People Serving People
September 14, 2012
It is at this time each year, especially, that I’m made more aware of the harm and heartache that exists in our students’ homes, if they are lucky enough to have a home.
Every day our staff receives dozens of calls about the terrible circumstances children are in because of dysfunctional home life, medical issues or myriad other upsetting situations; and every day MHSAA Associate Director Tom Rashid is preparing for Executive Committee consideration more requests from schools to waive eligibility rules for their students whose circumstances do not fit a transfer exception or are not compliant with other regulations.
During the 2011-12 school year there were 506 requests for waiver submitted to the Executive Committee, compared to 462 the year before. The record is 524 in 2007-08.
By far, there are more requests to waive the transfer regulation than any other: 352 in 2011-12 compared to 320 the year before. The record is 372 in 2007-08.
There are so many requests for waiver today that the Executive Committee exceeds the MHSAA Constitution that requires a minimum of three meetings each year. The Executive Committee has scheduled 12 meetings during each year for the past half dozen years.
And the Executive Committee front loads the calendar, this year with three meetings over five weeks at the start of the school year (Aug. 8, Aug. 28 and Sept. 11) so that the large number of situations that arise at the beginning of the new school year can be addressed before too much of fall season competition has occurred.
Last school year the MHSAA Executive Committee approved 352 of the 506 requests for waiver, including 265 of the 352 requests to waive the transfer regulation. The five-member committee of school administrators serves without monetary compensation, but with a commitment to treat schools and students as fairly and consistently as humanly possible. They are compassionate, caring people making difficult decisions.
Friday Night Football
September 23, 2016
There continues to be among high school athletic administrators a great gnashing of teeth over encroachment of televised college football on the Friday night turf that long tradition reserves for high school football games. Little by little and year by year, college games drift to all times of the day and all days of the week, and Friday night is no longer hallowed ground for the high school game alone.
The Friday night intercollegiate fare remains mostly irrelevant games by second tier teams, but televised nonetheless because of the overabundance of production entities and networks seeking live sports events. But high school leadership is right to be on guard.
Known to very few people is a million dollar offer in the 1970s by then NCAA Executive Director Walter Byers to the National Federation of State High School Associations if it would not oppose televised college football games on Friday nights. Clifford Fagan, then executive director of the National Federation, declined the offer from his good friend; and the mutual respect these two men enjoyed brought an end to the negotiation.
Then, as now, the National Football League was prohibited by law (part of its anti-trust exception) from televising games on Friday nights and Saturdays from mid-September through mid-December where the broadcast would conflict with a live high school or college game. Under Byers, and until the NCAA lost control of intercollegiate football broadcasting as a result of a legal challenge by what was then called the College Football Association, college football leadership voluntarily gave high school football the same deference on Friday nights that the NFL did under federal law.
Today, major college football is such a ravenous revenue beast that it will schedule play at any time on any day in any location, televising every game – on college conference-controlled networks if the matchup is not attractive enough for national or even regional broadcasts. The Friday night high school football tradition can expect to be trampled as college football swarms and grunts around the feed trough like hungry hogs.