Our Tools
March 11, 2014
MHSAA staff does very many things, including these two tasks: (1) we use the tools we have; and (2) we strive to develop more effective tools.
The tools we have are limited. We don’t have a huge staff to conduct investigations. We don’t have subpoena power to coerce disclosure of testimony and documents. We don’t have rules to cover every situation.
Thus, it feels like some people get away with things; and sometimes they do. We don’t have the tools to catch them or convict them. That is the inescapable condition of every voluntary statewide athletic association in the US.
But the other thing we do is keep working on better tools. Rules with broader reach and/or fewer holes. Penalties that are a greater deterrent to some people, and more punitive to others when deterrence doesn’t work.
Developing new rules is a tough process. Sometimes it takes months or years to get membership buy-in. Sometimes the “no-brainers,” so-called “easy solutions,” get shot down by lawyers who demand the most narrow remedy to each and every excruciatingly detailed problem.
We work today with the tools we’ve been given through the democratic processes of our voluntary association. And we keep working on ways to sharpen and strengthen those tools in ways that are reasonable in breadth and depth, rationally related to the basic tenets of a voluntary association, one of which is local control. Obviously, these are two of the more difficult things we do.
The Antidote
October 17, 2014
On average, according to the New York Times, the 32 National Football League teams have had 22 player arrests per team since 2000. And mounting.
This horrifying statistic doesn’t even include one team’s bounty-payment scheme to injure opposing players. It doesn’t include league-imposed suspensions for use of drugs.
So it doesn’t surprise me that the NFL’s corporate sponsors have begun to express concerns for their brand reputation. It’s only surprising that their concerns have been so slow in coming.
And it’s especially surprising that those who work at lower levels of sports don’t give up.
To the contrary, those who have devoted their lives to educational athletics demonstrate by their devotion to school-sponsored sports that they still believe – in spite of mounting evidence at major college and professional sports levels – that athletes can break records without having criminal records and that they can achieve championships without chemicals.
Coaches and administrators of school sports – my heroes – demonstrate daily by their continuing commitment of service to school sports that they still believe athletics can coexist with integrity and can nurture better character, not just crazy characters.
Under the radar, in communities across Michigan and the nation, school-based competitive athletic programs are doing good things for students, schools and society. This is the antidote for the cynicism creeping across the landscape of high-profile intercollegiate and professional sports.