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Suspicious Solutions

January 17, 2017

Fifty-two weeks ago yesterday I had hip replacement surgery on my right side. My recovery was so speedy that most people outside the offices of the Michigan High School Athletic Association never noticed, and I was back to my normal activities and workouts very quickly.

But gradually during late summer and then dramatically in early November, my body reacted. It has been giving me pain from hip to foot on my left side, a limp I can’t disguise, and a metaphor for this message.

It appears that correcting one thing adversely affected another thing; and the second problem is much more painful than the first one was.

So-called solutions often have unintended consequences, worse than the original problem. For example:

  • Every expansion of the MHSAA Football Playoffs has had an effect opposite of what was intended. Each has added additional stress on local scheduling and league affiliations; and each expansion has increased the likelihood of repeat champions.

  • Seeding MHSAA Basketball Tournaments, seen by some people as a solution so that the best teams will square off later in the tournament trail, will have those same consequences – stress on scheduling and leagues, and more repeat champions.

  • Relaxing requirements for cooperative programs once seemed like a good thing, but now it is more frequent that schools take the easy route – sending their students off to play on another school’s team – rather than doing the hard thing – providing and promoting the sport themselves. The former provides far fewer participation opportunities than the latter – the opposite of the intended purpose for cooperative programs.

  • Charter schools and School of Choice policies were supposed to force schools to improve through competition, but this “solution” devastated neighborhood schools. These policies didn’t “empower” parents, they created estrangement between schools and communities.

I could go on. The point is, my limp is a reminder to be on the lookout for the new problems inherent in so-called solutions.

Seal of Approval

February 12, 2016

“Sanction” is an interesting word. Sometimes it is used in a negative way, as in penalties, like the U.S. trade embargoes recently lifted on Iran and Cuba. Other times, to sanction something is to endorse it or at least approve its existence.

It is in this second, more positive sense that school sports uses the word “sanction” with respect to athletic events. And with respect to interstate meets and contests, the MHSAA adheres to the Sanctioning Bylaws of the national organization to which it belongs, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).

Without getting into the policies and procedures, here is what the NFHS says about the philosophy of sanctioning interstate athletic events:

Interscholastic programs should serve educational goals. To this end, schools have an obligation to conduct certain threshold inquiries about events in which their students may participate. On occasion, additional inquiries and oversight may be appropriate at the conference, district, state or national levels. In order to perform their “inquiry and oversight” functions fairly and efficiently, decision-makers at various levels have developed sanctioning procedures. The specific purposes served by event-sanctioning procedures include the following:

1) Sanctioning enhances the likelihood that events will adhere to sound and detailed criteria which meet the specific requirements of a school or a group of schools based upon experience and tradition.

2) Sanctioning serves to promote sound regulation of the conditions under which students and teams may compete.

3) Sanctioning is a means of encouraging well-managed competition.

4) Sanctioning adds an element of “due diligence” that encourages compliance with state association rules and regulations.

5) Sanctioning protects the welfare of student-athletes.

6) Sanctioning protects the existing programs sponsored by member schools and thereby promotes the opportunity for larger numbers of student-athletes to gain the benefits of interscholastic competition.

7) Sanctioning helps reduce the abuses of excessive competition.

8) Sanctioning promotes uniformity in obtaining approval for events.

9) Sanctioning helps protect students from exploitation.

Interstate event sanctioning at the NFHS level promotes financial transparency and equivalency of treatment of participating high schools. NFHS sanctioning forms are available on the NFHS website (www.nfhs.org).