Seeding Discontent
January 3, 2017
We have heard for years that the Michigan High School Athletic Association Football Playoffs have created scheduling problems for schools and have caused the demise of leagues, no matter how many times the playoffs expanded – from 16 schools in 1975 to 256 schools today (plus 16 more in the 8-player tournament). Many other states with a variety of other football playoff formats report similar stresses on their member schools.
The inability of weaker teams to compete within a league and the difficulty that stronger teams face to find willing opponents to complete a nine-game regular season schedule are not uncommon for varsity football in Michigan, but are problems rarely experienced in basketball.
That could change if seeding based on wins and strength of schedule comes to MHSAA Basketball Tournaments.
With an easier road to District and Regional titles gifted to higher seeded teams, coaches will want a regular season schedule that is difficult but not too difficult. They will seek a league that is tough, but not too tough. This is the recipe for scheduling headaches. Strong schools will have difficulty finding a full schedule of games, while weaker or simply smaller schools will have difficulty finding a league.
Fearing blemishes on the regular season win/loss records, coaches will delay playing substitutes and avoid sitting out or suspending good players who are bad actors. Every eligibility snafu leading to forfeit will carry tournament seeding consequences. The temptation to hide ineligibilities and the inclination to fight forfeits, not infrequent in football, will come to basketball.
Developing a seeding plan is not at all difficult, but living with one could be.
Momentum
August 4, 2017
The 2017-18 school year holds great potential for the Michigan High School Athletic Association and for school sports in Michigan. Only time will tell us if the potential is greater for good than for bad.
There is positive momentum in promoting participant health and safety as the last of three advances in the health and safety preparation of coaches is implemented, as high schools’ mandatory concussion reporting and MHSAA-purchased concussion care “gap” insurance for 6th- through 12th-graders enter year three, and as higher limits of accident medical insurance is purchased by the MHSAA for all member junior high/middle schools and high schools, effective this month.
There is positive momentum in serving and supporting junior high/middle school programs where membership was up five percent last year over the year before. The MHSAA had an enjoyable, brand-broadening experience as “presenting sponsor” at a half-dozen junior high/middle school league track & field meets this past spring; and the MHSAA will be doing so during fall, winter and spring junior high/middle school tournaments during the 2017-18 school year.
The MHSAA’s Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation continues to develop strategies that focus on junior high/middle school students and their parents and to address the greatest health threat in youth sports – overuse injuries as the result of year-round sports specialization; and the Task Force is developing tools that help define and defend educational athletics.
Beneath these three over-arching themes, the MHSAA is addressing some pressing new problems – like what to do about venues that are no longer available to us for MHSAA tournaments in girls and boys basketball and individual wrestling – as well as some chronic concerns – like recruiting and retaining contest officials and athletic-related transfers. The loss of officials and the rise of athletic-related transfers are problems of nearly epidemic proportions.
The amount of resources the MHSAA will be able to bring to all these topics will be affected by the number of controversies that arise during the normal course of essential business in administering programs, policies and penalties. Such controversies can knock us off message, and rob us of resources that could allow us to be doing more of the positive things we know need to be done.
There is also the potential that we get distracted by the National Federation of State High School Associations, some of whose member state association CEOs want to talk more about NFHS sponsorship of national tournaments, even after decades of opposition to such events from both state and national educational associations, as well as clear and convincing evidence that no organization – from Little League to the NCAA – has been able to conduct national tournaments without adding to their existing problems and creating new pressures and new problems.
Excesses and abuses in school sports have their own momentum. We should not create more by NFHS sponsorship of the very events it was created to end.