Peddling Influence
February 28, 2012
The Sports Business Journal published in December its annual list of the 50 most influential persons in sports business. No person from the ranks of high school sports is included, causing some to criticize the oversight. I don’t.
If ever a person from the high school level were to make this listing, it likely would be for behaving like those at the college, professional and international levels. No one will make the list for doing the job he or she is supposed to do, which is to assure that the business excesses of those other levels do not visit school sports, and to actively oppose those initiatives that would undermine educational athletics.
I understand fully that there are important business aspects to the administration of interscholastic athletics. But I also understand that these business tasks must be managed within the cozy confines of the educational mission of the sponsoring institutions – schools.
We know how to make a lot more money for school sports from networks, sponsors and promoters. But we also know why that wouldn’t be right for educational athletics. Contests on any day at any hour for broadcast purposes, at any location no matter how far. Highlighting big schools, highly ranked teams and highly rated/recruited players, to improve broadcast ratings and advertiser demands. Brilliant minds and bullying personalities couldn’t avoid this happening in college athletics. Once started, we could not fare better in controlling things on the high school level.
We have the potential to aggregate school sports content very attractively for producers, distributors and sponsors. But it’s best that we don’t. And just fine that we continue to be overlooked by business trade journals.
Tracking Transfers
August 16, 2016
The number of requests to waive rules by Michigan High School Athletic Association school administrators to the MHSAA Executive Committee during the 2015-16 school year dropped to the lowest total since the 2006-07 school year, and the percentage of approved requests exceeded 80 percent for the first time in decades.
Of 453 requests for waiver, 381 (84%) were approved during the Executive Committee’s 12 meetings from August 2015 through June 2016.
As always, requests to waive the transfer rule dominated. There were 291 requests, of which 224 were approved (77%). That’s the first time there were fewer than 300 transfer waiver requests since the 2006-07 school year.
Across the U.S., transfers persist as the most popular and prickly eligibility issue of school sports, especially in states with open enrollment/school of choice. While certainly a greater plague in more populated areas where several schools are often in close proximity, this problem knows no economic boundaries – students bounce from home to home in disadvantaged communities and wealthier parents leverage their advantages to buy homes where they desire their children to be schooled.
While still a very small percentage of all transfer students, high profile athletic-related transfers get headlines and, too often, their new teams grab trophies that elude schools which play by both the letter and the spirit of transfer rules.
Mishandling transfers is still the No. 1 cause of forfeitures in Michigan high school sports. Increasing mobility and the messiness of marital relations keep students on the move, and keep athletic administrators on their toes. Vetting all new students, and getting all information before the new student gets in a game, is a high priority of the full-time professional athletic administrator, and it’s not something many part-time ADs can do.