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.
It’s What Happens Next
October 17, 2017
It is when I read opinions such as this one from Norman Chad last month for the Charleston (SC) Gazette-Mail, that I know the cause is right to keep frustrating the arms race in high school sports.
“College football is so wrong for so many reasons and that’s before we even get to the latest academic fraud at Florida State. It is money ill-spent and time ill-spent, an alarming hidden-in-broad-daylight repudiation of our institutions of higher learnings’ supposed core mission.
“Let’s round up the usual suspects:
“Alabama’s outside linebackers coach makes more money than its university president. University President Stuart Bell’s salary is $755,000.
“This likely reflects the fact that outside linebackers impact the Tuscaloosa campus more than, say, National Merit Scholars. It also brings to mind 1930, when Babe Ruth’s $80,000 salary eclipsed President Hoover’s $75,000 salary; called on it, the Bambino said, ‘I had a better year.’
“Still and don’t get me wrong, I realize that Alabama’s outside linebackers are the Lamborghini of outside linebackers. It’s hard to fathom that Lupoi makes nearly a million dollars annually just to deal with outside linebackers. Somehow he doesn’t have enough time in the day to give even a sideways glance to an inside linebacker.
“Of course, this all starts at the top, with Alabama Coach Nick Saban, at $11.125 million this year, the nation’s highest paid public employee. Some argue he is undercompensated; the entire state economy apparently is tied to Saban’s ability to go 12-1 every season.
“Just below Saban are defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt, earning $1.3 million, and offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, earning $1.2 million. Saban, clearly and correctly, favors good defense over good offense to the tune of 100k a year.
“Meanwhile, the Crimson Tide’s strength and conditioning coach, Scott Cochran, makes $535,000. I also have no problem here; strength and conditioning are the backbones of America, though tragically omitted from our founding fathers’ Declaration of Independence.
“But where I draw the line on athletic excess is this: Cochran lords over a 36,000-square-foot weight room; as a rule, Coach Slouch sees no reason any weight room ever need to exceed 30,000 square feet.
“Texas has remodeled and renovated its football locker room and weight room. Man, evidently you cannot run a first-rate FBS program without state-of-the-art dumbbells.
“But let’s bypass the weight room here and focus on the locker room.
“Extravagant locker rooms are all the rage. Texas A&M’s new facility includes a barbershop, UAB’s facility has a nutrition center and Clemson’s sports two bowling lanes.
“Which brings us to Austin, where each player’s locker at Texas cost $8,700.
“Uh, $8,700 FOR A LOCKER?
“I mean, this is where you keep your cleats, your jockstrap, your deodorant and, back in the day, a copy of Playboy. But these are no ordinary lockers; above each of the 126 lockers, where a nameplate might normally be, is a 43-inch video monitor.
“That’s right, a locker room with 126 flat-screen TVs.
“It’s essentially Buffalo Wild Wings, without the liquor license.
“Maryland unveils an almost-paid-for new indoor football practice field. My spiritually bankrupt and financially bereft alma mater continues to push that in-the-red athletic rock up the hill, trying to keep up with the Joneses and Harbaughs in the Big Ten.
“To that end, they have renovated Cole Field House, with a center for sports medicine, an academy for entrepreneurship and the school’s first indoor football home.
“It’s a shiny new penny! Go Terps!!!
“I hope it doesn’t cost too many nickels and dimes.
“Actually, it cost only $155 million, mostly privately financed, with fiscally challenged university president Wallace Loh saying the project has raised two-thirds of its $90 million fundraising goal.
“So they have built something rather expensive that they have not paid for yet. Reminds me of the first rule of money management: Live within your means.
“I hope there’s at least a nice weight room in there.”
Detachment of athletics from academics is 90 percent complete in NCAA Division I football and basketball. We should hold up that track record as the example of what will happen when, step by step, we expand the scope of school sports. Intersectional and national events for high school sports teams are not merely expensive frills; they are dangerous.