UPSIDE DOWN & INSIDE OUT
November 2001

It was probably never perfectly so, but there was a time when we could say that the world of sport epitomized fairness. Certainly the sports world was as slow as the rest of society to treat the different races and genders even-handedly; but more than elsewhere, it was in sports where merit mattered. If you were good enough, you played; if not, you didn't.

In recent years, however, I've found myself looking at sports differently, now seeing that it epitomizes some of what is most unfair.
On the one hand I look at so many professional athletes with more money than they can ever spend, while on the other hand I see abject poverty in the cities cheering for those athletes.

On the one hand I see millionaires in the world of sports who lack brains, grace or both, while on the other hand I see teachers and pastors living hand to mouth.

The world's value system has been turned upside down. It's always bothered me. It bothers me even more that the world I love and serve – sports – is the most visible example of this perverted scheme.

We live at a time when much of life is turned upside down and inside out; and neither education nor educational athletics has been unaffected.
We pay college football and basketball coaches more than college physics and physical education professors. That's upside down. Then we support the exorbitant salaries of the football and basketball coaches with television revenue from advertisers whose products result in more dropouts and deaths to college-age youth than any other cause. That's inside out.

We pay one member of the Detroit Lions more in a year than we spend annually for the entire athletic program of the Detroit Public Schools. That's not uncommon, even understandable in a free enterprise system; but it's upside down.

We lower the standards of sportsmanship in direct proportion to the age and income of the athletes involved. The older the athlete, and the more we pay that athlete, the more immature the athlete is allowed to behave. Imperfect as it may be, the conduct of players, coaches and spectators at high school athletic events is far superior to that at college and professional events. That's good, from my perspective; but it's still upside down.
Try to find the physical education/intramurals/interscholastic athletics pyramid in our schools. If it can be found at all, it's upside down. We find communities much more inclined to give the elite athletes more and everyone else less.

In school athletics, we fire good teachers with poor win/loss records, while retaining poor teachers who have good win/loss records. That's inside out.
When there are financial problems, we cut junior high school programs before high school sports, JV programs before varsity sports, and non-revenue programs before revenue producing sports; all of which is upside down. And we get so twisted inside out to fund what's left of our program that we must use rationale to justify our actions that once we were so sure was wrong that it didn't even require discussion.

In a discussion about the problems brought to school sports by outside sports programs, my counterpart in another state high school association stood at a National Federation meeting and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, we are in sales. We've got to sell our product, sell our programs; or get buried by all the other sports programs that do."

Maybe. But we'd better be careful we're not selling the wrong things.

What are we Selling?
One of the things I noticed in 1986 when I became director of the Michigan High School Athletic Association was that on every issue of our monthly Bulletin was a picture of a committee. A group of adults who were busy making the rules and regulations for MHSAA tournaments.
I said to my colleagues that this featured the wrong things: the process, not the product; adults, not kids; rules, not results, not education.
So we changed our publication covers so that almost every issue has pictures of students competing. There are also coaches coaching and officials officiating; but mostly there are athletes competing on the covers of the MHSAA monthly Bulletin.
I have a copy of the Bulletin of another state high school association that begs us to ask the question, what is it selling? There isn't a kid pictured anywhere, only logos of corporate sponsors - 16 of them - and it's like this with every issue.
Perhaps we are in sales, and maybe we're selling the wrong things.
I may be old fashioned, but knowing that I'm living at a time when wrong seems right, and knowing that we sometimes sell the wrong things, I worry when another state high school association that I respect very much adds a "slam dunk" contest and a three-point shooting contest to its state high school basketball tournament.

The intentions are good, certainly: to return fan interest to the state basketball tournament. But is this addition for a few athletes really healthy? Did these few athletes need any more attention?

Are well selling education; or are we selling entertainment? Are we selling education; or are we just selling seats in an arena?

We are in sales, I suppose; but too often we're selling the wrong things. Sometimes we're selling to expand our support and services to schools, which is good. But just as often we are selling to enhance our status as associations or to ensure our survival.

This is exactly what I think of when I hear that the National Federation of State High School Associations is again promoting the idea of its sponsorship of national high school championships.

Henry Merritt Wriston, former president of Lawrence University, said this about college athletics in The Liberal Educator in 1937: "The institution which exploits youth for profit or publicity betrays its calling; it impairs or destroys its capacity to fulfill its function."

In the video series "Questions of Faith," author Will Campbell states: "Sooner or later, every institution comes to exist for its own sake, for its own growth, for its own well-being, for those who are profiting by it." I think this describes many state high school associations, even occasionally the Michigan High School Athletic Association.

Campbell states: "Every institution eventually becomes corrupt, at least in the sense that it becomes focused on its own needs." That seems to describe many states which have turned to lotteries to help fund education and to many schools which promote 50/50 drawings to support athletics. These gimmicks are regressive taxation at their best, and gambling at their worst; and they convey the not-so-hidden message that luck is more important than study, discipline and hard work, the opposite message we would hope to convey in education.

These are not activities consistent with our purposes; these are not activities worthy of our purposes. And the cost is the effectiveness of the very organizations formed to protect high school athletics, which means the cost is the programs themselves.

Campbell also states: "All organizations are disappointing because they do a lot that is different from and even contradictory to what they were created to do, designed to do, and originally intended to do." How many organizations, foundations and even colleges and universities are now operating in ways today that would be appalling to those who created them for different purposes?

How appalling would the agenda of today’s National Federation look to those who created it in the 1920s?

Where is the Greatest Threat?

As disheartening as the lack of purpose and principle at the state and national levels has been, it is not the greatest threat to the future of educational athletics.

In the early 1990s we thought the greatest threat was posed at the national level with national tournaments, national television and commercialization and exploitation in so many ways, shapes and forms. So Michigan schools responded with tighter limits on interstate travel, prohibitions on live television and prohibitions on outside compensation to coaches.

But now we see – made wiser by the passage of years – that the greatest threat to educational athletics wasn't and isn't at the national level, but comes from the local, grass roots level.

I refer to the attitudes and actions of people in our local communities who have forgotten or who have never known the pure purpose of educational athletics. Who see interscholastic athletics for their own glory more than students' education. Who see interscholastic athletics as a means for scholarships to college more than scholarship in high school.

Who not only want their team to win, but to win big. Who not only want their child to play, but to play all the time. Who see everything in life as a right they are owed, and who see everything that goes wrong as someone else's fault.

We have been contacted by a parent who was upset that his son did not win our Scholar-Athlete Award, and demanded to know what criteria was used, who the judges were, and the names and addresses and phone numbers of the finalists. We were worried that this father would call and harass the finalists for receiving what the father thought his son should get. Like he had a right to it. Like we owed it to his son.

When I say the greatest threat is not national but local and grass roots, I refer also to people I saw at an all-day, all ages wrestling meet. Ten year olds with tattoos. Babes in arms carried to wrestling mats to compete and then be lifted from the mats to go back to the bleachers. Children who refused to wrestle. Many who cried before, during and after they wrestled.

I refer also to parents who bring to school sports an intractable zeal to have school sports run like community sports. With early and intense specialization; cutting and select teams for elementary school age children; state, regional and national championships for junior high youth; large trophies and long trips.
Unless we change those attitudes and actions, school sports are in danger. For if school sports (educational athletics) are not different from community sorts programs, then there's no reason for schools to give their name or their money to them. Schools will drop their sponsorship of sports if school sports don't provide something unique from community sports programs.

We must delight in being different, for it is in these differences that the place of school sports is preserved in the world of sports and, more importantly, in the world of education, preserved as a tool for schools to reach and motivate students and to provide them practical experiences in teamwork and hard work, discipline and dedication, leadership and sportsmanship, loyalty and school spirit, sacrifice and self-control.

Our nation has never, ever needed these qualities more than today.

--MHSAA Executive Director Jack Roberts