Why Not National Events?
October 7, 2016
The constituent groups of the National Federation of State High School Associations are engaged in a deliberate discussion of the merits of conducting national high school sports championships. The topic has been raised and rejected by the National Federation membership multiple times over many years.
Support for such events is infrequently merit-based and more often found where political pressures have assaulted policies that have prohibited schools from participation in national tournaments by school teams and students representing schools. Opposition is based in both philosophical and practical concerns.
Proponents of national tournaments say such events will provide a platform to promote education-based athletic programs, but what we would often see – teams full of transfer students missing a lot of school – would undermine any positive promotional message. We would be saying one thing but doing another.
While more promotion of what we believe in might be nice, opponents believe national tournaments would worsen everyday problems and especially the most unsavory problems of school sports, namely undue influence and athletic-related transfers.
Opponents see national events as symptomatic of the "select the best and forget the rest" virus that is infecting much of youth sports that is neither school-sponsored nor student-centered. They see national events as causing school sports to move from ally to adversary of schools' educational mission. They see more loss of classroom instructional time, more travel, more costs and more local fundraising that saps community resources. They see the rich getting richer ... more for a few "haves" and less for most others, and nothing for the "have nots."
With each state having made its own decisions regarding when sports seasons will occur, many opponents wonder how any national tournament can serve the wide variety of seasons in place. Some sports that occur in the fall in one state are conducted in the winter or spring in other states. Even when sports occur in the same season in two states, the seasons may start and end two, three or four weeks differently. Do we really want our programs to place even more pressure on kids and coaches to specialize in a single sport year-around?
With each state having made its own decisions regarding the maximum number of contests, who is going decide what the national rule will be? Will it be the 18 games of one state or the 36 games of another? With each state having made its own decisions regarding age rules and transfer rules and out-of-season coaching rules, who is going to make and enforce these and all the other rules that must apply to all to assure the competition is fair?
And with four Michigan High School Athletic Association champions in most sports, which do we choose to represent our state? Do we really need to demean the champions of three classifications or divisions by advancing the fourth? Do we want our state finals to be the qualification for another level, or the ultimate experience for MHSAA member schools and students?
Yogi
October 27, 2015
We lost a treasure when Yogi Berra died last month at the age of 90.
I hope a lot of people attended his funeral. After all, it was Yogi who said, “Always go to other peoples’ funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.”
Yogi had an intriguing mind for math. It was he who told us to “Pair up in threes.” He informed us that “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.” He said, “Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical.” And, “You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.”
Yogi was a sage observer of everyday life. In fact, he told us “You can observe a lot just by watching.” He observed that “No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.” And, “It gets late early.”
Of course, Yogi ought to have known a lot about baseball, a sport in which he excelled and enjoyed unprecedented and unduplicated success as catcher for 10 World Series championship teams. He was an 18-time All-Star; but with characteristic humility, Yogi confessed, “In baseball, you don’t know nothing.”
While wise about many things, Yogi wasn’t correct about everything. When he said, “It ain’t over til it’s over,” he was wrong. It ain’t ever going to be over for Yogi.
And yet, without Yogi, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”