Persuasion

April 13, 2012

“People are persuaded by relationships more than reasons.”

That’s the one statement I remember from a radio interview I was inattentively listening to during a recent long drive.  I don’t remember the topic, the speaker, the interviewer or the radio station; but that single statement soaked further into my soul as the miles passed by.

I began to think of many instances when I gave the benefit of the doubt to a person I knew well.  And the times when both sides of a debate had merit but I decided in favor of the source I knew better and trusted more.  Relationships.

I thought of my own failures to direct a change or defend the status quo because I depended solely on solid rationale and disregarded the biases and baggage of those I needed to influence.  When I didn’t take time to cultivate allies because I was so certain that the idea itself was powerful enough to carry the day.  When my confidence that “what was right” would ultimately prevail, but it did not.  Relationships.

Twice during the past four months we have seen a preview of how, more frequently in the future, people will attempt to influence decision making in school sports without building genuine relationships.  Once as a first strategy, and once as a last resort, a constituent of our state utilized the World Wide Web to generate support for a policy change.

In each case an online petition was initiated that generated, from across the nation and around the world, a large number of emails, many of which were vulgar, profane or ridiculous, triggering all email to the MHSAA through that website to be filtered as spam, never to be seen by the decision-makers.  This approach is the antithesis of effective persuasion.

No organization of substance should be swayed by bored souls surfing the web who, by mere chance, stumble across an issue and then ring in, without real knowledge of that issue, and no real stake in its outcome.

Prep Prose

January 27, 2017

Mick McCabe retired in December after almost five full decades at the Detroit Free Press.

When Mick agreed with me, he did so boldly. When he disagreed, he sometimes did so brutally. 

He was at his best, and did most for school sports in Michigan, when he told the stories of coaches and athletes in the cities, suburbs and small towns all across our state. Especially when he told the stories of those who would never coach or play a game beyond the high school level. Especially when he found and focused on an unknown person in a low-profile sport who raised our spirits by reminding us of how good educational athletics can be.

Mick may have written more words about high school sports in Michigan than any person ever. And that's saying a lot when one remembers Jack Moss and Bob Gross and Bob Becker and Jane Bos and Del Newell and Cindy Fairfield and a dozen other retired sports writers in our state whose substantial bodies of work promoted prep sports.

School sports usually has been well-served by such media professionals who were allowed by their industry to take the time necessary to know the people and the policies that served school sports, and were allowed  the space to develop stories that went beyond headlines, tweets and texts, with fuller facts and closer truth than is the norm today.