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Second Half Starts Your Football Drive

August 31, 2014

By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor

Just like that, the first weekend of MHSAA football season 2014 is in the books.

But we've got three more months of exciting stories to follow as September kicks off Monday.

Here's a brief breakdown of regular features to come this season on Second Half:

  • A Game for Every Fan: Weekly looks each Friday at the best games to be played in every corner of the state.


  • Drive for Detroit: Weekly reviews each Tuesday at the most significant results from the weekend across both peninsulas.


  • Be the Referee: Weekly series from our director of officiating, Mark Uyl, that will include a number of football topics during the fall.

  • This Week on MHSAA.TV: We'll fill you in on all the games available on-demand on MHSAA.TV from the week before and let you know which coming up can be watched live on a subscription basis.

  • Inside Selection Sunday: Our annual explanation of how playoff pairings are chosen and some of our toughest decisions when building brackets in October.


  • Live from the Finals: We'll cover all nine MHSAA Finals, beginning with the 8-Player championship game and through two days of 11-player title contests during Thanksgiving weekend.


  • Records Report: Each week we'll fill you in on our latest additions to the MHSAA record books, including for football, which has our largest set of listings.


  • All the scores, schedules and standings: Keep an eye on "Scores & Schedules" on MHSAA.com for scores every weekend as we receive them, and visit your favorite team's page for all results from this fall plus league standings, the rest of the schedule to come and playoff point averages.

Kicking Bad Habits

May 4, 2018

Forty years ago, as a youngster on a venerable staff at the national office of the National Federation of State High School Associations, where the playing rules for high school football were published, I would entertain my colleagues with a quixotic proposal – year after year – to eliminate the kickoff from football.

As a college player, I got my first playing time as a member of the kickoff team. I knew it was because the coaches didn’t want to risk injury to better players.

As a high school coach, when I conducted preseason scrimmages, I always insisted that kickoffs not occur because I didn’t want to risk season-ending injuries before the season even began.

So, as the world of football from youth levels to the pros is eliminating kickoffs or altering rules to reduce their frequency, I write smugly, “What took you so long?”

Rules committees on every level for every sport have an obligation to examine the data for their sports closely and determine precisely the circumstances that cause the most injuries. And then they must create and enforce rules that will eliminate or greatly modify that most injurious situation.

If the data tells us now what my gut told me as a young coach and administrator, we should give kickoffs the boot.