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Membership Mentality

September 16, 2014

The Michigan High School Athletic Association is a membership organization – an association of schools, not individuals – that usually doesn’t think of itself as such. Most member-based organizations work hard to recruit and retain members because member dues are an important revenue source.

That’s not true for the MHSAA which charges no membership dues, no sport sponsorship assessments and no tournament entry fees. The MHSAA is free to join and its tournaments are free to enter.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think like a member-based organization or that none of the dynamics of membership-based organizations apply here.

For example, we are in the business of recruiting and retaining contest officials; and while we registered approximately 10,600 officials last year, that number is significantly lower than six years ago, and the average age is increasing. So, like any other member-based organization, we need strategies for attracting and holding new, young officials.

A new tactic launched this fall is the “Be The Referee” feature (Click Here) on a Lansing-based sports talk daily radio show and weekly television show. Our staff explains rules and points of emphasis, and then we make a pitch for new officials.

But the most fundamental strategy for recruiting and retaining officials is consistent, ceaseless efforts to improve officials’ working environment. This means improving the assigner-official relationship before events and the sportsmanship at events.

Ultimately, if assigners treat new officials unprofessionally and spectators treat them abusively, we have no chance to increase the numbers and decrease the age of MHSAA registered officials.

Bottom Lines

May 19, 2017

The cost of everything in everyday life seems to rise every year. Everything, that is, except the bread and butter revenue source of the Michigan High School Athletic Association.

Next school year – 2017-18 – is the 14th straight year that ticket prices for the District level of MHSAA basketball and football tournaments have remained unchanged; and it’s the 15th consecutive year without increase at the Regional level of those tournaments. Five bucks.

Meanwhile, the cost of venues hosting some MHSAA championships is rising rapidly. Even if calendar conflicts were not evicting the MHSAA from Michigan State University’s Breslin Center, steeply increased expenses could have the same effect.

There was a time when universities across the U.S. wanted state high school association tournaments using their on-campus facilities. This was a public service as well as a marketing tool for those institutions.

Today these universities derive much more revenue from higher international student tuition than is paid by the in-state students who first come to the campus to play in or watch state high school championships. Even more important than tuition dollars are research grants, royalties and donations to what is now the big business of higher education.

Where campus athletic facilities are operated outside the athletic department it is even more evident that money trumps the mission of public service, at least as it relates to facility usage and secondary school athletic programs which, to be sure, are less important than the search for world peace and cancer cures by our universities.

People might believe it’s more appropriate for MHSAA events to be on college campuses than in commercial arenas; but frankly, it’s getting hard for us to see a difference. The bottom line drives them both.