Lost Leaders
April 12, 2016
What’s the greatest threat to the future of school sports? It’s not concussions, for school sports are actually more safe each year, not less. It’s not a lack of civility, for our events are still the most sportsmanlike of any highly competitive sports program. It’s not cost, for school sports remain the cheapest form of organized sports to play and to watch.
Actually, the greatest threat to the future of school sports is from the self-inflicted wounds by local school district boards of education. The decisions to devalue the local high school athletic administrator. Heaping more and more duties on a person who is being given less and less time, training and support to perform those duties.
The full-time athletic administrator, with support for clerical duties and event supervision and without many other duties added on, is an increasingly rare situation in schools today. And when that person retires, moves up or otherwise moves on, it is typical that the replacement is less experienced, given even more unrelated duties to perform, and given less time in which to do them.
It’s then that the athletic director looks to coaches to run their own programs; and when the school coach is a nonfaculty person, this is a delegation of school sports to a non-school person.
Is it any wonder then that philosophies suffer, policies are ignored and problems occur?
Is it any wonder then that people who see no difference between the philosophies of school and non-school sports question why schools should spend any time at all on this aspect of adolescent development? They become all too ready to leave sports to the community.
Every shortcut to school sports administration has a consequence. Every dollar we try to squeeze from the school sports budget has a hidden higher cost. Every non-athletic duty we add to the athletic director’s day is another step closer to schools without sports.
And the secondary schools admired by the rest of the world will become ordinary.
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.