The first defined season for school sports in Michigan came in 1930 for the sport of football.  As the years have passed, school administrators have found it necessary to adopt starting and ending dates, as well as maximums for the number of interscholastic scrimmages and contests, for each and every sport season in order to assure that . . .

• one sport did not conflict with other sports programs in the school;
• no sport interfered with other extracurricular activities of the school;
• sports did not interfere with the academic mission of the school;

and through their voluntary association, these administrators found it necessary to agree upon statewide maximums in order to promote the important value of fair competition between schools.

School administrators have learned from experience that to maintain competitive equity, it is not only necessary to define the interscholastic season and limit what can occur during it, but also it is necessary to define and limit what can occur out of season.  This has become increasingly challenging as school sports have expanded to include sports that were entrenched in community-run programs before they became school programs and as the coaching staffs of schools have had to expand beyond teaching faculty to adults in the community employed outside of schools.  It continues as an active topic of discussion for MHSAA meetings in 2011-12.

It is a compliment to the schools of Michigan, and a credit to the sound thinking of school administrators who have put the health, welfare and education of students above sports, that the portion of the MHSAA Handbook that has grown the largest and has been challenged the least in jurisprudence are Regulation II, Sections 10 and 11, which provide, respectively, the daily, weekly and season limitations for students as well as the in-season and out-of-season limitations for schools and their personnel.