Partners in Promotion
March 28, 2017
The Michigan High School Athletic Association and State Champs Sports Network are joining forces during the coming school year to define what school sports are, defend what they stand for, and distribute that message on a collective platform across the state every weekend, 12 months a year.
Beginning this fall, State Champs Metro Detroit-based high school football show “Extra Point” will move to Fox Sports Detroit on Saturday mornings and become the “MHSAA Extra Point.” Throughout the entire football season, this 30-minute show will feature a variety of statewide football highlights utilizing the expansive bank of State Champs Sports Network camera crews. This will also give a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for students to have specially selected highlights reaching as many as 3.5 million homes. But only those MHSAA member schools participating in the School Broadcast Program will have that exclusive opportunity.
The longest running all-sports high school sports show in state history, “State Champs High School Sports Show” on Fox Sports Detroit, airs Sunday morning, nearly 40 times a year. Now, every episode will feature the MHSAA Minute – talking everything in the life of the association from coaches education to health and safety, officiating, breaking news and more.
We’ll also have special programming where we dig into the MHSAA vaults to bring old games, coaches and players back to life on State Champs Legends. We’ll also tackle important topics and issues in school sports, with the first special coming this August when “Concussions and the Modern Athlete” will focus on head injury and its impact in high school sports.
Every football Friday night, “State Champs Scoreboard” radio show airs on the number one ranked 97.1 – The Ticket in Detroit. Now, in partnership with the expansive MHSAA Network, affiliate stations across the state will jump on board to simulcast. During the winter we’ll take it all online for a Friday night statewide basketball show on Facebook live.
Finally, plans are in the works to further grow the next generation of sports media and production professionals. Working in conjunction with PlayOn Sports, a State Champs Sports Network crew will work hand in hand with high school students, conducting live demonstrations of the MHSAA School Broadcast Program by live streaming an event from their school.
In an era where high school sports coverage is at its lowest point in state history, a new team will continue to spotlight the life lessons school sports teach our children. This partnership between the State Champs Network and the MHSAA will do more than ever to champion that message.
A 7’ Tall Tuba Player
October 11, 2016
In countless school and community gatherings all across Michigan, and in more printed pieces than I can remember, I have advocated for students to attempt to sample all of the diverse activities that a comprehensive high school has to offer ... both athletic and non-athletic activities. It is this variety that highlighted my own school experience and enriched that of my two sons.
Because of my outspoken advocacy for speech and debate and music and drama, I have been asked why I do not advocate that the Michigan High School Athletic Association serve and support those activities in the way it does sports.
The first and foremost reason is that those school programs are already well served by existing organizations in Michigan. But more fundamentally, I resist expansion of MHSAA authority to those activities because it would undermine the essential eligibility rules we must have for competitive athletic programs. I have seen this pressure in other states, but sports has regulatory needs that speech and debate and music and drama do not.
While the profile of some of these programs in some of our member schools is as high as any sports program in those schools, the competitive pressures are still different. No one is recruiting tuba players from one school to another. Debaters are not often subject to undue influence. Meanwhile, sports programs are under intense pressures that lead to athletic-motivated and athletic-related transfers, undue influence and other unsavory behaviors.
As I recently explained this rationale to my colleagues in neighboring states, all but one of which is an athletics-only organization like the MHSAA, one of my counterparts chipped in: "Well, we did once have a tuba player be recruited by and transfer to another school in our state. But he was seven feet tall and, in addition to playing in the band, he was the basketball team's highest scorer and most prolific rebounder."