Our Laboratory
June 30, 2014
Failure: Lab is a speaker-audience experience modeled after TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design); but unlike TED’s frequent focus on success stories, Failure: Lab showcases stories of failure – and it instructs speakers not to provide lessons learned. Figuring out those lessons is the role of the audience, not the presenters.
Of course, one of life’s most bountiful laboratories of failure is sports. At least 50 percent of the participants in any athletic contest do not win. Sometimes it’s just one competitor out of 10 or 100 or 1,000 who wins.
In MHSAA tournaments, all but one team in each class or division ends the season with a loss. In basketball this past winter, only four of 729 high schools that sponsored boys varsity basketball ended the season with a victory.
It’s a fact; sports is a failure lab.
In the spirit of Failure: Lab, I won’t offer a defense or an explanation of the lessons learned. You’re the audience; you figure it out. Why do we go to so much time and effort to create this laboratory?
Football's Status
June 16, 2017
Football has enjoyed a status within our schools that is unmatched by any other sport.
It attracts more participants than any other interscholastic sport.
Unlike many other sports (think especially of ice hockey, lacrosse and soccer), football began in the high school setting and was not imported from community programs.
And until the past decade, football has not had to cope with out-of-season programs run by non-school groups and commercial entities that are so troublesome – think especially of basketball, ice hockey, soccer and volleyball, but really all sports except football, until recent years.
The growth of 7-on-7 passing leagues and tournaments is the most obvious concern as commercial interests move in to profit from a mostly unregulated summer environment, as began to occur in basketball 30 years ago and has spread to many other sports since.
The Olympic movement has fueled some of this as national governing bodies have engineered programs for younger athletes in efforts to increase medal counts on which the U.S. Olympic Committee bases funding.
The quixotic pursuit of college scholarships is another powerful stimulant; and while the NCAA could have banned its coaches from recruiting away from school venues, it has not done so; and non-school entities have begun to tailor their events toward convenient although costly recruiting venues.
We can expect these events to spread like an invasive species through football unless, learning from the past, the NCAA makes these events off-limits to its coaches, and/or organizations like ours across the country will not only regulate but also conduct programs during the summer.