The Rules We Use
February 9, 2016
The MHSAA Handbook of 90 years ago consisted of merely 21 pages, a diminutive 3½ x 6 inches in size.
The proposals for just the changes in the Handbook for 2016-17 require almost as many words as the entire Handbook of 1925-26.
The Handbook has grown to 130 full-sized, 8½ x 11-inch pages not just because we serve more sports and students than 90 years ago. It also grows because life is much more complicated. Society, schools and sports have much broader concerns today.
Every policy described in the current Handbook got there as a response to people wanting more rules or recommendations – sometimes to treat students better and other times to promote competitive equity, both of which are worthy objectives and should continue to be the rationale for proposals.
Occasionally I hear my colleagues in other states say we need to modernize our rules, to be sure we are not trying to apply 20th century rules to 21st century problems. I don’t disagree with that populist refrain.
However, before any rule is removed, those in charge must ask and answer: “How will school sports look without this rule? Will the problem this rule was created to solve return if we remove the rule? Will doing so create even worse problems?”
Rarely has the adoption of a new rule by our organization been a mistake. I cannot say the same for the removal of rules.
Do The Opposite
July 15, 2013
During the summer weeks, "From the Director" will bring to you some of our favorite entries from previous years. Today's blog first appeared Aug. 12, 2011.
In Borrowing Brilliance, author David Kord Murray suggests that some of the brightest, most creative ideas emerge by doing the opposite of what your closest competition is doing.
So when I see school sports in some ways adopting over-hyped and commercialized traits of major college and professional sports or in more ways drifting toward behaviors of non-school youth sports, I sense an absence of creative thinking and doing by the folks in charge.
This wouldn’t worry me if I didn’t foresee that when school sports become too much like non-school sports, folks will begin to earnestly question why schools are spending severely limited time and money duplicating non-school programs.
Which will cause schools to drop those programs – first at subvarsity levels, as is already occurring, and then at all levels.
Which will cause schools to lose what has been well documented to be a great motivator for improving student attendance and grade-point averages and reducing student discipline problems and dropout rates.
It is almost to the point where if I see non-school sports do one thing, I recommend school programs do the opposite.
- Make athletes pay to play?
- Schools should do the opposite!
- Make athletes transport themselves to events?
- Schools should do the opposite!
- Schedule lots of games and little practice?
- Schools should do the opposite!
- Schedule long-distance travel and national-scope events?
- Schools should do the opposite!
- Focus on individuals more than teams?
- Schools should do the opposite!
In anything and almost everything, in large matters or small, schools should tend toward the opposite of what they observe in much of non-school sports. It will likely be better for the student-athletes and tend to preserve the niche school sports has long enjoyed in the world of sports.