Time for Tough Topics
February 28, 2014
The daily deluge of calls and emails about issues that matter that day tempt us to take our eye off other issues that matter today, tomorrow and for many years. Good service requires that we respond promptly and pleasantly to the daily details, but good leadership requires that we give adequate attention to matters more fundamental to the mission of school-sponsored sports, and more critical to the future of educational athletics.
No matter how many times we’re contacted about today’s programs and problems, we must create our own time to dive deeply into the core philosophies and cornerstone policies of voluntary competitive interscholastic athletics.
We have attempted to do this with the “Four Thrusts for Four Years” campaign to address health and safety issues, especially but far from exclusively focusing on increased acclimatization and decreased head-to-head contact in football practices. The practice proposals of the 2013 Football Task Force – developed over a series of meetings by serious people, appear to have widespread support and should receive an affirmative vote by the Representative Council next month.
Similarly, we have appointed a task force to work throughout 2014 on junior high/middle school issues. Theirs is the difficult challenge of locating the sweet spot – the policies that protect the multi-sport experience in a learning environment for our younger students while still providing more competition, and for younger grades, to attract and hold the interest of junior high/middle school students and their parents who are seeking much more competition much earlier in life than the MHSAA’s current policies allow.
Out-of-season contact by high school coaches with their high school students is another of the topics that is often discussed and occasionally studied, and the rules governing out-of-season coaching are frequently tweaked. The result is a mammoth section of the Handbook that is difficult to read and follow, and invites widespread disrespect. MHSAA staff is conducting a series of two-hour sessions to try to reframe the discussion and present to the membership by next fall a new (and briefer) set of rules and interpretations. The goal will be to respect both the guiding principles of educational athletics as well as society’s changes since the current rules were first developed.
That’s the goal for all of this these tough, timeless topics.
Collateral Damage
August 17, 2015
Whenever something unusually crazy happens at the college level that may adversely affect high school athletics, there are calls that the MHSAA do something to stop the stupidity. I can count on these requests whenever a Division I college program offers a scholarship to a pre-teen; and when it happened recently in Michigan, the MHSAA heard more complaints than ever.
What the critics do not appreciate is that the MHSAA has zero authority for NCAA recruiting rules and grant-in-aid policies. If we did, things might be much different. For example:
- There would be no recruitment in any form allowed before a student has completed 11th grade. There would be no offers or promises of scholarships prior to this date.
- Then, there would be no in-person recruitment allowed that does not occur at the student’s school and arranged through that school’s administration.
- When scholarships are offered, they would be for four or five years, irrevocable if the student maintains academic eligibility, whether or not the student plays a single minute.
All the commentary regarding the cesspool of college recruiting is wasted air or ink if it doesn’t focus on those who have the authority to change that environment. It’s the college coaches themselves, the administrators of those intercollegiate programs and the presidents of those institutions. Any corrective measures they suggest to high schools miss the point that they caused their problems and they alone can solve them. We are just collateral damage.