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New Football Practice Policies

March 25, 2014

Last Friday, the MHSAA Representative Council adopted the proposals of the Football Task Force revising practice policies that take effect this fall, helping Michigan schools keep pace with an advancing standard of care – a standard that is reducing head-to-head contact in football practice on every level and in every league.

Michigan’s Football Task Force proposal – the result of four meetings during 2013 and much research and work between them – reduces collision practices to one a day before the first game and to two per week after the first game.

A collision practice is one in which there is live, game-speed, player-vs-player contact in pads (not walk-throughs) involving any number of players. This includes practices with scrimmages, drills and simulation where action is live, game-speed, player-vs-player.

A non-collision practice may include players in protective gear. Blocking and tackling technique may be taught and practiced. However, full-speed contact is limited to players versus pads, shields, sleds or dummies.

The new policies also increase the acclimatization period at the start of fall practice from three days to four days – helmets only permitted on the first two days, helmets and shoulder pads only on the third and fourth days.

Click this link for the Complete policy and FAQs.

Centennial Celebration

October 20, 2017

The National Federation of State High School Associations is preparing to celebrate its 100th year of service during the 2018-19 school year. It may be unfair to boil down to a few bullet points a century of contributions to school sports, but I make the attempt here – with the credentials that there has been a John E. Roberts heading up a National Federation member state organization for more than 60 of those years (my dad in Wisconsin for nearly 30 years, followed by my more than 31 years in Michigan).

Here, in my opinion, are the four greatest gifts of the National Federation to school sports in America:

  • In the late 1920s and 1930s, the National Federation’s leadership influenced the end of national high school tournaments. First four, then a dozen and then two dozen very young state high school associations, through their even younger National Federation, successfully challenged prestigious universities (like the University of Chicago) and the biggest names in college sports (like Amos Alonzo Stagg) who conducted national high school tournaments.

  • During the next decades, and one sport at a time, the National Federation assumed from the colleges and non-school organizations responsibility for writing the playing rules for high school level competition, intentionally crafting rules that promoted greater participant safety and much more ease of understanding and enforcement by contest officials. The National Federation now releases about 40 publications each year, serving 16 different sports.

  • At the start of the new millennium, the National Federation began its march to emerge as the nation’s most prolific provider of online education for coaches. The National Federation now has more than 50 different online courses available, including more than 20 free courses; and approximately five million courses have been delivered.

  • In 2013, the NFHS Network was launched to provide a digital broadcast home for state high school association tournaments and the School Broadcast Program. With more than 3,000 events produced each month now, this is the most effective platform in National Federation history for promoting the excitement, diversity and values of school-sponsored sports.