Predictable Problems
April 9, 2012
A completely predictable theme of this year is that as schools continue to cut support for school sports, they bring more controversy to school sports.
It is impossible to avoid serious problems running a comprehensive interscholastic athletic program involving many participants, lots of spectators, great emotion and some risk of injury, without dedicating competent full-time staff to its supervision.
Two emerging trends since schools have trimmed support for interscholastic athletics are . . .
more mistakes are being made (not because of more deception but because of more distractions – too little time on task); and
more of the oversights are being discovered later in the season. So late, in fact, that MHSAA tournament brackets are left empty. We had a team claim a Boys District Basketball Tournament trophy one week without playing the District championship game. The next week another team received a Boys Regional Basketball Tournament trophy without playing the title game. In each case, the opposing team had advanced with an ineligible player, and had to withdraw.
If we reduce time on task, if we minimize training and support, we invite mistakes and oversights, which invites forfeits and injuries, which incites controversy in the school and community.
Bottom Lines
May 19, 2017
The cost of everything in everyday life seems to rise every year. Everything, that is, except the bread and butter revenue source of the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
Next school year – 2017-18 – is the 14th straight year that ticket prices for the District level of MHSAA basketball and football tournaments have remained unchanged; and it’s the 15th consecutive year without increase at the Regional level of those tournaments. Five bucks.
Meanwhile, the cost of venues hosting some MHSAA championships is rising rapidly. Even if calendar conflicts were not evicting the MHSAA from Michigan State University’s Breslin Center, steeply increased expenses could have the same effect.
There was a time when universities across the U.S. wanted state high school association tournaments using their on-campus facilities. This was a public service as well as a marketing tool for those institutions.
Today these universities derive much more revenue from higher international student tuition than is paid by the in-state students who first come to the campus to play in or watch state high school championships. Even more important than tuition dollars are research grants, royalties and donations to what is now the big business of higher education.
Where campus athletic facilities are operated outside the athletic department it is even more evident that money trumps the mission of public service, at least as it relates to facility usage and secondary school athletic programs which, to be sure, are less important than the search for world peace and cancer cures by our universities.
People might believe it’s more appropriate for MHSAA events to be on college campuses than in commercial arenas; but frankly, it’s getting hard for us to see a difference. The bottom line drives them both.