Limitations of Rules
November 15, 2013
Those who make rules ought to have knowledge of the limitations of rules, lest they overreach and over-regulate.
Dov Seidman writes in how: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything: “Rules fail because you cannot write a rule to contain every possible behavior in the vast spectrum of human conduct. There will always be gray areas, and therefore, given the right circumstances, opportunities, or outside pressures, some people might be motivated to circumvent them. When they do, our typical response is just to make more rules. Rules, then, become part of the problem.”
The NCAA is under constant criticism for its voluminous rule book which seems to pry into myriad of daily activities of athletes, coaches, boosters and others with so many rules it’s impossible for people to know them all. So university athletic departments must hire compliance officers to guide people – effectively absolving the people in the trenches from knowing the rules and committing to their adherence; and the NCAA office must hire investigations to sort through all the allegations of wrongdoing.
While much trimmer than the NCAA Manual, the MHSAA Handbook is much larger today than its original versions. Still, every year in December when the MHSAA staff conducts a series of meetings that kicks off a six-month process of reviewing theHandbook, there is a concerted effort to “make the rules better without making the rule book larger.”
We know that unless the rules address a specific problem and are written with clarity and enforced with certainty, rules do more harm than they do good. “This,” according to Seidman, “creates a downward spiral of rulemaking which causes lasting detriment to the trust we need to sustain society. With each successive failure of rules, our faith in the very ability of rules to govern human conduct decreases. Rules, the principal arm of the way we govern ourselves, lose their power, destroying our trust in both those who make them and the institutions they govern.”
It’s What Happens Next
October 17, 2017
It is when I read opinions such as this one from Norman Chad last month for the Charleston (SC) Gazette-Mail, that I know the cause is right to keep frustrating the arms race in high school sports.
“College football is so wrong for so many reasons and that’s before we even get to the latest academic fraud at Florida State. It is money ill-spent and time ill-spent, an alarming hidden-in-broad-daylight repudiation of our institutions of higher learnings’ supposed core mission.
“Let’s round up the usual suspects:
“Alabama’s outside linebackers coach makes more money than its university president. University President Stuart Bell’s salary is $755,000.
“This likely reflects the fact that outside linebackers impact the Tuscaloosa campus more than, say, National Merit Scholars. It also brings to mind 1930, when Babe Ruth’s $80,000 salary eclipsed President Hoover’s $75,000 salary; called on it, the Bambino said, ‘I had a better year.’
“Still and don’t get me wrong, I realize that Alabama’s outside linebackers are the Lamborghini of outside linebackers. It’s hard to fathom that Lupoi makes nearly a million dollars annually just to deal with outside linebackers. Somehow he doesn’t have enough time in the day to give even a sideways glance to an inside linebacker.
“Of course, this all starts at the top, with Alabama Coach Nick Saban, at $11.125 million this year, the nation’s highest paid public employee. Some argue he is undercompensated; the entire state economy apparently is tied to Saban’s ability to go 12-1 every season.
“Just below Saban are defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt, earning $1.3 million, and offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, earning $1.2 million. Saban, clearly and correctly, favors good defense over good offense to the tune of 100k a year.
“Meanwhile, the Crimson Tide’s strength and conditioning coach, Scott Cochran, makes $535,000. I also have no problem here; strength and conditioning are the backbones of America, though tragically omitted from our founding fathers’ Declaration of Independence.
“But where I draw the line on athletic excess is this: Cochran lords over a 36,000-square-foot weight room; as a rule, Coach Slouch sees no reason any weight room ever need to exceed 30,000 square feet.
“Texas has remodeled and renovated its football locker room and weight room. Man, evidently you cannot run a first-rate FBS program without state-of-the-art dumbbells.
“But let’s bypass the weight room here and focus on the locker room.
“Extravagant locker rooms are all the rage. Texas A&M’s new facility includes a barbershop, UAB’s facility has a nutrition center and Clemson’s sports two bowling lanes.
“Which brings us to Austin, where each player’s locker at Texas cost $8,700.
“Uh, $8,700 FOR A LOCKER?
“I mean, this is where you keep your cleats, your jockstrap, your deodorant and, back in the day, a copy of Playboy. But these are no ordinary lockers; above each of the 126 lockers, where a nameplate might normally be, is a 43-inch video monitor.
“That’s right, a locker room with 126 flat-screen TVs.
“It’s essentially Buffalo Wild Wings, without the liquor license.
“Maryland unveils an almost-paid-for new indoor football practice field. My spiritually bankrupt and financially bereft alma mater continues to push that in-the-red athletic rock up the hill, trying to keep up with the Joneses and Harbaughs in the Big Ten.
“To that end, they have renovated Cole Field House, with a center for sports medicine, an academy for entrepreneurship and the school’s first indoor football home.
“It’s a shiny new penny! Go Terps!!!
“I hope it doesn’t cost too many nickels and dimes.
“Actually, it cost only $155 million, mostly privately financed, with fiscally challenged university president Wallace Loh saying the project has raised two-thirds of its $90 million fundraising goal.
“So they have built something rather expensive that they have not paid for yet. Reminds me of the first rule of money management: Live within your means.
“I hope there’s at least a nice weight room in there.”
Detachment of athletics from academics is 90 percent complete in NCAA Division I football and basketball. We should hold up that track record as the example of what will happen when, step by step, we expand the scope of school sports. Intersectional and national events for high school sports teams are not merely expensive frills; they are dangerous.