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.
What Sport Looks Like
April 9, 2013
The decision of the International Olympic Committee to eliminate wrestling from its schedule of events is deplorable for more reasons than I have room to describe here. Many others have expressed their outrage, which I share; and it looks like there will be a concerted effort to have the IOC reverse itself.
Notwithstanding all the angst it created and has yet to endure, the IOC’s policies and procedures are intriguing, and possibly useful. They go something like this.
Periodically, the IOC requires each of the designated Olympic sports to defend its status, to state their case why the sport should remain a part of the Olympic program. Then, after a series of votes that retain one sport at a time, the IOC drops the sport that makes the weakest case. It does so to make room for one of the previously unlisted sports that makes the best case for inclusion.
This would appear to keep the existing Olympic sports on their toes, and to keep the Olympic movement fresh and reflective of modern trends in sports.
While I would not enjoy the controversy, I can see the potential for some positive results if the MHSAA were to invoke the same policy for determining the 14 tournaments it will provide for girls and the 14 for boys.
This might cause us to consider more deeply what a high school sport should look like, or at least what an MHSAA tournament sport should stand for.
On the one hand, we might be inclined to delete those sports that involve mostly non-faculty coaches and non-school venues, or require cooperative programs to generate enough participants to support a team, or resort almost entirely to non-school funding, or cater to individuals more than teams.
Or perhaps this process would cause policymakers to forget traditional thinking and ask: “In this day and age, should we shake off traditional notions of sport and consider more where modern kids are coming from?” That might mean fewer team sports and more individual sports, more “extreme” sports like snowboarding and skateboarding, and more lifetime sports, meaning not just golf and tennis and running sports, but also fishing and shooting sports.
Is the only question how many schools sponsor a sport, or must an activity also have certain qualities and/or avoid certain “defects?” What should an MHSAA tournament sport look like and stand for?