Logo

Baloney

January 27, 2015

When I was in high school and college I worked a different job each summer, usually looking for hard labor that would help prepare my body for the next football season, and each time confirming that it would not be my choice for lifetime employment. One summer I worked at a lumber yard and paper mill complex along the banks of the Wisconsin River.

Every day I ate lunch with the men who had made this their life’s work; and I grew in ways both positive and negative as I listened to their conversations and tales. We all brought our own lunch pails.

One day, one of the more veteran employees opened his lunchbox and flew into a rage. “I can’t believe it,” he exclaimed. “Baloney again! I hate baloney.”

Trying to calm him down, another worker said, “If you hate baloney so much, just ask your wife to make you something else.”

To which the complainer replied, “That won’t work. I make my own lunches,” which resulted in an uproar of laughter from the rest of us.

I thought of this incident recently as I was preparing to meet with constituents about the rules they most love to hate: policies relating to coach and player contact out of season. Those are our most criticized rules.

But it occurs to me, if we don’t like the sandwich we’re eating – out-of-season coaching rules – we should remember: we made them ourselves, and we can change them. In fact, no one is in a better position to do so than we are. And no one has a greater duty to do so than we have, if we really are in need of a new recipe.

A Backhanded Compliment

April 17, 2012

A year ago this month I listened to the attorney for another statewide high school athletic association pose this question:  “Why is it that people quite readily accept inflexible age limitations over a broad spectrum of American life, including sports, but presuppose it is wrong for school sports?”

This attorney was in the middle of a controversy that more recently has visited the MHSAA:  an overage student seeking relief from a universally applied maximum age rule.  The speaker was perplexed and frustrated by the double standard.

Part of the reason for the double standard rests in the reality that people value the school sports experience so much more than other parts of life, including other sports experiences.  Because they want the opportunity to play, they resort to litigation in an attempt to create the right to play.

Another part of the reason school sports is challenged on an issue on which other programs get a free pass is that school sports has a centralized authority, close to home.  State high school associations are readily accessible targets, easier both to find and to fight with than most other entities with age restrictions.

And, of course, part of the reason for the double standard is the proximity of interscholastic athletics to academics – the former extracurricular, the latter curricular – the former a privilege for most teenagers, the latter a right of all citizens to age 26.

The reasons school sports are attacked on this issue while other entities are not are reasons really complimentary to school sports:  the program is popular, accessible and connected to education.  None of these features of school sports, or its age limitation, should change.