Students of Rules
November 12, 2013
Those who make rules ought to be students of rules. We mean this in at least the two ways this posting and the next will address.
First, rule makers should know the essence of the existing body of rules which they will be responsible for upholding or modifying during the necessary ongoing review of those rules. These rule makers should have a general awareness of when and why each rule was first adopted, how it might have evolved, how it is now applied and what the major compliance problems have been in the past or may be in the future.
This first requirement is as important for those who prepare the rules for the contests – the playing rules – as for those who promulgate the rules that establish the minimum eligibility standards and the maximum limits for competition. In the face of any proposal to eliminate or greatly modify any rule, rule makers must ask what problems may return if they remove the rule that solved those problems.
Dov Seidman writes in how: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything: “Rules, of course, don’t come out of thin air. Legislatures and organizations adopt them usually to proscribe unwanted behaviors but typically in reaction to events. They lower speed limits after automobile accidents become too frequent, regulate pit bulls after a series of dog bites, or institute new expense-tracking procedures after someone is caught trying to get reimbursed for their new iPod. Rules have been established for a reason, but most people are out of touch with the rationale and spirit of why. They don’t read legislative histories and so have a thin, superficial relationship to the rules . . .”
That is not acceptable for those who write, review and revise rules. They have to know where each rule has come from. This is why for the rule makers and for those in our member schools responsible for applying the rules day in and day out, the MHSAA keeps current “The The History, Rationale and Application of the Essential Eligibility Regulations High School Athletics in Michigan."
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.