A Rite of Spring
March 21, 2015
It is inevitable in March, as predictable as May flowers after April showers, that the weeks of District Basketball Tournaments will bring criticism, and calls to seed those tournaments so top ranked teams don’t face one another in early round games.
The MHSAA’s tournament has been unseeded for 90 years; and while we should never be slaves to the past, we should always be respectful and appreciate that smart people of previous generations had many of the same discussions we are having today; and they determined that the blind draw was best.
While the preference for the blind draw has prevailed in recent years, the almost addictive attention of the media and public to the “bracketology” of NCAA basketball tournaments appears to have improved the chances that some form of seeding will eventually be applied to the MHSAA Basketball Tournament and, in doing so, join a half dozen other sports for which the MHSAA employs at least a limited seeding plan for at least one level of those tournaments.
The challenge before us is not intellectual – seeding tournaments is not rocket science. No, the challenge is political – forming consensus for a plan that does not lead to extra travel and expense for participating schools, and that can be easily understood and simply administered at multiple sites. We are talking about 256 District tournament sites – 128 each in the Girls and Boys Basketball Tournaments. The problems and pitfalls of seeding tournaments of this magnitude are nothing the colleges have tried to tackle.
And no one should be deluded that seeding is a “no-brainer” that “everyone supports.” That is not accurate. There are many people who enjoy the fact that there are top-notch matchups every night of the District tournament weeks, and not all delayed to the nights of District finals. And there will be little enthusiasm from poorly seeded teams which are forced to drive past a closer opponent to get clobbered by a more distant opponent.
While postseason tournaments are the MHSAA’s “bread and butter” program, tournament seeding is not a defining or fundamental issue of educational athletics that requires our urgent or concentrated attention. Promoting participant health and safety, for example, demands much more attention. I’m not opposed to seeding; I just don’t give it the same importance as so much else we are challenged to do.
Building Future Support
December 19, 2017
Editor's Note: This blog originally was posted December 17, 2013, and the message still serves purpose today.
Most students would rather play sports than watch other people play.
This is obvious; but often we make both little decisions and large ones that seem to ignore this truth. More often than necessary we create more opportunities for watchers than we do for players.
Ultimately this leads to non-watchers because people – especially young people – tend to lose interest when they don’t play. We know this because, in school after school, we find that the best boosters – the most frequent and fervent spectators – are the students who participate on their school’s other teams.
It is also true that those who played sports when they were in school, and those whose children now play in school sports, are the people who will support schools most strongly in the future.
This too seems obvious, but still, many school districts all across this state and nation appear to make decisions like it has never occurred to them.
Every time we cut a kid from a high school team, we create critics of our programs – the student’s parents today and this student in the future. If the program has no room for a student today, why would we ever expect that student or his/her parents will support our programs tomorrow?
No-cut policies for all outdoor sports and larger squads for indoor sports – beginning at younger grade levels – will be among the policies of school districts which hope to retain school sports beyond the next generation or two.