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Robust Benefits

February 6, 2015

Here are some research-based opinions that track with the personal experiences of most of us who have given our careers to educational athletics. The words are those of Kevin Kniffen, who teaches leadership and management at Cornell University (from NYTimes.com [Oct. 22, 2014]):

“Research shows that people who play high school sports get better jobs, with better pay. Benefits that last a lifetime.


“Those lessons presumably help to account for the findings that people who played for a varsity high school team tend to earn relatively higher salaries later in life. Research to which I contributed, complementing previous studies, showed that people who played high school sports tend to get better jobs, with better pay, and that those benefits last a lifetime.

“Hiring managers expect former student-athletes (compared with people who participate in other popular extracurriculars) to have more self-confidence, self-respect and leadership; actual measures of behavior in a sample of people who had graduated from high school more than five decades earlier showed those expectations proved accurate.

“We also found that former student-athletes tend to donate time and money more frequently than people who weren't part of teams.

“In other words, there are clear and robust individual and societal benefits that appear to be generated through the current system of school support for participation in competitive youth athletics.

“With respect to whether youth athletics should be part of educational institutions, it’s certainly true that there’s no necessary relationship between the two; but, what would happen if schools were to drop all of their interscholastic sports programs?

“Any policymakers who took such action would effectively be privatizing – and, in turn, limiting – an important set of opportunities that schools presently provide in a significantly more democratic and open fashion than likely alternatives would. Beyond raising a basic barrier for anyone to gain the kinds of experiences that appear to be rewarded in the workplace, the privatization of competitive youth sports would also create the largest barriers – and cause the greatest long-term losses – for those whose families are not able to bear the costs of participation outside of the public school system.”

A Hot Topic

July 10, 2012

It is a terrible irony that Georgia saw two of its high school football players die late last summer when it’s the Georgia High School Association that was providing us with the best information we’ve ever had about the risks of heat illness and death.

The deaths occurred in the third year of a thorough three-year study in Georgia that is reinforcing common sense. The study is confirming who is most at risk and when they’re most at risk.

  • Who is most at risk? Linemen more than other players; underclassmen more than older players; those who have had the flu or similar sickness more than others.
  • When are they most at risk? During the season’s first week more than the second. During the second practice of a double session day more than the first. During the second half of the second practice more than the first half, and, early in the morning when humidity is often highest.

It all makes perfect sense: the chubby 9th or 10th grader during the second half of the second practice during the first week of the season. And because it’s statistically predictable, heat illness is almost entirely preventable.

There is some danger here in over-generalizing and over-simplifying, but awareness of these tendencies will help coaches to schedule and administrators to legislate around high-risk scenarios. We expect both will be happening in Michigan.