic jousting with the monster about which so many have been complaining so long.
Tomorrow for boys, and then eight days later for girls (July 26), the MHSAA is teaming up again with the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan (BCAM) to provide Reaching Higher, “an advance placement course” for students who have both the interest and potential to participate in college basketball on some level.
Through Reaching Higher we intend for players and parents to gain greater appreciation for the rules and realities of the college recruitment process and for what it takes both academically and athletically to qualify for and succeed in intercollegiate basketball.
Click here to view the details.
The Top Task
April 17, 2018
I’ve said and written many times before that the task of an athletic administrator is not merely event management, it is also – and more importantly – message management. It is defining and defending educational athletics. Doing so every day, in every way. Forcing our constituents, from top to bottom and both young and old, to ask and answer ...
“What is educational athletics?”
and
“What is the meaning of success in school sports?”
and
“How do we deliver the message every day?”
This is why I’ve blogged twice a week for nine years. Eighty percent of those postings have been intended to help define and defend educational athletics.
This is why the MHSAA publishes benchmarks – the only issues-focused high school association magazine in the US.
This is why we have a Student Advisory Council, a Scholar-Athlete Award, a Battle of the Fans, Captains Clinics and Sportsmanship Summits.
This is why we take our coaches education – the Coaches Advancement Program – face to face, week after week, to every corner of our state.
This is why we have a Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation.
This is why we have a radio network and waive fees for local stations which use our great public service announcements that define and defend educational athletics ... many of which conclude with the phrase, “Promoting the value and values of educational athletics.”
All of this, and much more, is about defining and defending educational athletics ... the top task of athletic administrators from top to bottom of our exciting enterprise.