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Perspectives on Popularity

January 13, 2015

With the National Football League about to take center stage in this country’s sporting drama this month, some “Down Under” comparisons provide perspective to moderate how popular and venerable the NFL is.

The NFL’s longest waiting list to become a season ticket holder is found in the NFL’s smallest market, Green Bay, where the waiting list to become a Packer season ticket holder is now 30 years. It’s so crazy that my sister, who splits her time between Vermont and Florida, still controls the two season tickets her father first obtained 55 years ago; and the tickets never go unused. The Packers season ticket waiting list is more than 80,000 names long.

However, the waiting list to join the Melbourne Cricket Club in Australia is even more imposing. Currently, more than 236,000 people are waiting to join the more than 100,000 active members, 40 percent of whom have only “restricted” privileges. An average of 10,000 fans join the waiting list each year, and their projected waiting time has now reached more than 40 years.

The Melbourne Cricket Club is the oldest sporting club in Australia, founded in 1838; while the Green Bay Packers is a relative upstart, founded in 1919. Still, it is the oldest NFL franchise in continuous operation with the same name and city ... since 1921 ... 83 years after the Melbourne Cricket Club.

By the way, the Michigan High School Athletic Association has operated under that name since 1920 ... one year longer than the Packers.

Classes or Divisions

April 4, 2014

Never is the continuous cycle of school sports more obvious to me than at this time of year. Just as winter tournaments conclude for 2013-14, we post the classifications and divisions for MHSAA tournaments in 2014-15.

Unlike many states which reclassify every two, three or four years, we collect enrollment figures each year and redraw the lines between Classes A, B, C and D each year in late March. And for all sports except basketball and volleyball, we place an almost equal number of schools that actually sponsor the sport into equal divisions – usually four divisions, but fewer for sports that are sponsored by a relatively small number of schools.

This traditional treatment of boys and girls basketball and girls volleyball – continuing with four classes rather than four divisions with an equal number of schools that actually sponsor the sport in each division – reflects that when last considered for change 17 years ago, there wasn’t much difference in the number of schools in the four classes vs. the four equal divisions in these three tournaments.

For 2014-15, of the 749 MHSAA member schools, 724 indicate they sponsor boys basketball, 716 sponsor girls basketball and 704 sponsor girls volleyball. (Among the sports in equal divisions, the most populous is baseball with 630 sponsoring schools.)

Last January, the MHSAA Classification Committee requested that staff provide the Representative Council what the numbers would look like for 2014-15 if these three sports were in “equal divisions” like other sports. The Classification Committee wasn’t recommending any change – just asking that the Representative Council see the numbers again.

  • In boys basketball, the number of schools in Divisions 1, 2, 3 and 4 would be 181, compared to 188, 182, 182 and 172 in Classes A, B, C and D, respectively.
  • In girls basketball, the number of schools in Divisions 1, 2, 3 and 4 would be approximately 179, compared to 186, 181, 182 and 167 in Classes A, B, C and D, respectively.
  • In girls volleyball, the number of schools in Divisions 1, 2, 3 and 4 would be approximately 176, compared to 186, 178, 180 and 160 in Classes A, B, C and D.

Obviously, every time more schools are placed in a division, the enrollment range between the largest and smallest school of that division expands. Therefore, a change to equal divisions places more schools and expands the enrollment range in the division of schools where enrollment spreads have the greatest impact - Division 4. It was our smallest schools that least liked the change to equal divisions in other sports 17 years ago. They would be the dissenters to this change for basketball and volleyball today.