Let me know if you can run this and how much it'll cost.

Today's e-mail, man wants us to send him a copy of our box score format for preps so he can fill it out every time his 12-and-under baseball team plays a game and send it to us. E-mailed him back, said we don't run box scores/linescores for any local results other than varsity preps. He said that his baseball team is just as important as the high schools.

 

This might be a little off-topic, but we've been getting these "grandson/granddaughter does well on out-of-state prep team" submissions. Our policy is if the kid was originally from the area, it gets in as a brief, but if not, no way. Anyone have similar policies?

 

I have no formal policy, but I agree with what you're doing. We have to draw the line somewhere, and even in those submissions, I make damn sure the kid himself/herself is the story and not the team. It was their choice to go play elsewhere in many cases, and that city's newspaper can cover the team on a regular basis. If the kid does something feature-worthy or note-worthy, then maybe I have some interest in it.

 

Had a lady come in the other day, wanted to know about getting a thank-you article to the local high school booster club.
M=me
SH= Stupid hag

M: Um, that's not what we do.
SH: Well If i wrote one would you run it
M: No ma'am, it's more of an ad, and if you want an ad, you can speak to our ad department Or if you want to write a letter you can send one to our letter to the editors.
SH: Will they put it in and ad for free?
M: I doubt it ma'am, but you'd have to ask them.
SH: Well, I guess I can pay for it. That's fine
<Slight pause as she resigns herself to go see the ad people>
SH: Well, is there any other way we could get it in for free?
M: Well, there is the letter to the ditor.
SH: Yeah, but not everybody reads those.
M (and I shouldn't have said it, but I did): Nor does everyone read the ads.
SH: Yeah. Do they run all the letters to the editor?
M: Mostly.
SH: Will they run this one?
M: Probably, we don't get a lot. If you want to ask or have questions, I can get the editor's secretary for you.
SH: Do they only run on Sundays?
M: The letters to the editor? They mainly run on Sundays, but they run other days as well. Again I can get the secretary who can answer your questions.
SH: Okay, I think I'll just get an ad.

Then....then....then.....she leaves the building. HELLO. THE AD DEPARTMENT IS INSIDE THE BUILDING!

 

Not a bad idea, I've been bit on the butt by this one.
Kid who briefly lived in the area when he was an infant, was a first round MLB draft choice, but played on the other side of the state and I didn't know that his grandparents lived in town and were also high-profile advertisers.
His team was in the state tournament and when I get back from the tourney, the editor calls me into the office and I get quizzed on why I didn't do more on his games. The out-of-the coverage area games in a class that had no local teams playing in it.
I finally get the grandparents on the phone and they are just grilling me. I finally get around to asking them why didn't they tell me this before the state tournament started.
They had forgotten and that calmed them down a little bit. We eventually ended up running a mammoth feature on the kid.
But if you run a prep notebook, that is a good place to stick those kinds of things.

 

They will, ultimately, win.

All the doom-and-gloom caterwauling (not enough gyms, not enough refs, every school will have to drop basketball, yadda yadda) by the MHSAA and the status-quo diehards is bullshit. Forty-nine other states do it the other way. It can be done.

 

But why should it be?
Just because everyone else does it this way, doesn't mean it's right. Other states, four I can think of, did it this way until recent years.
There is no discrimination here. They get their own seasons, there is no conflict with gym time.
The whiny moms sued and lost because they sued under the 14th amendment, when they should have sued under Title IX. Since the Department of Justice ruled the TIME of year a sport is played is not grounds for discrimination, the MHSAA should win/
The original argument wasnt over gym time, it was that it denied them an opportunity for scholarships. College coaches love it because they can see the players in seasons opposite their own and have sent in briefs to that effect. The MHSAA has no obligation to provide a schedule that is convenient for AAU teams.
It is far from bullshit.

 

No other states do it that way now -- Michigan is the lone holdout. And yes, if EVERYONE else does it the other way, it DOES mean that they are right. The other states have all switched when faced with certain defeat in court, as Michigan is now.

Directly comparable boys and girls sports -- baseball/softball included -- should be played at the same time of year. Regardless of how convenient it is or seems to be for anyone.

Equal opportunity, or lack thereof, for both genders.

I hope when the courts finally order the change, they do it on about August 15, and they order it to be implemented IMMEDIATELY, that is, right that minute.

Leave it up to the MHSAA, they'll dick around with it for another 25 years. They could be ordered by the Supreme Court to make the change, and claim they need 6-8 years to "properly prepare and implement" the change. Baloney. You've known it was coming for 10 years. Everybody else does it. Shut up, quit stalling and make the change.

 

Oh no. I'm only a few posts into this thread, and my eyes are already filled with tears of laughter.

 

This is going to sound like a stupid question (as opposed to a Stupid question), but fuck it, everyone already thinks I'm a retard anyway:

What sort of precedent, if any, is there for someone suing because they moved from a neighboring state that ran its girls soccer or volleyball season at a different time than the state to which they moved? Where I am, we do boys and girls soccer in the spring. In the state to our south, they do boys in the fall and girls in the spring. Would they have a case, and is it discrimination for the two soccers in my neighboring state to run in different seasons too?

 

No, several states run at the same time; several states do it differently.
Again, despite what Starman thinks (and I agree with him on a lot of issues, but not this one), the time of year is not germain to dscrimination.

Believe me, as entrenched you are as thinking the MHSAA is a bozo organization, you have no idea how correct it does things until you go elsewhere. Three months into my new state, I told the MHSAA's mouthpiece I'd never bitch about his group again.

 

Last I heard, most high school coaches in Michigan opposed the change. They said it doesn't hurt the girls one way or the other in recruiting. And if the different seasons really were a disadvantage, don't you think these coaches (especially the women) would be in favor of changing seasons?