A 7’ Tall Tuba Player
October 11, 2016
In countless school and community gatherings all across Michigan, and in more printed pieces than I can remember, I have advocated for students to attempt to sample all of the diverse activities that a comprehensive high school has to offer ... both athletic and non-athletic activities. It is this variety that highlighted my own school experience and enriched that of my two sons.
Because of my outspoken advocacy for speech and debate and music and drama, I have been asked why I do not advocate that the Michigan High School Athletic Association serve and support those activities in the way it does sports.
The first and foremost reason is that those school programs are already well served by existing organizations in Michigan. But more fundamentally, I resist expansion of MHSAA authority to those activities because it would undermine the essential eligibility rules we must have for competitive athletic programs. I have seen this pressure in other states, but sports has regulatory needs that speech and debate and music and drama do not.
While the profile of some of these programs in some of our member schools is as high as any sports program in those schools, the competitive pressures are still different. No one is recruiting tuba players from one school to another. Debaters are not often subject to undue influence. Meanwhile, sports programs are under intense pressures that lead to athletic-motivated and athletic-related transfers, undue influence and other unsavory behaviors.
As I recently explained this rationale to my colleagues in neighboring states, all but one of which is an athletics-only organization like the MHSAA, one of my counterparts chipped in: "Well, we did once have a tuba player be recruited by and transfer to another school in our state. But he was seven feet tall and, in addition to playing in the band, he was the basketball team's highest scorer and most prolific rebounder."
Playoff Proposal Pauses
May 10, 2013
During the MHSAA Football Finals at Ford Field last November, I was approached by representatives of the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association with a request to have the MHSAA’s computing capabilities crunch the numbers for a concept that a couple of the coaches association’s members had for revising the MHSAA Football Playoff point system.
Within a few weeks the MHSAA hosted a meeting that brought together the coaches who introduced the concept with our numbers crunchers; and within a few days our staff had outlined the principles, revised the point system and retrofitted it to show how the system would have affected the 2012 playoffs.
There was initial excitement that we might be onto something, but that brief infatuation began to wane as we dug deeper and discussed the plan more widely.
The key ingredients of the proposal are (1) that a school would gain playoff points for every game its opponent wins, whether or not that school defeated that opponent, and (2) that the number of automatic qualifiers would be reduced in favor of a larger group of additional qualifiers based on a revised playoff points system that would favor schools which schedule larger and more successful opponents.
In spite of our staff’s helpfulness in bringing this proposal forward, we’ve lost optimism that it will accomplish what is hoped. Rather than making regular-season scheduling easier, it could make it harder as the “six-wins-and-in” mindset is replaced by the even worse “seven-wins-and-in” mindset. And any system that ignores a minimum number of wins and relies entirely on playoff points is even less fair than the current system to schools in the less densely populated areas of Michigan.
From our retrofitting of the proposed concept to the 2012 season, we know that teams with 6-3 records would be displaced in the playoffs by teams with 4-5 records, which is certain to go down badly and be difficult to explain to those communities. The revised point system would make it even more difficult than the current system for schools in less populated areas to find opponents of the size and strength to generate high playoff point averages without these schools driving 100, 200, 300 or more miles, one way, several times each season. For individual schools and some entire leagues, this will make football scheduling tougher, not easier. It is likely to add stress to those league affiliations, and to football scheduling generally.
In any event, there is no need to rush to 2013 or 2014 a proposal that’s called “Enhanced Strength of Schedule System” because schedules are 99 percent set for 2013 and nearly so for 2014. Even if adopted today, few schedules would be impacted before 2015. If a change like this one is to be implemented, schools must have ample notice, and our technology department must have enough time to program the new point system and then test it through an entire season.
The Representative Council acted wisely on May 6 when it paused the progress of this proposal. Some elements of it may be discussed at the MHSAA’s scheduled meetings this summer and fall.