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Committees Fail Critical Issues

June 7, 2013

Over the years I have become increasingly impatient with the MHSAA’s committee process.  On the one hand, it is a nice exercise in democracy to involve each year more than 500 different people on more than 40 standing committees, including at least one for each MHSAA tournament sport.  However, it’s too often a superficial process that seems indifferent to or incapable of dealing with the most important issues of school sports.

Typically, each sport committee meets once each year for three to five hours, during which time it considers proposals that come from schools, leagues and the state’s coaches association for the sport; and the proposals most often deal with allowing more regular-season events and more qualifiers to the MHSAA postseason tournament.

Occasionally there is a proposal that might improve sportsmanship.  But much more often the proposals would increase conflicts between academics and athletics and/or strain overstressed local budgets.  And almost never is there a proposal that would address the health and safety of participants (the Wrestling Committee has been an occasional exception and the Competitive Cheer Committee is a routine exception).

While coaches associations must shoulder some of the blame because they’ve brought MHSAA committees “trivial” topics, at least in comparison to the tougher health and safety topics, much of the cause of MHSAA committee ineffectiveness is that the committees don’t meet long enough or often enough to research serious problems and develop well-thought-out solutions.  That is forgivable because it is difficult to get commitments from busy people all across Michigan to be absent from their regular jobs and travel dozens or even hundreds of miles, and to do so multiple times each year – which is what it takes to more fully understand complex problems and more carefully construct solutions.  Meetings have to be few and they have to be efficient.

However, facing the worst publicity football has seen since the mid-1970s, we knew we had to supplement the football committee process.  We did so by appointing a special Football Task Force of optimum size and experienced, representative makeup to meet on however many occasions are necessary during 2013 to accomplish three purposes:

  •     Review practice policies to improve acclimatization of players and reduce head trauma.
  •     Review competition rules to reduce head trauma and the frequency of the sport’s most injurious game situations.
  •     Develop promotions that extol the value of football to students, schools and communities and the safety record of school-based football.


The promotional efforts have begun to be rolled out; game rule modifications are being investigated; and four proposals for changing football practice policies have been prepared.  They will be the topic of our next posting.

Watch Regionals Live on MHSAA.tv, FSN

November 11, 2014

By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor 

Regional play in two MHSAA tournaments will be featured this week on MHSAA.tv and FoxSportsDetroit.com with 10 games in volleyball and football.

Volleyball

Regional Semifinal coverage takes place today at two locations (coverage available with subscription):

Class A at Mason
DeWitt v. Ann Arbor Huron, 5 p.m.
Mason v. Portage Central, 7 p.m.

Class C at Morley-Stanwood
Shelby v. Morley-Stanwood, 6 p.m.
Ravenna v. Laingsburg, 8 p.m.

Football

MHSAA.tv also will cover two football playoff games live Saturday in advance of covering 12 Semifinal games on Nov. 22.

Here’s this week’s Regional Final schedule (with subscription):

Capture the moment. Share the excitement. A Day Pass subscription to MHSAA.tv is $9.95. A Month Pass subscription is $14.95, enabling purchasers to watch all of this week’s action plus two more weeks of coverage of the Girls Volleyball Tournament, weekly Football Playoff coverage, and the Preliminaries and Finals of the Lower Peninsula Girls Swimming & Diving Finals. 

All events become available for free on demand viewing three days after the date of the contest.

NEW: Subscribers can clip highlights from on-demand events and share them with friends and fans through Facebook, Twitter or via email. 

Click the box at right to learn how to capture favorite moments and share the excitement.

Prep Zone

It’s the fourth season for the popular PrepZone on FoxSportsDetroit.com, which will provide free live coverage of four football playoff games again Friday:

  • Division 1 – Canton at Saline
  • Division 3 – Lowell at Zeeland West
  • Division 4 – Whitehall v. Grand Rapids South Christian at Byron Center High School
  • Division 8 – Baldwin at Beal City

All games kick off at 7 p.m., with short-term archives available on FoxSportsDetroit.com and long-term archives and DVDs available through MHSAA.tv.

Also, catch highlights of the following games on Football Friday Overtime at midnight Friday and again at 7 a.m. Saturday and Sunday on Fox Sports Detroit:

  • Flint Powers at Lansing Catholic
  • Redford Thurston at New Boston Huron
  • Detroit Country Day at Chelsea
  • PLUS – Prep Zone Games

MHSAA Highlights: This week's package includes five highlights from MHSAA postseason events that took place from Nov. 1-8 including the Cross Country and Boys Soccer Finals and Volleyball and Football Districts.

PHOTO: St. Louis sets up at the net on the way to winning its Class C District last week. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)