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Our Narrative

November 21, 2011

Thomas Friedman – author of The World is Flat, From Beruit to Jerusalem and Hot, Flat and Crowded, among other major works – has a gift for converting complicated topics into moving narratives.  So I took note, during President Obama’s second year in office when, in a New York Times column, Mr. Friedman took the President to task for a communication gap.

Friedman wrote that the President doesn’t have a communications problem per se (in fact, he’s been one of our nation’s more articulate chief executives), and he has a good grasp of facts on many subjects.

What he has, according to Friedman, is a narrative problem.  “He has not tied all his programs into a single narrative that shows the links between his health care, banking, economic, energy, education and foreign policies.”  Without this, wrote Friedman, people do not see these are all “building blocks of a great national project.”

Regardless of one’s opinion of Mr. Obama as President and Mr. Friedman as pundit, those responsible for school sports should pause over this observation or opinion; should stop to consider how all the projects and programs we contemplate either do or do not help us tell the story of educational athletics in Michigan. 

The narrative for school sports can be compelling.  When and where programs maximize participation and promote high standards of eligibility, conduct and care; when and where programs demonstrate quality coaching and officiating; and when and where it can be demonstrated that the programs are not merely compatible with the educational mission of the school but actually improve attendance, raise GPAs and increase graduation rates; then and there we have a coordinated and convincing narrative.

Projects and programs that produce and promote these results will be the kind of building blocks that tell our story and should generate popular support for many more years to come.

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.