Battle of the Fans
March 27, 2012
Guests at the MHSAA Girls and Boys Basketball Tournaments at Michigan State University’s Breslin Center the past two weekends saw the result of the MHSAA’s first “Battle of the Fans.” The idea came from the MHSAA’s Student Advisory Council, and it spread through social media. Read about it here.
We embraced this idea of our Student Advisory Council because a “Battle of the Fans” is something we can do, and most other youth sports cannot. In the world of youth sports, fans are almost unique to school sports. Fans aren’t found at AAU tournaments or US Soccer Development Academies like they are at school sports events.
We embraced this idea because fans are a part of what defines school sports and makes high school sports different than other youth sports, and makes interscholastic athletics a tradition in the United States like nowhere else in the world.
We embraced this idea because some people say that high school sports attendance is down and school spirit is declining. This initiative demonstrates that is not true everywhere, and doesn’t need to be true anywhere. It can help to motivate better spirit in more schools.
We embraced this idea to get more people talking about what is and is not good sportsmanship, and to encourage students to reengage in school events in more positive ways. This should make for more and even better competition, and dialogue, in 2013.
Hard Copy
January 31, 2017
It's probably a sign of my age and stage in life, but I cannot get in any habit of consuming information by podcasts. If I want to absorb facts, figures and ideas that I can retain for later use, I have to receive that information in writing and be free to highlight phrases and make notes in the margins of that document.
I'm so committed to or conditioned by this process that I even need to print online articles so I can take my pen to the text to help me embrace the author's message or mold it into mine. I remain an ardent advocate for the medium of printed words.
I'm apt to remember portions of long-form printed pieces much longer than texts and tweets; and if a printed piece is very good, or at least speaks to me, I develop a relationship with it through my underlining and notes, and it stays with me longer than audio and even video media.
My preferences are demonstrated in the continuing commitment the Michigan High School Athletic Association has made to providing printed souvenir programs at the finals for most of its postseason tournaments as well as to a glossy, issues-oriented magazine (benchmarks) and hard-copy printed curriculum for our in-person coaches education program (CAP) when many of its counterpart organizations across the US have moved to electronic alternatives for these services.
I'm all for reducing the use and waste of paper for environmental reasons; but for educational purposes, print on paper still has a place in the modern world of communications clutter. Perhaps a never more important place.