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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.

No Easy Fix

February 13, 2015

“If we don’t fix this problem, even our friends and allies may turn against us.”
That was the dire warning one of the MHSAA staff members gave to the rest of us at a weekly staff meeting recently, during which this staff member was receiving emails from people appalled over the mid-season transfer of a basketball player from one school to another.
The “fix” that some people want is a rule that makes every transfer student ineligible for a full year, regardless of the reason for the change of schools or the circumstances of the student. Of course, that rule would never survive judicial scrutiny, and legislators in every corner of the state would be advocating change for the sake of one child or another.
A more moderate remedy is to utilize a rule that applies the full-year period of ineligibility to those students whose circumstances do not fit one of the already established 15 exceptions that make a student eligible without delay following a transfer. That half-measure would not stop many transfers that would still frustrate people, and it would snag many transfers that would continue to anger people.
The rules we already have in place are tools for schools to use to stop many of the transfers that frustrate without snaring those transfers that anger: the athletic-motivated transfer rule and especially the athletic-related transfer rule (or links law).
Before our friends and allies turn their backs on us, they need to turn in the transfer situations where the rules already apply, and the undue influence (recruiting) they can document. They need to give the system a chance to work to the full extent of its potential. We should not make tougher rules if schools fail to utilize the rules they already have.
Adopting rules is usually easy for the organization. Applying rules is often much harder for the schools.