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The Antidote

October 17, 2014

On average, according to the New York Times, the 32 National Football League teams have had 22 player arrests per team since 2000. And mounting.

This horrifying statistic doesn’t even include one team’s bounty-payment scheme to injure opposing players. It doesn’t include league-imposed suspensions for use of drugs.

So it doesn’t surprise me that the NFL’s corporate sponsors have begun to express concerns for their brand reputation. It’s only surprising that their concerns have been so slow in coming.

And it’s especially surprising that those who work at lower levels of sports don’t give up.

To the contrary, those who have devoted their lives to educational athletics demonstrate by their devotion to school-sponsored sports that they still believe – in spite of mounting evidence at major college and professional sports levels – that athletes can break records without having criminal records and that they can achieve championships without chemicals.

Coaches and administrators of school sports – my heroes – demonstrate daily by their continuing commitment of service to school sports that they still believe athletics can coexist with integrity and can nurture better character, not just crazy characters.

Under the radar, in communities across Michigan and the nation, school-based competitive athletic programs are doing good things for students, schools and society. This is the antidote for the cynicism creeping across the landscape of high-profile intercollegiate and professional sports.

What Sport Looks Like

April 9, 2013

The decision of the International Olympic Committee to eliminate wrestling from its schedule of events is deplorable for more reasons than I have room to describe here.  Many others have expressed their outrage, which I share; and it looks like there will be a concerted effort to have the IOC reverse itself.

Notwithstanding all the angst it created and has yet to endure, the IOC’s policies and procedures are intriguing, and possibly useful.  They go something like this.

Periodically, the IOC requires each of the designated Olympic sports to defend its status, to state their case why the sport should remain a part of the Olympic program.  Then, after a series of votes that retain one sport at a time, the IOC drops the sport that makes the weakest case.  It does so to make room for one of the previously unlisted sports that makes the best case for inclusion.

This would appear to keep the existing Olympic sports on their toes, and to keep the Olympic movement fresh and reflective of modern trends in sports.

While I would not enjoy the controversy, I can see the potential for some positive results if the MHSAA were to invoke the same policy for determining the 14 tournaments it will provide for girls and the 14 for boys.

This might cause us to consider more deeply what a high school sport should look like, or at least what an MHSAA tournament sport should stand for.

On the one hand, we might be inclined to delete those sports that involve mostly non-faculty coaches and non-school venues, or require cooperative programs to generate enough participants to support a team, or resort almost entirely to non-school funding, or cater to individuals more than teams.

Or perhaps this process would cause policymakers to forget traditional thinking and ask:  “In this day and age, should we shake off traditional notions of sport and consider more where modern kids are coming from?”  That might mean fewer team sports and more individual sports, more “extreme” sports like snowboarding and skateboarding, and more lifetime sports, meaning not just golf and tennis and running sports, but also fishing and shooting sports.

Is the only question how many schools sponsor a sport, or must an activity also have certain qualities and/or avoid certain “defects?”  What should an MHSAA tournament sport look like and stand for?