Not Right for Us
March 7, 2017
The proposal to utilize KPI Rankings to seed the District and Regional rounds of the MHSAA Boys and Girls Basketball Tournaments should not be adopted by the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
This is no criticism of KPI Rankings per se, or of its creator who is assistant athletic director at Michigan State University; but it’s not the right thing to do for our statewide high school basketball tournaments.
The KPI rankings is one of a half-dozen means used by the NCAA to seed its Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. But the proposal before us is that KPI rankings become the one and only system for seeding the MHSAA’s tournaments. There would be no other criteria and no human judgment.
The result would be seeding that misses important details, like which teams are hot and which are not at season end, and which teams have recently lost players to injuries or ineligibilities and which have had players return.
KPI ranks teams on a game-by-game basis by assigning a value to every game played. A loss to an opponent with a poor record is considered a “bad loss” and has a negative point value. A win over an opponent with a good record is considered a “good win” and earns a positive point value. Margin of victory is a factor.
This is a nice tool for the NCAA to use, along with a variety of other tools and considerations that its billion-dollar budget can accommodate, but none of which is proposed for seeding the MHSAA tournaments. KPI Rankings is not sufficient as the one-and-only seeding criterion for MHSAA tournaments.
Moreover, dependence on a seeding system owned by a single individual, who is outside the MHSAA office, and who has the potential to move from MSU to anywhere across the USA, is a poor business strategy.
If there is to be seeding, there are more appropriate ways to do it for the high school level. But first there needs to be clearer consensus that seeding is a good thing to do, philosophically and practically. In the MHSAA we do this sport by sport, and level by level. And the jury is still out for seeding in Michigan high school basketball.
Long-Term Effects?
November 4, 2014
A recent report of NBC News has raised concern for the possibility that prolonged exposure to one of the latest versions of artificial turf might contribute to the chances that a person will contract some forms of cancer. This came as cruel irony to many who have raised funds for and installed the latest facilities that were intended to be much healthier both for participants and our environment.
It is reported that the millions of old tires that have been diverted from landfills and then ground up and spread to soften artificial playing surfaces may release elements that contribute to disease for those who spend enough time on those surfaces. Touted to be softer and protect participants from joint injuries and concussions, and advertised to promote a healthier environment by recycling old tires and avoiding the need to constantly fertilize and water natural grass fields, it’s now being suggested that this artificial product may be the less healthy alternative for participants and the environment.
As of this writing, the health benefits of current generation artificial turf are well documented, while the health risks are unproven – there is anecdotal evidence, for example, that soccer goalies who have spent many hours per week for many years diving and rolling on the new turf may have ingested unhealthy levels of the tiny black rubber pellets that give the artificial turf its soft “natural” feel.
Nevertheless, this situation is a humbling reminder of how difficult it is to assess all of the unintended consequences in the future of our actions in the present. How might a product that solves many obvious problems be anticipated to have a link to a hidden illness many years later? How might a person who plays a single sport many hours each day all year long anticipate the overuse injuries or other illnesses that such an obsession or devotion might cause?
The questions being raised about the long-term effects of long-term interaction with today’s artificial turf remind us once again to seek moderation in how much we do of any one thing and to seek humility when we think we’ve accomplished something. One seldom can be certain of what is good for us and what is not; and sometimes even the long view of things is not long enough to know.