Fresh Air
June 30, 2014
On well over 300 of every 365 days each year I take a brisk early morning walk. One of the many things I’ve noticed over the years is how the smell of the exhaust of even a single passing automobile will stale the fresh air for several minutes after the vehicle is out of sight.
I’ve often thought there was a metaphor here that I could use in commenting on school sports; and my recent reading of Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief gave shape to that thought when the novel’s central character said:
“. . . when we came to intersections, we would have to stop and then the blue whiteness of the exhaust would overtake us. We could see it and smell it. We thought we had left it behind us somewhere back on the road, but when we slowed down, it seemed to overtake and surround us.”
What we have in school sports that none of the so-called more “prestigious” brands of sports offer is fresh air. Purity. Wholesomeness.
This is our trump card, our ace-in-the-hole.
We lack the resources to compete on a marketing or promotional level with college and professional sports; and we look foolish and waste resources when we try.
But when we focus on local rivalries between nearby opponents – complete with pep bands and marching bands, fully-clad cheerleaders, pep assemblies, letter jackets and Homecoming parades and dances – we play to our strength. We’re local, amateur and just a touch corny. Charming is a better word.
As we travel in this direction, the air is clean and fresh. As we slow or even stop at the intersection of other choices, we will smell the foulness in the air and know immediately that the only course for educational athletics is the road we’re already on.
A Meaning-Driven Brand
June 5, 2012
One of the apparent conclusions of the MHSAA online “Have Your Say” opinion poll conducted five years ago that continues to guide us today, is that the character of school sports is key to the appeal of school sports. This is true for both sponsoring school personnel and for those participants and spectators regularly involved in school sports. This suggests that to keep our core customers, we must preserve our core characteristics. That whatever changes occur in school styles and structures, we must maintain by our policies and programs the features and values which our core customers have experienced and both want and expect to continue.
It may sometimes feel that we are swimming against the current of public opinion when we enforce rules that define student eligibility or the limits of competition and travel, but the development and implementation of such restrictions might be essential to the expectations of our core constituents for the experience they remember for themselves and want for their children or team.
Just because schools change, it is not necessary that rules of school sports change as well. Sometimes, perhaps. But not always or even often. Leadership must always consider the program without a rule before we do away with the rule.
It is not too strong to state that schools seek MHSAA membership precisely because there are rules. In fact, schools formed the MHSAA to be their vehicle for making and enforcing rules. Just as participation by students is more valuable to them and their schools where standards of eligibility and conduct are higher, so is membership by schools in an organization more valuable where such standards are developed and enforced.
The Culting of Brands is a good book with a bad title in which author Douglas Atkin writes about the success of “a meaning-driven brand.” He says, “The product carries the message and then becomes it.” These kinds of brands, he says, are really beliefs. “They have morals – embody values.” They “stand up for things. They work hard; fight for what is right.”
Ultimately, it is exactly this that is expected of the high school brand of competitive athletics in Michigan.