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We’ve Got This Right

March 1, 2013

This year's Super Bowl was an occasion for an unusual amount of commentary on the state of football safety, especially concussions.

One group called on state high school associations and football coaches associations to eliminate contact outside the defined interscholastic season.  That would mean spring football practice, and during summer leagues and camps, and at all-star games.

Michigan is one of a large majority of states where schools do not allow spring football practice.  Michigan is one of a minority of states where schools do not allow contact at summer camps, for which we are often criticized by out-of-state camp promoters.  And Michigan is one of a smaller minority of states where schools prohibit students, coaches, officials and administrators from being involved in all-star games involving undergraduates.

While we are well ahead of the curve on out-of-season contact policies, we are in the mainstream of state high school associations studying what the appropriate limits should be on contact during early season football practice and throughout the remainder of the season.  We have a task force that appears headed toward recommending that the Representative Council prescribe only one contact session per day during early season practice and only two contact practices per week after games begin.

There will be other ideas percolating and then simmering with these before any are proposed to the MHSAA Football Committee and Representative Council.

Fracking in School Sports

May 1, 2015

First there were rumors, then there were reports, and now there are beginning to be results from geological surveys warning that the process of fracking in oil and gas exploration and deep ground extraction is increasing the frequency of earthquakes in several parts of the United States.

I want to say, “Duh! How could it not?” Why would it surprise any rational human being that the delicate blue marble we inhabit would not get off kilter when we bore deep into the surface with drills and explosive charges and then pump water at high pressure into the tunnels we create and the crevices we exploit? When I put that picture in my mind, I shudder.

Often I picture the world of school sports like this marble we inhabit. Sometimes I see exploiters drilling deep into our core, dropping explosives, applying pressure, and extracting what they believe are valuable resources while laying waste to everything else, including very much that is very precious to very many other people – in fact, to most athletes, coaches, administrators, officials, parents and spectators.

We should pay attention to the times when we feel our foundation shaking, even just a little. We should make it difficult for the exploiters to extract our elite, especially when they disregard and lay waste to everything else that holds our world – educational athletics – together.