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Internal Medicine

March 20, 2018

When I express concerns for the health of high school basketball, I’m not confusing our problems with the corruption of major college men’s basketball that is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, there are some tentacles that reach us, and taint us; but the problems that plague us most are more basic and local.

The concerns I have for high school basketball are captured in scenes that play out much too often across the membership of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. For example:

  • Declining participation, with JV and varsity rosters too small to practice 5-on-5 at either level.

  • Increasing forfeits.

  • Ugly mismatches, with scores so lopsided that it is hard to imagine much teaching or learning can occur.

  • Starters transferring; reserves dropping out.

  • Confrontations between parents and coaches.

  • Faculty coaches becoming a vanishing breed.

These kinds of concerns do not flow from the top down – we can’t blame these issues on the NCAA and NBA. No, our more persistent and perplexing problems percolate up from the youth level.

Often the students who come to our programs have participated in youth sports programs for five to 10 years before they join a school team. They arrive with expectations that often differ from what is intended for school-based programs. They’ve been in a different environment; they have different expectations.

And much of what is coming with youth sports begins to infect school sports. 

There is no vaccination that will be 100 percent effective in immunizing us. There is no single solution that can quickly reverse these negative trends in school-based basketball and other school sports. The efforts must be systemic and long-term. And among the efforts that must be made are these

  • More attention to coaches education – every coach, every year – where the ethics of educational athletics and the meaning of success in school sports provide the core of the curriculum; and

  • More attention to junior high/middle schools – more opportunities for 6th- through 8th-graders to sample school sports and to savor an experience that puts team before individual and learning ahead of winning.

Eight-Player Options

March 10, 2017

Put this in the category of “No good deed goes unpunished.”

In 2011, the MHSAA provided an additional playoff for Class D schools sponsoring 8-player football. This helped save football in some schools and helped return the game of football to other schools. But now that the number of 8-player programs has expanded from two dozen in 2011 to more than 60, there are complaints:

  • Some complaints come out of a sense of entitlement that all final games in both the 8-player and 11-player tournament deserve to be played at Ford Field.

  • Some complaints come from Class C schools whose enrollments are too large for the 8-player tournament. Class C schools which sponsor the 8-player game have no tournament at all in which to play, regardless of where the finals might be held.

  • Some complaints come from Class D schools which protest any suggestion that Class C schools – even the smallest – be allowed to play in the 8-player tournament.

There are now three scenarios emerging as the most likely future for 8-player football:

  • The original plan ... A five-week, 32-team tournament for Class D schools only, with the finals at a site to be determined, but probably not Ford Field.

  • Alternative #1 ... Reduce the 11-player tournament to seven divisions and make Division 8 the 8-player tournament with 32 Class D teams in a five-week tournament, ending at Ford Field.

  • Alternative #2 ... Conduct the 8-player tournament in two divisions of 16 Class D teams, competing in a four-week playoff ending in a double-header at the Superior Dome on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

The pros and cons of these options are being widely discussed. Sometimes the discussions have a tone that is critical of the MHSAA, which comes from those who forget that it was the MHSAA itself which moved in 2011 to protect and promote football by adding the 8-player playoff tournament option for its smallest member schools. That Class D schools now feel entitled to the Ford Field opportunity and Class C schools want access to an 8-player tournament is not unexpected; but criticism of the MHSAA’s efforts is not deserved.