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Football Practice Proposals

June 11, 2013

During 2013, a Football Task Force has been working on revisions to practice policies that might simultaneously improve acclimatization of players and reduce head trauma. Over three meetings, the following four-part recommendation has been developed:

  1. During the first week of practice of the season, only helmets are allowed the first two days, only shoulder pads may be added on the third and fourth days, and full pads may not be worn until the fifth day of team practice.
  2. Before the first regular-season game, schools may not schedule more than one “collision” practice in a day.
    • A “collision” practice is one in which there is live, game-speed, player-vs.-player contact in pads (not walk-throughs).
    • During any additional practice sessions that day, players may wear helmets and other pads (neither is mandatory). Blocking and tackling technique may be taught and practiced. However, contact is limited to players vs. pads, shields, sleds or dummies.
  3. After the first regular-season game, teams may conduct no more than two collision practice days in any week, Monday through Sunday. During other days of practice, players may wear helmets and other protective pads (neither is mandatory). Blocking and tackling technique may be taught and practiced.  However, contact is limited to players vs. pads, shields, sleds or dummies.
  4. No single practice may exceed three hours, and the total practice time for days with multiple practice sessions may not exceed five hours.
    • Warm-up, stretching, speed and agility drills and cool down are all considered part of practice. Neither strength/weight training activities nor classroom sessions are considered practice for the purposes of the three- or five-hour limits.

MHSAA staff will be taking this recommendation on the road from now through October to obtain constituent understanding and feedback. It is the intent of the Task Force to finalize its consensus regarding these matters by late November so they may be reviewed by the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association, the MHSAA Football Committee and at the MHSAA League Leadership meeting prior to Representative Council action in March 2014.

Our End of the Pool

June 26, 2012

The six-year veteran CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, told Fortune magazine’s Geoff Colvin in a June feature, “Courage in leadership is very difficult, especially in today’s world, where the media doesn’t take time to really understand you.”

We can relate to this in our work in school sports, as very many veteran sports journalists and broadcasters have retired or been downsized, replaced by staff who are fewer in number and relationships and weaker in institutional knowledge and professionalism.

Whenever I read, watch or hear news accounts concerning topics that involve our work and about which I know a lot, I can see how incomplete and inaccurate the reporting is.  This has always been true, but now is much more obvious; and this has made me even more skeptical when I read through other topics about which I know less.  How much of this is opinion, not fact?  What facts are incompletely presented?  What “facts” are just plain wrong?

In this environment, it’s risky for leaders to step out with new initiatives; and it’s even riskier to defend the status quo, for the establishment is routinely presumed to be wrong by media who now often lack subject-matter depth and historical perspective.

Still, it remains the leader’s role, according to Jim Collins in Great by Choice, to not just predict the future, but to go out and create it anyway – in spite of criticism by media who have little experience swimming in our subject matter and who are merely wading into the shallow end of our deep pool.  Sometimes creating the future means doing something new and different; but just as often – perhaps even more so – it means defending something whose existence helps to maintain the very essence of educational athletics.