An Unsustainable Trend
February 10, 2015
Decades ago there was much criticism from college and university physical education departments that schools were sacrificing broad-based programs of intramurals and recreation for higher-profile programs of interscholastic sports teams.
Today, broad-based intramural/recreational programs have all but vanished from schools; and the criticism now is that elite community club and travel teams threaten the broad and deep interscholastic athletic program schools have been providing students.
In my lifetime, I’ve seen the image of school sports go from elitist to egalitarian. From a few sports teams for boys in the 1950s, to teams on multiple levels in many sports for both boys and girls today.
Over the same period when the public profile of school sports has been diminished by many societal trends but especially the ascendancy of major college and professional sports riding the proliferation of television sets and rising profits from sports broadcasts, the breadth and depth of school sports was busy expanding the circle for which it provides opportunities to play.
The irony is that in this time of school sports’ greatest inclusion, school sports is on its weakest financial footing. When it is doing the most, school sports is being supported the least.
It’s an indefensible, unsustainable trend that must be addressed by those who control the purse strings of state government and local school districts.
Boring Impartiality
January 6, 2017
Some people – like our U.S. President-Elect and, apparently, like the NCAA Division I Football Playoff Selection Committee – seem to believe that all publicity, no matter how negative, is good publicity. If it draws attention to your candidacy or championships series, no matter how embarrassing, it’s okay – even good.
That’s not the belief of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. As an organization that must too often do unpopular things, like enforce rules that others don’t and impose penalties that others won’t, the MHSAA prefers to avoid creating controversy where there are options to do so.
The structure of MHSAA tournaments provides some options.
Tournaments which exclude no teams or individuals provoke less controversy than those with a limited field. Tournaments which favor no teams through a seeding scheme cause fewer arguments.
If our only purpose were to increase revenues, there is much we could do to gerrymander MHSAA tournaments in order to shorten, smooth out and straighten the tournament trail for the teams with the best records and biggest crowds during the regular season, like the NCAA women’s and NIT men’s basketball tournaments do.
But if fairness – blind, boring impartiality – is more important to us, then we will not force the teams with the poorest regular season records to face off in bracket rat-tails and we will not provide the teams with the best regular season records a tournament trail that avoids similar teams for as long as possible.
This approach opens us to criticism that we are dumb to be different and stupid to reject the revenue-generating practices of major college and professional sports organizations. But no one can claim we are unfair.
It’s not unfair to treat all schools the same. The unfairness begins – and real controversy follows – when an organization tries to favor some teams over others.