Spitting in the Ocean
February 27, 2015
I laughed out loud when I read recently that the municipal government in Beijing, China was blaming outdoor grilling for the city’s increasingly dense smog and was banning cooking over outdoor fires.
Here is the earth’s most prolific polluter – China, and its state-run, Hell-bent-on-growth economy – telling the nice people of its capital city to stop spitting in the ocean of poison the Chinese government itself has created and still promotes.
The National Football League – whose GDP may be growing as rapidly as China’s – has acted in similar ways. Facing epidemic criticism for its handling of current and former players’ head injuries, the NFL pointed at youth football. Facing criticism for the brutality of its players toward women, the NFL prepared programs for adolescents and teens. It seems the fault is always someplace other than the NFL juggernaut.
But most times that I laugh at or criticize the blind eyes or bad faith of others, I pause to consider if we might sometimes act in similar ways. Might we be asking others to stop doing harm where we ourselves are doing more harm?
An extreme example could be that we criticize people for losing their minds at events when it is the MHSAA itself that sponsors and conducts the events of highest profile and importance ... although I will always argue that the most important events of educational athletics are the first ones – the first practices and games that introduce 7th, 8th and 9th graders to school-sponsored sports and shape their attitudes for years to come.
In any event, when any of us sees others act in ways we think are ridiculous, it would be good for all of us to then think about the ways we look ridiculous to others. And then consider if there are ways to change those perceptions.
Striking A Balance
January 23, 2018
This past fall, the feature topic of the seven Update Meetings of the Michigan High School Athletic Association was the Transfer Rule ... its history, rationale and reasons why it should and shouldn’t be altered to counter the transfer epidemic that school of choice laws and the youth sports travel team culture have infected upon school-sponsored sports in this and other states.
The Update Meeting presentation included cautions that, while the vast majority of school administrators and coaches want a tougher and tighter transfer rule with longer periods of ineligibility and fewer exceptions that permit immediate eligibility, many people outside of school sports believe such changes would infringe upon their individual choices; and even some people involved in school sports at the local level lose interest in supporting the rules already in place when they are applied to their own situation.
The Update Meeting concerns have been legitimized during more recent months in both high and low profile situations.
There are suggestions that the MHSAA should have an investigations department to search for and penalize athletic-oriented transfers and unscrupulous acts by coaches, parents and others. Which is a foolish notion. The MHSAA does not have subpoena power, can’t perform wiretaps, and cannot devote the personnel and other resources that an investigations department would require. Even with hundreds of millions of dollars in resources, the NCAA has not been able to execute that function for intercollegiate sports, and recently the FBI stepped in to do the difficult work.
As has been its long-standing and generally effective practice, the MHSAA relies heavily on its member schools to help enforce its rules, which schools agree to do as a condition of their voluntary membership.
At the other extreme are suggestions to do away altogether with transfer eligibility rules. Let anything and everything go. Which is what we call the AAU, an incompatible approach to student-centered, school-sponsored sports.
Striking a balance is a difficult, but worthwhile endeavor. To that end, the MHSAA Representative Council works tirelessly on behalf of member schools to establish the proper set of rules to create competitive equity.