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The Limitation of Rules – Part 2

September 6, 2016

There may be an inverse relation between the length of the Michigan High School Athletic Association Handbook and the commitment to follow its rules.

There seems an increasingly popular attitude that if something isn’t specifically prohibited, then it’s permitted. The question is more often “Is it legal?” and less often “Is it right?” Technical integrity rather than ethical integrity.

There may not be more rule breakers today, but there sure seems to be more rule benders – people at the borders of what is allowed, testing limits.

Which leads to an even longer Handbook as efforts are made to plug the holes and fill the gaps.

Which is a temptation we must resist, for we cannot keep up. Like a dog chasing its tail, we’ll go in circles. Getting dizzy. Losing sense of what is important.

We were successful in that the 2016-17 MHSAA Handbook has the same number of Interpretations as the year before. A whopping 284 Interpretations. Our goal for 2017-18 should be fewer.

Elite Soccer?

August 5, 2014

Every four years, the Winter Olympics brings obscure cold-weather sports to American homes; and a few months after that, the World Cup brings the world’s most popular game to the American conscience and conversation.

Predictably, those who don’t understand or don’t like soccer ridiculed the sport, while the sport’s devotees ignored ugly blemishes on the face of the “beautiful game.”

It’s my hope that those who play or coach school-based soccer, or who aspire to, saw the spacing, the strategy and the one-on-one skills of soccer at its highest level on its biggest stage. It really is beautiful!

But I wish even more that those who play or coach school-based soccer, or hope to, will ignore the feigning and the flopping. Grown, athletic men seemed to be tripped up by the slightest push or pull, and then tumbled with comical force, and then trembled dramatically as they held their head or gripped an ankle with both hands.

Oh, there were times when the shoves were real and forceful and the injuries were real and painful; but the vast majority of the players who fell were faking both incident and injury.

At times last month I thought I was watching World Wrestling Federation actors, not World Cup athletes. And in that regard, I prefer our high school version of the world’s highest profile sport.