Beyond the Noise
September 13, 2013
It has been said that when the law is not in your favor, then argue the facts; or when the facts are not in your favor, then argue the law; and when neither supports what you want, then just argue.
And this is the time of year when we are reminded that old adage is true.
It is in August and September when the MHSAA staff processes more eligibility questions and the MHSAA Executive Committee considers more requests to waive eligibility rules for individual students than at any other time of year. Often it is the least meritorious cases that create the loudest noise.
It is during these months and the next that the MHSAA deals with the most stressful of forfeitures caused by the participation of ineligible players. When an ineligible student plays in a varsity football game, that forfeiture not only means the loss of that game; that loss could also mean the team loses a spot among the qualifiers in the Football Playoffs.
Difficult eligibility and forfeiture cases sometimes make for good publicity for the individuals involved, but they can create bad precedent for the future of the program if it is only those noisemakers who are listened to and served.
Double Win Practice Policies
February 22, 2013
The MHSAA’s third health and safety thrust for the next four years focuses on practice rules, especially early in the fall season.
Here we will be especially interested in finding “double wins,” that is, policies that simultaneously enhance acclimatization and reduce head contact.
In football, for example, this could mean increasing the number of days without protective pads before the first practice in full pads. Michigan requires three days, but there’s a trend toward four or five days in other states.
Football might also limit any day to a single practice in pads, following the lead of colleges and a growing number of state high school associations that are restricting two-a-day practices in pads on the same day or on consecutive days.
Both of these changes could make acclimatization more gradual and healthy, and reduce the occurrences for contact to the head: two priorities as practice policies are reviewed and revised.
The MHSAA’s sport committees, sometimes with their work augmented by that of special task forces, are being charged with these responsibilities.