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Living With Change

December 1, 2017

One of the odd and irksome scenes I observe occurs when a relative newcomer to an enterprise lectures more seasoned veterans about change. About how change is all around us, and inevitable. About how we must embrace it and keep pace with it.

All that is true, of course; and no one knows more about that than the veteran being subjected to the newcomer’s condescension.

No one “gets it” better than those who have lived and worked through it. Short-timers can’t claim superiority on a subject they’ve only read or heard about.

Who has the deeper appreciation of change in our enterprise? The person who started working before the Internet, or after? Before social media, or after?

Who has keener knowledge of change in youth sports? The person in this work before, or after, the Amateur Athletic Union changed its focus from international competition and the Olympics to youth sports?

Who sees change more profoundly? The one who launched a career before the advent of commercially-driven sports specialization, or the one who has only seen the youth sports landscape as it exists today?

Who can better evaluate the shifting sands: newcomers or the ones who labored before colleges televised on any other day but Saturday and the pros televised on any other day but Sunday (and Thanksgiving)?

Where newcomers see things as they are, veterans can see things that have changed. They can be more aware of change, and more appreciative of its pros and cons. They didn’t merely inherit change, they lived it.

No Easy Fix

February 13, 2015

“If we don’t fix this problem, even our friends and allies may turn against us.”
That was the dire warning one of the MHSAA staff members gave to the rest of us at a weekly staff meeting recently, during which this staff member was receiving emails from people appalled over the mid-season transfer of a basketball player from one school to another.
The “fix” that some people want is a rule that makes every transfer student ineligible for a full year, regardless of the reason for the change of schools or the circumstances of the student. Of course, that rule would never survive judicial scrutiny, and legislators in every corner of the state would be advocating change for the sake of one child or another.
A more moderate remedy is to utilize a rule that applies the full-year period of ineligibility to those students whose circumstances do not fit one of the already established 15 exceptions that make a student eligible without delay following a transfer. That half-measure would not stop many transfers that would still frustrate people, and it would snag many transfers that would continue to anger people.
The rules we already have in place are tools for schools to use to stop many of the transfers that frustrate without snaring those transfers that anger: the athletic-motivated transfer rule and especially the athletic-related transfer rule (or links law).
Before our friends and allies turn their backs on us, they need to turn in the transfer situations where the rules already apply, and the undue influence (recruiting) they can document. They need to give the system a chance to work to the full extent of its potential. We should not make tougher rules if schools fail to utilize the rules they already have.
Adopting rules is usually easy for the organization. Applying rules is often much harder for the schools.