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Future Actions

February 19, 2016

MHSAA committees have prepared not quite two dozen recommendations for Representative Council action later this spring. Once again this is a smaller than average number of proposals, and again they are modest in scope and significance. What has been different in recent years, and especially this year, is the length and depth of discussions by some of the committees.

Slowly, we are changing committee focus from tournament tweaks and other strictly transactional business to more strategic, even transformational issues.

Several committees talked longer than ever about health and safety issues, with attention to concussion and sports specialization, and how to accommodate and appeal to younger grade levels (6th, 7th and 8th).

I look forward to the day when these long discussions turn into provocative proposals. For example, I would love to hear that ...

  • The MHSAA Football and Junior High/Middle School Committees recommend MHSAA sponsorship of flag football at the 6th- through 8th-grade levels.

  • The MHSAA Soccer and Junior High/Middle School Committees recommend practice and game policies that reduce heading at the 6th- through 8th-grade levels.

  • The MHSAA Golf Committee recommends MHSAA sponsorship of coed, Ryder Cup format golf.

  • The MHSAA Tennis Committee recommends MHSAA sponsorship of coed team tennis.

There is so much more we could be doing to transform school sports for the 21st Century. New sports and formats, with increased attention to health and safety and the junior high/middle school level. This is our future, when talk turns to action.

Diversionary Tactics Backfire

September 24, 2013

Placing a stone in your left shoe will take your mind off a blister on your right foot; but it does not solve the problem.

Faced with domestic starvation and civil unrest, many dictators have created external enemies in hopes of distracting their countrymen and women and rallying their support. Think of North Korea as just one of dozens of examples, recent to ancient. It has even ocurred in the US, recently and throughout our nation’s history: strawmen vilified to distract us from other more pressing problems.

Closer to home, it is something like this strategy that may be at work in many school districts as they restructure and rename schools, or resort to closings and charters. And something like this is behind the state and federal emphases on standardized testing and schools of choice.

And really close to home, it was something like this at work in football. Faced with thousands of former players with alleged concussion-related illnesses filing suit against the National Football League, and bad publicity mounting, the NFL focused instead on youth football. We told them this strategy would backfire; but a professional league with more money than many nations was not inclined to listen to little guys like us.

The NFL went state by state to advance concussion legislation which was long on symbolism and low on substance, and totally lacking any enforcement capabilities. In state after state, the NFL paraded young people with sad stories in front of state legislators looking for good headlines.

So today, 49 states have new “concussion” laws; and participation rates in youth football are plummeting. Big surprise. But ironically, it’s plummeting at a time when school-sponsored football is the safest it has been since it was introduced to schools 100 years ago. The equipment is the best ever, the rules the most protective ever, the coaches and officials the best trained and most safety conscious ever.

Take a look at this quick video that tells the true story about school-sponsored football.