That football is a more popular spectator sport than gardening has many obvious explanations.  One of the less obvious but more compelling reasons may be discovered in this quote from Michael Pollan’s Second Nature – A Gardener’s Education:  “You cannot discern in the bloom of a rose the work of the plant.”

When we gaze upon garden flowers and admire the beauty of the blossoms, we don’t see what made them bloom – like the sacrifice of the leaves or the stink of the manure in which the plant is rooted, to cite Pollan.  Nor do we see the muscle of the gardener, the mix of the soil or the miracle of photosynthesis.

But when we watch a touchdown-scoring play, at least with the benefit of several television replays and expert commentary, we will see the otherwise hidden hard work of the offensive line and the sacrificing blocks and fakes of backs and receivers that helped the play to succeed.

Generally, but certainly with limits (making sausage may be an exception), our pleasure in most things grows with our understanding of the process that went into its making.  Whether that’s less or more true of mechanical, musical and visual arts than of sports is not the point here.  What is the point is that appreciation and support of high school sports are likely to increase as we provide explanations of what we’re doing – both what and why.  And both appreciation and support are more likely to increase as we expand participation . . . participation in the contests, participation in the planning and participation in the decision-making.

Students who participate in school sports today are more likely than other students to become adults who support our programs later, because they understand what’s involved, both the hard work and positive outcomes.

And adults who participate in the planning of school sports today are more likely than others to support the decisions made later, because they better appreciate the reasons behind the decisions.

In addition to topics previously discussed in this space, some of the other topics for which we have invited broad discussion this year include:

• Frequency of academic checks for athletic eligibility.
• Limited team membership rules (to what extent students may participate simultaneously in non-school competition during the school season of a sport).
• The time, length and conditions of the preseason “down time” for coaches and athletes.
• The optimum overlap of boys and girls basketball seasons in the winter, and the best starting and ending dates for spring sports.

 We’ll frame these issues and others in future blogs to facilitate your participation in the discussions and decisions.