Bowl Games Are Bad
October 6, 2014
A misguided marketing firm is trying again, this time attempting to bribe schools and state high school associations to bend or break their rules. A national media chain is trumpeting the plan to give some legs to its foolish national rankings. So there is some buzz about the plan, but no brains.
At a time when concerns rage for excessive head contact and concussions in football, no responsible party would for a single second think seriously about adding more football practices or games for school-age players.
Well before late December, high school football has ended, and winter sports are well underway with practices and competition that are far more important than several more weeks of practice and another game of football.
How could we ever allow one team to have an extra month more of football practice than all others? How is that fair to all the other football teams?
The answer is that it’s not fair to the football programs of other schools; it’s not fair to the other sports at the school involved; and it’s not healthy for the football players involved.
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.