Tournament Divisions
May 26, 2017
The spring 2017 issue of benchmarks published by the Michigan High School Athletic Association examines tournament classification in this state and around the country [Click for this issue]. Editor Rob Kaminski anticipated this would be a breaking story in Michigan.
In late March, the MHSAA Representative Council approved a second 16-team playoff for Class D schools in 8-player football, starting this fall – 2017.
Then in early May the Council approved the move from four traditional classes (A, B, C, D) to four equal divisions (1, 2, 3, 4) in boys and girls basketball and girls volleyball, effective with the 2018-19 school year.
The growth in 8-player football schools (from 24 in 2011 to 60 today) predicated the football change, while an 18 percent decline in the Class D enrollment cap over the past decade (248 in 2007-08 to 203 in 2017-18) was making the change to equal divisions in basketball and volleyball more sensible each year.
The objection of smaller schools to the equal divisions format in these sports has diminished over time as the Class D enrollment range has shrunk. If the change to equal divisions had occurred for 2017-18, the change would be from a Class D maximum of 203 students to a Division 4 maximum of 216 in girls volleyball, 212 in girls basketball and just 208 in boys basketball.
News Unfiltered
July 12, 2017
During the first summer after my college graduation, I was the campaign advance man outside of the Milwaukee and Madison areas for a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Wisconsin. A great job.
Sometime during that summer, I met the head of the campaign in a café. He was reading a newspaper as I arrived; and as I sat down at the table, I asked him what he was reading. I’ll always remember his response. He said, “I’m looking for what could go wrong today?”
It was the campaign manager’s job to think about worst-case scenarios and consider how the campaign might get taken off message by the news of the day.
I was young and impressionable, and I soon began to consume the daily news through the same filter.
It was not difficult to do so in the 1970s. The daily newspaper was printed and delivered to my door every day. Television had just three networks, and each provided brief news reports two or three times a day.
Today, what passes as news comes from hundreds or thousands or millions of sources and it is changing constantly, 24/7/365. Only a small portion of those sources is professionally operated with accountability for the substance and/or style of the so-called reporting.
Today it drives me nuts to consume news – that is, to really think about what I’m reading or hearing the way I did in the 1970s. Today, meaningful matters often get buried in trivia while the most inane and inaccurate stories and comments can go viral overnight.
I’ve always said you can get too much of a good thing – too much food; too much free time; and certainly, too much sports. And clearly, we have too much “news” about sports.