Skepticism
October 4, 2011
One of the greatest catalysts of the environmental movement in Michigan was the rise of the middle class working family as our state industrialized in the early 1900s. Forty-hour-a-week workers with good pay and benefits sought out clean rivers, streams, lakes and parks for recreation and relaxation during their weekends and vacations. Many industries that created the jobs soon realized they had to provide their employees a clean environment as well.
Now as we struggle through a prolonged period of economic malaise in America, economists and politicians focus on what is needed to stimulate growth in the U.S. and world economies. They appear to worship at the altar of economic expansion, few seeming to question if our planet can sustain the growth rates they pursue. What price to our environment does a robust economy extract?
Of course, it is easier for a person with a job, insured benefits and a retirement program to question the obsession with economic growth; but a job without clean air to breathe and water to drink will not be satisfying for long. So a healthy dose of skepticism about economic growth is needed.
As I read the scathing indictment of corruption in college sports in the October issue of The Atlantic Magazine, I kept thinking that a healthier dose of skepticism about ever-increasing hype might have avoided the crass commercialism and exploitation of what once was but may no longer be justifiably connected to institutions of higher learning.
And of course, a healthy dose of skepticism must be maintained by those in charge of school sports as we trend during difficult economic times in directions more commercial than our founding principles may have envisioned.
Researching Reclassification
January 25, 2013
The MHSAA was the first state high school association in the U.S. to divide its member schools into enrollment groups for season-ending tournament play. Over the years, in one form or another, all other statewide associations have done the same; and in more recent years, some have tweaked their systems to facilitate practical considerations of tournament administration or to address demographic or political shifts among their memberships.
Two forces have combined to bring increased attention to the participation of public and nonpublic schools in the same tournaments:
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First, as state associations expanded the number of classifications to provide more opportunities for their schools to experience tournament success, the percentage of nonpublic schools winning those championships has increased. Nonpublic schools rarely won any championships at all before the expansion to multiple classifications and especially to the additional expansion in football classifications. Public schools are not winning fewer championships today than years ago; they are merely winning a lower percentage of the championships now provided.
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Second, as state governments have reduced funding to public schools, those schools have been forced to reduce support for their sports programs and more often make them pay-as-you-go, much like nonpublic schools have operated for years. As pay-for-play and fundraising have been popularized in public schools, their “marketing advantage” over nonpublic schools has been diminished.
Often overlooked by those who call for separate tournaments for public and nonpublic schools is the fact that the majority of nonpublic schools rarely have had any success in statewide tournaments, and some have never had any success at all. An occasional District championship and a rare Regional trophy is the reality of most MHSAA member schools, both public and nonpublic. This, and the fact that "multipliers" have addressed only nonpublic schools and not also select-enrollment public schools (magnet, charter, choice), explains why MHSAA study groups have rejected the use of an automatic enrollment multiplier for nonpublic schools which is now in use in about 10 states.
Two other states have recently implemented a system that places schools in a classification for larger schools after they achieve a certain level of tournament success in the classification in which they would normally be placed. Of course, critics of this type of system that address the “chronically successful” are quick to point out that this does nothing for the school which is successful in the largest classification and tends to “penalize” next year’s students for the success of the previous years’ teams. Would it be right to force Ithaca High School into a higher classification in football in 2013 because it captured MHSAA titles in 2010, 2011 and 2012? And what would be done with Detroit Cass Technical after back-to-back titles in Division 1 of the Football Playoffs?
About these topics nationwide, there is much talk, some action, and no consensus.