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News Unfiltered

July 12, 2017

During the first summer after my college graduation, I was the campaign advance man outside of the Milwaukee and Madison areas for a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Wisconsin. A great job.

Sometime during that summer, I met the head of the campaign in a café. He was reading a newspaper as I arrived; and as I sat down at the table, I asked him what he was reading. I’ll always remember his response. He said, “I’m looking for what could go wrong today?”

It was the campaign manager’s job to think about worst-case scenarios and consider how the campaign might get taken off message by the news of the day.

I was young and impressionable, and I soon began to consume the daily news through the same filter.

It was not difficult to do so in the 1970s. The daily newspaper was printed and delivered to my door every day. Television had just three networks, and each provided brief news reports two or three times a day.

Today, what passes as news comes from hundreds or thousands or millions of sources and it is changing constantly, 24/7/365. Only a small portion of those sources is professionally operated with accountability for the substance and/or style of the so-called reporting.

Today it drives me nuts to consume news – that is, to really think about what I’m reading or hearing the way I did in the 1970s. Today, meaningful matters often get buried in trivia while the most inane and inaccurate stories and comments can go viral overnight.

I’ve always said you can get too much of a good thing – too much food; too much free time; and certainly, too much sports. And clearly, we have too much “news” about sports.

Special Delivery

February 23, 2016

If there is one month of the year that demonstrates the difference in the MHSAA today compared to a generation ago, it is February.

  • This is the month when 775 people, including more than 700 students, gathered for the MHSAA Women in Sports Leadership Conference in Lansing. This year’s was the 22nd edition of the conference.

  • This is the month when the 120 finalists and 32 recipients of the 2016 MHSAA Scholar-Athlete Award are announced. This is the program’s 27th year, sponsored by Farm Bureau Insurance.

  • This is the month when MHSAA staff is on the road to visit finalists for “Battle of the Fans V,” and thousands of students vote for their favorite on social media, and the MHSAA Student Advisory Council finalizes the selection of this year’s top cheering section.

For most of its history, the MHSAA worked with school personnel who then interacted with students. Today, the MHSAA delivers much more than its postseason tournaments directly to student-athletes, including captains clinics and sportsmanship summits all year round.

While this work must never displace from our top priority the development and delivery of eligibility competition standards that are safe and sound for an educational environment, these direct interactions inform the rules making process in very positive ways.