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Robust Benefits

February 6, 2015

Here are some research-based opinions that track with the personal experiences of most of us who have given our careers to educational athletics. The words are those of Kevin Kniffen, who teaches leadership and management at Cornell University (from NYTimes.com [Oct. 22, 2014]):

“Research shows that people who play high school sports get better jobs, with better pay. Benefits that last a lifetime.


“Those lessons presumably help to account for the findings that people who played for a varsity high school team tend to earn relatively higher salaries later in life. Research to which I contributed, complementing previous studies, showed that people who played high school sports tend to get better jobs, with better pay, and that those benefits last a lifetime.

“Hiring managers expect former student-athletes (compared with people who participate in other popular extracurriculars) to have more self-confidence, self-respect and leadership; actual measures of behavior in a sample of people who had graduated from high school more than five decades earlier showed those expectations proved accurate.

“We also found that former student-athletes tend to donate time and money more frequently than people who weren't part of teams.

“In other words, there are clear and robust individual and societal benefits that appear to be generated through the current system of school support for participation in competitive youth athletics.

“With respect to whether youth athletics should be part of educational institutions, it’s certainly true that there’s no necessary relationship between the two; but, what would happen if schools were to drop all of their interscholastic sports programs?

“Any policymakers who took such action would effectively be privatizing – and, in turn, limiting – an important set of opportunities that schools presently provide in a significantly more democratic and open fashion than likely alternatives would. Beyond raising a basic barrier for anyone to gain the kinds of experiences that appear to be rewarded in the workplace, the privatization of competitive youth sports would also create the largest barriers – and cause the greatest long-term losses – for those whose families are not able to bear the costs of participation outside of the public school system.”

The Imperative of Institutional Control

March 13, 2018

Of the various criticisms about the MHSAA’s handling of transfers, these three have the ring of some validity:

  • The Transfer Rule is too complicated.

  • The Transfer Rule is poorly understood at the local level, and thus unevenly administered.

  • The MHSAA office is ill-equipped to police the transfer scene.

The language of the Transfer Rule has expanded from a few sentences to many pages over its 90-year lifetime. This is the result of changes in schools, sports and society, as well as people operating at the edges of the rule, which has led to a rule that has attempted to cover more circumstances with more specificity year after year.

This increasingly nuanced rule takes both training and time. The MHSAA does an excellent job of providing training online and in person, but local administrators are not putting in the time – they can’t! They are usually less experienced but given more non-sports duties than athletic directors of 10, 15 and 20 years ago; and they are leaving the profession after shorter careers. They often lack the training and time to do the complicated and potentially contentious tasks, including Transfer Rule administration.

Overwhelmed local athletic directors are not shy about contacting the MHSAA office for assistance in interpreting and applying the Transfer Rule. These incoming questions dominate the time of MHSAA staff who have many other duties, including the administration of MHSAA tournaments in 14 sports for each gender.

Lacking sufficient staff time and subpoena power, the MHSAA must depend on local school administrators to police their own programs, communicate with their neighbors, and report what they believe might be violations within their own and nearby programs.

While we keep working on the language of the Transfer Rule, we harbor no illusions that it will become simpler to understand and enforce. That’s just not how the modern world works ... everything becomes more complicated. Which may only make it more unlikely that schools will dedicate the time and talent necessary to assure that the principle of “institutional control” is practiced by MHSAA member schools.

However, if we give up on that principle, no amount of oversight by the MHSAA office will ever be enough to police school sports in Michigan ... not just to monitor transfers, but also to attend to the dozens of other elements that distinguish educational athletics.