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Special Delivery

February 23, 2016

If there is one month of the year that demonstrates the difference in the MHSAA today compared to a generation ago, it is February.

  • This is the month when 775 people, including more than 700 students, gathered for the MHSAA Women in Sports Leadership Conference in Lansing. This year’s was the 22nd edition of the conference.

  • This is the month when the 120 finalists and 32 recipients of the 2016 MHSAA Scholar-Athlete Award are announced. This is the program’s 27th year, sponsored by Farm Bureau Insurance.

  • This is the month when MHSAA staff is on the road to visit finalists for “Battle of the Fans V,” and thousands of students vote for their favorite on social media, and the MHSAA Student Advisory Council finalizes the selection of this year’s top cheering section.

For most of its history, the MHSAA worked with school personnel who then interacted with students. Today, the MHSAA delivers much more than its postseason tournaments directly to student-athletes, including captains clinics and sportsmanship summits all year round.

While this work must never displace from our top priority the development and delivery of eligibility competition standards that are safe and sound for an educational environment, these direct interactions inform the rules making process in very positive ways.

Conventional Wisdom

August 9, 2016

The conservative columnist George Will is a baseball junkie who recently hit a homerun in his commentary just prior to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He wrote that the show in Cleveland would focus on style and trivia more than the substantive trends of the world’s circumstances. 

Mr. Will speculated, and was proven correct, that the Cleveland circus would miss altogether serious developments in the South China Sea that are nearly as threatening as Hitler’s advance across Europe prior to the United States’ entering into what became World War II. He was referring to China’s aggression through the construction of islands and the conduct of military exercises in areas that the World Court has determined do not belong to China. This war on a pristine aquatic environment is upsetting the geopolitical order as well.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with sports except to point out the absurdities of our talking about trivia in one place while near tragedy goes unaddressed elsewhere ... which happens routinely in sports. For example:

  • In pro football, the talk is of “Deflategate” more than domestic violence. Or, as the most recent owners’ meeting reveals, on commerce more than concussions.

  • In college football, the talk is of billion dollar broadcast deals more than the broken bond between universities and the “students” they send far and wide to compete on television at any hour of any day.

  • And in school sports right here in Michigan, stakeholders perseverate about football playoff expansion more than football players’ health and safety. Or on end-of-season basketball tournament seeding more than out-of-season basketball insanity.

Our challenge is to listen to all concerns but to expend leadership capital only on the matters that really matter.