Sold Out
December 13, 2016
We are sometimes criticized for limiting the scope of school sports – for restricting long-distance travel and prohibiting national tournaments; but there is no question that we are doing the correct thing by protecting school sports from the excesses and abuses that characterize major college sports.
Across the spectrum of intercollegiate athletics, but especially in Division I football and basketball, there exists an insatiable “keep-up-with-the-Joneses” appetite.
Universities are building increasingly extravagant facilities. They are sending their “students” into increasingly expansive scheduling. But it’s never enough.
There is always another university somewhere building a bigger stadium, a fancier press box or more palatial dressing rooms, practice facilities and coaches quarters.
So-called “students” are sent across the US and beyond to play on any day at any time in order to generate revenue to keep feeding the beast.
The Big Ten knows it’s wrong, admits it, but schedules football games on Friday nights to attract larger rights fees from television.
Feeling used or abused, some of the athletes of Northwestern and then at the University of Wisconsin, talk of creating a union to protect themselves from the obvious, rampant exploitation.
And then occasionally, some college coaches dare to suggest that high schools are wrong to have regulations that reject the road that colleges have traveled, a road that has distanced athletics very far from academics in intercollegiate sports.
The intercollegiate model is not and must not be the interscholastic model. We who are sold out for educational athletics have nothing good to learn from those who have sold out for broadcast revenue.
11-Player Football Semis Sites UPDATED
November 16, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Sites and game times have been announced for the MHSAA Football 11-player Semifinals.
Friday's 8-player Final will kick off at 7 p.m. Friday at Greenville High School, with Cedarville and Lawrence both making their first 8-player championship game appearances.
Below are sites for the 11-player games; all are 1 p.m. Saturday unless noted, with Wednesday updates in bold (click for all previous results, team records and playoff points from this fall):
DIVISION 1
East Kentwood vs. Clarkston at Brighton High School
Saline vs. Detroit Cass Tech at Troy Athens High School
DIVISION 2
Muskegon Mona Shores vs. Farmington Hills Harrison at Howell High School
Southfield vs. Warren DeLaSalle at Novi High School
DIVISION 3
Muskegon vs. Zeeland West at Greenville High School
Orchard Lake St. Mary's vs. New Boston Huron at Dearborn High School
DIVISION 4
Grand Rapids South Christian vs. Edwardsburg at Jackson High School, 3 p.m.
Lansing Sexton vs. Detroit Country Day at Fenton High School
DIVISION 5
Menominee vs. Grand Rapids West Catholic at Northern Michigan University Superior Dome, 11 a.m.
Lansing Catholic vs. Almont at Ortonville-Brandon
DIVISION 6
Boyne City vs. Ithaca at Midland Community Stadium, 2 p.m.
Grand Rapids NorthPointe Christian vs. Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central at Battle Creek Harper Creek High School
DIVISION 7
Ishpeming vs. Saginaw Michigan Lutheran Seminary at the Superior Dome, 2 p.m.
Pewamo-Westphalia vs. Detroit Loyola at Jackson High School, 11 a.m.
DIVISION 8
Munising vs. Beal City at the Superior Dome, 7 p.m. Friday
Muskegon Catholic Central vs. Harbor Beach at Alma College
PHOTO: Detroit Cass Tech defeated Clinton Township Chippewa Valley on Saturday to return to the Semifinals. (Photo courtesy of the Detroit Public School League.)