Crime and Punishment
August 17, 2012
In my previous posting I identified three criteria that have helped the MHSAA decide what its responsibilities should be, which is worth re-reading in the context of the widespread debate about what the NCAA’s role should be in the wake of the Penn State tragedy.
In essence, my last posting stated that the MHSAA has neither the legal authority nor the resources to be involved in protecting young people at all times and in all places. It is in the area of sports, and especially within the limits of the season and the boundaries of the field of play, that the MHSAA has a role and rules.
So obviously, if I had been asked about what the NCAA should do about Penn State, I would advise the NCAA to look at its Handbook. If its member institutions have adopted policies and procedures to be followed and prescribed penalties to be enforced that apply in this matter, then by all means, follow the rules. But if not, stay out of it. You’ve got enough to do that’s not getting done where you have the requisite expertise and responsibility.
Clearly, the NCAA leadership took a different position, apparently preferring to absorb criticism for going too far rather than suffer criticism that it did too little in response to horrific behavior at one of its member institutions.
Unfortunately, in stating publicly that the severity of the penalties was intended to send the important messages that football should not outsize academics and that success on the field should not be at the expense of the safety and nurturing of athletes and that coaches should not be treated as larger-than-life heroes, the NCAA misses the point that the system the NCAA itself has created or allowed is much at fault for such excesses.
Any system that allows such lavish expenditures on the sports program and its personalities the way it is allowed in NCAA Division 1 football and basketball will continue to have serious problems, every year and at multiple institutions. Penn State is not the first university to have screwed up priorities; it just has the most recent and tragic victims.
For its part, the MHSAA has rules designed to position athletics secondary to academics, keep the pursuit of success secondary to safety, and maintain administrators’ authority over coaches, whose pay may not exceed the supplementary pay schedule for teachers and may not flow from any source but the school itself. We are striving to have policies now that will make it unnecessary to impose penalties later for sports programs that are out of control.
Transfer Tools
February 7, 2014
On Oct. 15 I used this space to talk about “Transfer Trends”; and I took that topic on the road, including it in MHSAA Update meetings throughout the state. I described an “epidemic.”
As I have said and written before (including in this space on Sept. 27, 2011), our transfer regulation is an inadequate tool for the fight ahead of us. It has failed to slow the growth of athletic-motivated transfers even after adoption of a rule for that purpose in 1997. Too few schools have wanted the hassle of alleging and documenting that a transfer was primarily for athletic reasons. In 2012, the leadership of the basketball and wrestling coaches associations, observing that current rules permitted several high-profile transfers in their sports, asked for a much tougher transfer rule – one that would subject most transfer students to a full year of ineligibility. Recognizing its legal responsibility to enforce the most narrow proscriptions possible, the Representative Council responded with more precision.
The new athletic-related transfer rule adopted last May extends the period of ineligibility from one semester to two for those students whose circumstances do not fit one of the existing 15 exceptions to the transfer regulation and where the student has engaged in certain activities during the previous 12 months that link the student to the new school’s athletic program.
If a student played high school sports during the previous 12 months and did one of the activities that linked that student to the new school athletically, the new rule doubles the period of ineligibility. If, for example, this transfer student attended an open gym at the new school, played summer or non-school sports on a team coached by one of the coaches of the sport at the new school, or received instruction in strength or conditioning from a personal trainer who coaches at the new school, then the period of ineligibility would double.
In addition to narrowly tailoring the new rule to the most obvious and egregious examples of an athletic-motivated or -related transfer, the Representative Council also provided necessary notice. The rule has not been “sprung” on students who may have done things before the rule change that would have made them ineligible. Because the rule has a 12-month run-up to consider, the Council provided almost 15 months’ notice. The rule takes full effect Aug. 1, 2014.
This is another example of defining a problem and designing the policy with precision. It’s both most educationally sound and judicially defensible.