Lost Leaders
April 12, 2016
What’s the greatest threat to the future of school sports? It’s not concussions, for school sports are actually more safe each year, not less. It’s not a lack of civility, for our events are still the most sportsmanlike of any highly competitive sports program. It’s not cost, for school sports remain the cheapest form of organized sports to play and to watch.
Actually, the greatest threat to the future of school sports is from the self-inflicted wounds by local school district boards of education. The decisions to devalue the local high school athletic administrator. Heaping more and more duties on a person who is being given less and less time, training and support to perform those duties.
The full-time athletic administrator, with support for clerical duties and event supervision and without many other duties added on, is an increasingly rare situation in schools today. And when that person retires, moves up or otherwise moves on, it is typical that the replacement is less experienced, given even more unrelated duties to perform, and given less time in which to do them.
It’s then that the athletic director looks to coaches to run their own programs; and when the school coach is a nonfaculty person, this is a delegation of school sports to a non-school person.
Is it any wonder then that philosophies suffer, policies are ignored and problems occur?
Is it any wonder then that people who see no difference between the philosophies of school and non-school sports question why schools should spend any time at all on this aspect of adolescent development? They become all too ready to leave sports to the community.
Every shortcut to school sports administration has a consequence. Every dollar we try to squeeze from the school sports budget has a hidden higher cost. Every non-athletic duty we add to the athletic director’s day is another step closer to schools without sports.
And the secondary schools admired by the rest of the world will become ordinary.
Sweating the Small Stuff - #3
June 5, 2018
I’m sure it discouraged some of our state’s high school football coaches to learn that the Representative Council of the Michigan High School Athletic Association did not approve at its May 6-7 meeting what some people refer to as the “enhanced strength of schedule proposal” for determining 256 qualifiers to the MHSAA’s 11-player football playoffs.
There was desire among some Council members to appease those who keep trying to reduce the difficulties that a football tournament causes for regular season scheduling and conference affiliations. Others noted that the proposal, as presented, could cause as much harm to some schools and conferences as it would help others, that it did not solve the scheduling problem but shifted it.
During spirited discussion, some Council members resurrected two ideas that have been rejected previously, such as (1) doubling the playoffs once again (and shortening the regular season to eight games), and (2) coupling a six- or seven-win minimum with the revised strength of schedule criteria. The pros and cons of each idea flowed freely.
And therein is the problem. If one digs down into the details of proposals, both old and new, there are both positive and negative aspects apparent, both intended and unintended consequences likely.
There can be paralysis in analysis; but when we are dealing with more than 600 high school programs and a physically demanding sport with fewer regular-season contests permitted than in any other sport, one cannot be too careful. Eliminating one of just nine regular-season games? Increasing first-round tournament mismatches? Disadvantaging larger schools locked in leagues or areas of the state where smaller schools predominate? These are not minor matters.
And until there are sensible answers, these are not trivial questions.