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.
Our Own Worst Enemies
September 26, 2017
The early history of school sports was in four phases. It began as activities that students alone would organize. Then schools saw the need to supervise. Then schools created statewide high school athletic associations to standardize. Then a national federation of those state associations brought an end to corporate and college efforts to nationalize school sports. All of this between the U.S. Civil War and World War II.
The entire history of school sports has had one overriding narrative. Inherent in the struggles that defined each phase of the early history, and every decade since, has been the struggle between those who believe competitive athletics is an asset for schools intent on educating students in body, mind and spirit, versus those who believe interscholastic athletic programs are a distraction at best and, at worst, damaging to the character development of students. There is much evidence to support both sides of this long debate.
Sometimes, the advocates for school-sponsored sports have been, and are, their own worst enemies. What the advocates of school sports must realize is that the more they do to enlarge the scope of school sports ... more games, longer seasons, further travel, escalating hype ... the more they prove that the opponents of school sports have been correct.
As they encourage the chasm between athletics and academics and between school sports' haves and have-nots to widen; as sports teams are outfitted in uniforms that are fancier and funded for travel that is further, while classroom resources are fewer; as sportsmanship declines and athletic transfers increase; the so-called “progressive” thinkers help make the case that competitive athletics is bad for students, schools and society.
Opposition to escalation in school sports is not old fashioned; it's the only way to assure the future of sports in schools ... the only way to save school sports from itself.