Logo

No Easy Fix

February 13, 2015

“If we don’t fix this problem, even our friends and allies may turn against us.”

That was the dire warning one of the MHSAA staff members gave to the rest of us at a weekly staff meeting recently, during which this staff member was receiving emails from people appalled over the mid-season transfer of a basketball player from one school to another.

The “fix” that some people want is a rule that makes every transfer student ineligible for a full year, regardless of the reason for the change of schools or the circumstances of the student. Of course, that rule would never survive judicial scrutiny, and legislators in every corner of the state would be advocating change for the sake of one child or another.

A more moderate remedy is to utilize a rule that applies the full-year period of ineligibility to those students whose circumstances do not fit one of the already established 15 exceptions that make a student eligible without delay following a transfer. That half-measure would not stop many transfers that would still frustrate people, and it would snag many transfers that would continue to anger people.

The rules we already have in place are tools for schools to use to stop many of the transfers that frustrate without snaring those transfers that anger: the athletic-motivated transfer rule and especially the athletic-related transfer rule (or links law).

Before our friends and allies turn their backs on us, they need to turn in the transfer situations where the rules already apply, and the undue influence (recruiting) they can document. They need to give the system a chance to work to the full extent of its potential. We should not make tougher rules if schools fail to utilize the rules they already have.

Adopting rules is usually easy for the organization. Applying rules is often much harder for the schools.

Yogi

October 27, 2015

We lost a treasure when Yogi Berra died last month at the age of 90.

I hope a lot of people attended his funeral. After all, it was Yogi who said, “Always go to other peoples’ funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.”

Yogi had an intriguing mind for math. It was he who told us to “Pair up in threes.” He informed us that “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.” He said, “Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical.” And, “You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.”

Yogi was a sage observer of everyday life. In fact, he told us “You can observe a lot just by watching.” He observed that “No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.” And, “It gets late early.”

Of course, Yogi ought to have known a lot about baseball, a sport in which he excelled and enjoyed unprecedented and unduplicated success as catcher for 10 World Series championship teams. He was an 18-time All-Star; but with characteristic humility, Yogi confessed, “In baseball, you don’t know nothing.”

While wise about many things, Yogi wasn’t correct about everything. When he said, “It ain’t over til it’s over,” he was wrong. It ain’t ever going to be over for Yogi.

And yet, without Yogi, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”