Domestic Solutions
September 6, 2013
Kudzu was introduced to this continent in the late 1800s to control soil erosion in the southern United States. Now, this fast-growing Asian climbing vine is choking out all other vegetation. This seriously invasive species is growing at a rate faster than 150,000 acres each year in spite of millions of dollars spent to control it.
Asian carp were introduced to this continent one hundred years later, primarily for the purpose of cleaning commercial catfish ponds in Arkansas. They escaped into the Mississippi River and have proliferated, eating voraciously and growing to immense proportions. They now threaten the commercial fishing industry of the Great Lakes.
When we invite what appear to be relatively easy outside solutions to difficult internal problems, we invite more serious problems.
Whatever issues we face in school sports are best addressed by schools themselves using the resources at hand. No outside agent can be introduced to solve the problems we confront. No software is the silver bullet, and no sponsor provides the sustenance to keep educational athletics not only alive, but well.
It is up to us alone – administrators, coaches, officials. Using the natural resources right in front of us. Here and now.
I’d prefer to see the kudzu and carp when I travel in Asia, not America.
It’s Not Us
October 2, 2015
There are continuing and crescendoing complaints about “AAU ball” – the travel, the competition without preparation, the agents and hangers-on, the sleaze factor. Yet some of those same complainers are critical of the very rules that tend to keep that sleaze at a low level in school sports in Michigan.
If so many people agree that kids and parents are being sold a bill of goods full of empty promises by a growing number of youth sports zealots, recruiting gurus, and both club and college level coaches, then why should we provide passports that would expose more students to this atmosphere?
If so many people feel that what’s happening in youth sports is bad and what’s masquerading as educational athletics in major college sports is baloney, then why should we help high school students earn frequent flier points through relaxation of time-tested travel and television policies?
If so many people believe there are too many athletic-motivated transfers, then why should we throw fuel on the fire? Those schools which could afford it would try to make their programs more attractive with national travel and televised games as a magnet to suck the best players out of neighboring schools that cannot afford the same excesses.
There is more than enough travel and exposure opportunity for schools here in Michigan and Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Ontario and Wisconsin. Any more adds impure emphases and increased expenses to programs that are already overburdened or bankrupt.
When our school administrators and coaches say that national travel and tournaments are unaffordable and “It’s not us,” they mean it. They’ve got their priorities right.