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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.

Family Focus

September 2, 2014

The year I graduated from college (1970), 40 percent of U.S. households consisted of a married couple and their children. According to research summarized in AARP The Magazine’s June-July issue, the percentage was only 19 percent in 2013.

Even more startling is this: In 1960, five percent of U.S. births were to unmarried women. In 2012, it was 41 percent.

Very far from the most important impact these trends have on life in America today is the slice of American society we serve: competitive school sports.

In the 1960s and 1970s, schools would expect two parents in attendance for each child’s games or meets. In 2014, it is not unusual that one or infrequent that both parents are absent when their son or daughter competes.

Of course, school programs today have more boys sports and an almost entirely new slate of girls sports for parents to observe than two generations ago; and many times multiple events are scheduled simultaneously and force attentive parents to miss one child’s game while another child competes elsewhere.

It’s not my purpose here to point to specific strategies needed to keep parents constructively engaged in school sports. The limit of my commentary now is to offer a reminder, even to myself, that the manner in which we did things when the family unit looked one way is very likely in need of an overhaul, or at least a tweak, when the family unit looks very different.

The challenge, of course, is finding new avenues for old messages – fresh ways to deliver lasting core values. If we continue to proclaim that our brand is family friendly, we will meet this challenge.