Out-Punting Our Coverage
March 19, 2013
Any traveler to the Atlantic coast of any Central American country will witness firsthand the arrogance of the human race.
Strewn along almost every shore is the waste of nations outliving their means. Plastic in all shapes and colors, from products of all types – bottles, toys, sandals, tools.
Island nations to the east, unable to cope with the volume of their waste, cast it off covertly under cover of night. Oceangoing vessels large and small heave it overboard.
My wife puts it this way: “We’ve gotten ahead of ourselves.” Humans have fantastic abilities to create, but we do so without conscience, without caring enough about consequences.
This clearly applies to the world’s waste problem – from cast-off containers to used cars to computers made obsolete in a matter of months. We keep producing more and more, without plans for the waste of producing new products or the waste created by making existing things obsolete.
In the Pacific Ocean, a mass of trash the size of Texas is circulating as if there were a drain. But there isn’t one. No easy answer to flush human waste – the excrement of our greed – to some other place where it will do no harm.
In Chinese cities today the air, water and land are toxic – much as it was in developing US cities around 1900 – as China takes its turn to poison its people in the name of progress.
That we can do something doesn’t mean we should do it. In sports terms, the human race has out-punted its coverage, and the consequences are far more dire than a punt return for a touchdown.
Not the Critic
February 22, 2014
It is predictable; and it’s petty, not profound. Almost without exception, when a rule is enforced in one situation, the MHSAA will be criticized for not pursuing a similar penalty in other cases.
Of course, the critic is apt to draw parallels where they don’t exist. The critic is likely to assume facts that are not correct, and likely to call for the MHSAA to apply rules that the critic misunderstands, and to assess penalties that are in no one’s authority to impose. The critic can be unbothered by truth, accuracy and accountability. We cannot.
To be honest, MHSAA staff members have often been frustrated that the rules as they are written have no way to stop a particular transfer, or that people will not give testimony to enable a finding of undue influence. The reality is that rules cannot be written to stop everything bad without interfering with very much that is not bad.
And it is equally true that many people who have condemning information do not have the courage to share that information. And that some school administrators are too busy to get involved in such messiness. And that other school administrators are only too happy to have a malcontent athlete or parent move to another school.
Even at risk of irritating member school colleagues, the MHSAA ignores no allegations of violations by its member schools, their personnel or their students, even though we know that very many will be without merit – sometimes an innocent misunderstanding, other times a personal vendetta. And we know there may be just as many situations going unnoticed by or unreported to MHSAA staff.
And we also know that even when we do our job and we get it right – which is almost all the time – we may still be criticized by those who either have a personal agenda or do not have all the facts.
What is also true but unknown to the critic is the frequency with which MHSAA staff works proactively with schools to avoid problems, and how often MHSAA staff works privately with schools which self-report and quickly penalize their own constituents. A high percentage of violations have little publicity because we are intentional in efforts to keep a low profile for the unsavory side of educational athletics, and to keep the spotlight on the achievements of young people.