Slow to Seeding
April 11, 2016
While it is an inevitable topic of discussion, it is not inevitable that the MHSAA Girls and Boys Basketball Tournaments will involve seeding of any significant scope.
The fact that there was no seeding proposal even considered by the MHSAA Basketball Committee this year is indicative of two facts:
There are many people who are totally against seeding the MHSAA Basketball Tournaments; and
Those who favor seeding cannot agree on how to do it.
It is possible that someday there will be limited seeding that does not involve margin of victory or cause additional travel for participating teams – perhaps placing the top two teams of a geographic District onto opposite District tournament brackets, or perhaps seeding the four teams that reach the Semifinals in each class.
Proposals that encourage teams to run up scores during the regular season or send teams to Districts outside their geographic area and/or involve the Regional tournament level are less likely to win favor. And, of course, the devil is in the details of the criteria for determining which teams are better than others.
The MHSAA Representative Council has taken the position that if seeding is to occur in MHSAA tournaments, it will be considered on a sport-by-sport and level-by-level basis. While some MHSAA tournaments already have seeding at one level or another, the Council knows that seeding for some sports and some tournament levels of other sports may never be acceptable.
The MHSAA Representative Council is also wise enough to know that seeding is really not an important topic, at least in comparison to the compelling health and safety issues to which the Council has been devoting great time and money during this decade.
No. 1 Worries
December 27, 2017
Editor's Note: This blog originally was posted Sept. 21, 2012, and the theme rings true today.
Fueled by the “No. 1” syndrome, people often worry about and value the wrong things when it comes to interscholastic athletics.
For example, they worry about the eligibility of athletes more than the education of students. They worry about athletic scholarships to college more than genuine scholarship in high school. Faced with financial shortfalls, they use middle school athletics as the whipping boy because the No. 1 syndrome causes people to value varsity programs more than junior varsity, and high school programs more than middle school.
It is possible in the subvarsity programs of our high schools (far more than in varsity programs where crowds and media bring pressure to win) and it should be and usually is pervasive in our middle school programs, that participation is more important than specialization, trying more important than winning, teamwork more important than individual honors, and teaching more important than titles and trophies.
At the middle school level, coaches have an opportunity to look down the bench for substitutes without first looking up at the scoreboard. The scorebook should be kept to see how many students played in the game, not how many points any one player scored.
Here is where education prevails over entertainment in interscholastic athletics. Here is where philosophy of athletics is more in tune with the mission of the school. Here is where the taxpayer’s dollar is spent best.
To the degree we introduce large tournaments and trophies into middle level programs, we damage the purity of educational athletics and the purpose of middle school programs. To the degree we cut middle level programs in the face of budget crises, we succumb to the No. 1 syndrome.
We must expose the No. 1 syndrome for the sickness it is: a cancerous growth that must be cut out of educational athletics before it leads to cutting out what is arguably the most educational parts of interscholastic athletics: middle school programs.