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Second Half by MHSAA

We Get It

November 4, 2011

Participation in high school sports, both nationally and in Michigan, increased in 2010-11 versus the year before.  It was the 22nd consecutive year of increases nationally, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.

The National Federation also conducted a first-of-its-kind attendance survey that tells us in 2009-10 that there were more than a half billion spectators at high school sporting events across the country.  There were more than two and a half times as many fans attending high school basketball and football contests as attended college and professional contests combined in those sports.

We should be excited about our programs and encouraged by their historical popularity and continuing growth.  But clearly, we are not.  In fact, we are a discouraged bunch.

We are discouraged because, behind the good numbers that are reported, we see serious erosion – a subtle “slip-sliding away” of the principles and the popularity of school-based sports.  In spite of the good numbers, we sense that all is not well in educational athletics.

In many places athletic directors are losing their full-time dedicated positions, which are essential to oversee a program of high participation, large crowds, great emotion and some risk of injury.  In many places students are losing participation opportunities, which are essential components of a complete education necessary to prepare young people for the increasingly complicated and competitive world which they are about to enter.

We get it at the MHSAA.  We know what’s happening.  Not only do we get it, we also get the hundreds of calls from coaches who don’t have an athletic director available to answer their questions.  And we get the hundreds and hundreds of calls from parents and others who can find neither a coach nor an athletic director available to address their concerns or answer their questions.  Almost every time a school district dials down its oversight of the interscholastic athletic program, its constituents dial up the MHSAA to answer their questions and address their concerns.

Less money for and less oversight of school sports is a combination tailor-made for problems – for ineligible students and forfeits, for crowd control and sportsmanship problems, and for injuries; and in all cases, for the controversies that follow.  There are smarter places to make cuts in our schools and still turn out smart kids.
 

Eight-Player Options

March 10, 2017

Put this in the category of “No good deed goes unpunished.”

In 2011, the MHSAA provided an additional playoff for Class D schools sponsoring 8-player football. This helped save football in some schools and helped return the game of football to other schools. But now that the number of 8-player programs has expanded from two dozen in 2011 to more than 60, there are complaints:

  • Some complaints come out of a sense of entitlement that all final games in both the 8-player and 11-player tournament deserve to be played at Ford Field.

  • Some complaints come from Class C schools whose enrollments are too large for the 8-player tournament. Class C schools which sponsor the 8-player game have no tournament at all in which to play, regardless of where the finals might be held.

  • Some complaints come from Class D schools which protest any suggestion that Class C schools – even the smallest – be allowed to play in the 8-player tournament.

There are now three scenarios emerging as the most likely future for 8-player football:

  • The original plan ... A five-week, 32-team tournament for Class D schools only, with the finals at a site to be determined, but probably not Ford Field.

  • Alternative #1 ... Reduce the 11-player tournament to seven divisions and make Division 8 the 8-player tournament with 32 Class D teams in a five-week tournament, ending at Ford Field.

  • Alternative #2 ... Conduct the 8-player tournament in two divisions of 16 Class D teams, competing in a four-week playoff ending in a double-header at the Superior Dome on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

The pros and cons of these options are being widely discussed. Sometimes the discussions have a tone that is critical of the MHSAA, which comes from those who forget that it was the MHSAA itself which moved in 2011 to protect and promote football by adding the 8-player playoff tournament option for its smallest member schools. That Class D schools now feel entitled to the Ford Field opportunity and Class C schools want access to an 8-player tournament is not unexpected; but criticism of the MHSAA’s efforts is not deserved.