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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.
Second Half by MHSAA

Urgency

November 8, 2011

I still have in my files and in my mind Joe Klein’s Newsweek editorial of Sept. 21, 1992, that took Bill Clinton to task for his “small themes” during the closing months of his campaign for the U.S. presidency.

Never one to be shy in his bully pulpit at Newsweek (or in his then anonymously published novel Primary Colors based on the 1992 Democratic presidential primary), Klein wrote that Clinton’s late campaign efforts were “rhetorically flaccid, intellectually unadventurous, morally undemanding.”

In response, Clinton’s campaign strategist, James Carville, resorted to a sports metaphor:  “The way to the goal line is to keep running off tackle.  Four yards and a cloud of dust.”

This “take no chances, do no harm, run out the clock” spirit and strategy that so infuriated Klein will not be seen at the MHSAA.  Expectations and efforts will be in continuous crescendo no matter how close the goal line gets.  In fact, as it is with any good football team in the “red zone,” the closer the goal line looms, the greater the sense of urgency there will be.

There is no greater proof at this moment to our most inner circle of constituents – high school athletics directors – than the MHSAA’s work with ArbiterSports to become the first state high school association in America to develop, and to deliver at least initially at no cost to all member high schools, a comprehensive suite of electronic tools for athletic department administration.  This is a responsibility, and risk, that could have been left to others; but we’re being motivated by undertaking the task here and now – first in the nation – so that the product is tailor-made for high school sports, Michigan’s way.