The Needle
March 2, 2012
Jordan Cobb is one of the MHSAA’s superbly talented staff members; and one of his many duties may intrigue you.
Jordan watches “the needle.”
The “chartbeat” needle tells us, at any moment, how many visitors we have to MHSAA.com. It even tells us what page they’re viewing on MHSAA.com, how they got there, and where they’re located in the world.
Not so long ago, Jordan would fret on a Friday night in the fall that our servers did not have the capacity to handle all those looking for game scores. Through lots of creative programming and work-arounds, and an in-house eight-unit “server farm” that shifts and spreads loads to accommodate peak demands, Jordan now watches the needle more in wonder than with worry.
On most Friday nights during the fall and winter, and for the entire months of November and March, MHSAA.com is among the one percent most visited U.S. websites – on any topic, not just sports.
Even on a quiet weekday afternoon, there will at all times be one to two hundred viewers navigating MHSAA.com.
A decade or two ago, the MHSAA office would not receive two hundred telephone calls per day or two hundred letters per week. Now, every second of the workday and long into the evening and all weekend long, one hundred to one thousand people or more are making contact with the MHSAA at MHSAA.com.
So MHSAA.com deserves our attention and resources. It is creating first and lasting impressions. It is branding us, and doing so far beyond the walls of schools and the borders of our state.
Most importantly, it is demonstrating what we value. It is conveying messages about who we are, what we do and what we believe. And providing a stark contrast to who we are not and what we don’t do and don’t believe.
Going to the Mat
October 4, 2016
Somewhere I heard a speaker say: “The most exciting thing in life is to be shot at ... and missed.”
In a real sense, I wouldn’t know; but metaphorically, that’s somewhat how we’ve felt after a federal district court judge tried unsuccessfully to cripple the Michigan High School Athletic Association in the aftermath of a lawsuit over the placement of sports seasons in Michigan.
Plaintiffs wanted the high school sports seasons for boys and girls to coincide and to mirror the seasons the National Collegiate Athletic Association established after our high school seasons were adopted. With the urging of its member schools, the MHSAA battled for nine years to attempt to retain a sports seasons schedule that allowed schools to use their resources (facilities, coaches and officials) in ways that they could demonstrate promoted higher participation rates by both genders.
Plaintiffs did not get all that they sought in the case, and neither did schools; but the judge ordered the MHSAA to pay $7.9 million, much more than the organization’s assets at that time.
But rather than being the death knell for the MHSAA, these events breathed exciting new life into the organization, the positive effects of which continue today.
The judgment – reduced significantly through negotiations, early payment incentives and insurance and paid off in 18 months – set in motion a review of internal operations that reduced expenditures by $600,000 over 12 months, while sponsorship and broadcast revenue grew by a combined $600,000 during those 12 months.
Eight years later, many of the operational savings continue, and non-tournament revenue is now more than double what it was in the first year following the judgment.
While complaints still come to us from students and citizens in local communities regarding the court-ordered changes for sports seasons, and participation has declined significantly in several of the affected sports – especially girls basketball, girls volleyball and boys tennis – the MHSAA office still continues to enjoy many efficiencies, as well as some euphoria, from the shot-at-but-missed experience.
This comes from the knowledge that we went to the mat for what our schools wanted, fought long and hard, paid a high cost, and came out of it with schools’ respect. In the aftermath, the MHSAA staff and Representative Council came together, and came through it stronger.