If I Were The New IHSAA Commissioner ...
January 29, 2020 at 4:30 a.m.
If I Were The New IHSAA Commissioner ...
By Roger Grossman-
He has been quite open about his reasons for leaving high school athletics’ governing body — he’s be doing it for 20 years and he’s ready to do something else.
He’s got a place on one of our local bodies of water, so we’re likely to see him a lot during the summers, and we’ll be glad to have him here more often. He’s a good guy— the best kind of guy.
In his nine years as commissioner of the IHSAA and 20 years on the board, the IHSAA has had remarkable peace. Sure, he’s had to oversee eligibility cases and brawl suspensions and normal stuff that the chief executive of a sports organization has to deal with. But he’s done a good job with those and has been pretty fair and used a common sense approach to dealing with people and schools in those cases.
I say that because I don’t want anything I am about to say to come across as critical of Cox in any way, shape or form. He’s done an excellent job, he will missed, and I consider him a friend.
I am also not planning to apply for the job opening.
However, I do have some ideas of things I might want to add or change if was going to do that. Again, not a criticism of Cox and the current leadership team — just a few things I think would be good ideas to implement if I were sitting in the big chair on North Meridian Street in Indianapolis.
If I were IHSAA commissioner, one thing I would like to see put in place is a tweak to the sectional tournaments in all sports that use brackets (so not golf, cross country etc., and not football). I would take away the host school’s ability to get a first round bye.
Hosting, for the team itself, is a huge advantage. Their gym. Their pitcher’s mound. Their tennis courts. The host school never has to travel to play and their fans don’t have to travel to watch the games and support their teams.
So I suggest that the host school be guaranteed to play in the first game of the tournament — you write them in on the very first line. It levels the playing field a little by making the host school play and win the maximum number of times to win a sectional. That would also increasing the money generated at the gate since they are likely to have the highest following.
My second suggestion would be to start seeding the sectionals. The top two teams in each sectional, as voted on by the coaches and athletic directors of the sectional schools, would be put in opposite sides of the brackets so that they would not meet until the championship if they advance that far. The rest of the teams would blindly placed into the brackets as they are now.
I fought this one for a while, but I have given in to it.
The IHSAA’s staff would observe the sectional meetings via video sources like Skype or some other video service, and intervene to break ties if that became necessary.
For selfish purposes, I want to require all coaches in all sports to post their team’s results and individual and team stats on a single website (Maxpreps is most commonly used now).
We live in a world where fans have more information about teams than ever before. It is ridiculous for coaches to continue to hide their stats from those outside their program in the name of not aiding opposing teams from preparing to play against them.
My job is to educate my listeners about not only the Tigers, but also who they are playing and how they match up against each other. The same is true of print and online media outlets. We just want to be able to do our jobs, and at the same time fans can look at the numbers themselves if they choose.
And, I hate to break it to coaches, but their counterparts are have been watching the videos of their games for a long, long time—they don’t need to see your stats to know what to expect.
As commissioner, participation would be mandatory, and would give a team 24 hours from the end of their game to enter their stats, and fines against the school would be high enough to discourage anyone from being late.
When I starting putting together thoughts on this column, the IHSAA had not mandated that someone at each baseball sectional site be the “official pitch count person” and given them a standard way to chart every pitch thrown.
They have since mandated that, and I applaud them for doing so.
I also am working on a formula so that most tournament games in the major sports would be played on weekends. Haven’t figured that one out yet, but I still haven’t given up on the concept yet.
I wish Bobby well, and I hope that he will drift past me on his favorite vessel and say “hello” while I am anchored and trying to put a modest dent in the local bluegill population.
He’s earned some free time.
He has been quite open about his reasons for leaving high school athletics’ governing body — he’s be doing it for 20 years and he’s ready to do something else.
He’s got a place on one of our local bodies of water, so we’re likely to see him a lot during the summers, and we’ll be glad to have him here more often. He’s a good guy— the best kind of guy.
In his nine years as commissioner of the IHSAA and 20 years on the board, the IHSAA has had remarkable peace. Sure, he’s had to oversee eligibility cases and brawl suspensions and normal stuff that the chief executive of a sports organization has to deal with. But he’s done a good job with those and has been pretty fair and used a common sense approach to dealing with people and schools in those cases.
I say that because I don’t want anything I am about to say to come across as critical of Cox in any way, shape or form. He’s done an excellent job, he will missed, and I consider him a friend.
I am also not planning to apply for the job opening.
However, I do have some ideas of things I might want to add or change if was going to do that. Again, not a criticism of Cox and the current leadership team — just a few things I think would be good ideas to implement if I were sitting in the big chair on North Meridian Street in Indianapolis.
If I were IHSAA commissioner, one thing I would like to see put in place is a tweak to the sectional tournaments in all sports that use brackets (so not golf, cross country etc., and not football). I would take away the host school’s ability to get a first round bye.
Hosting, for the team itself, is a huge advantage. Their gym. Their pitcher’s mound. Their tennis courts. The host school never has to travel to play and their fans don’t have to travel to watch the games and support their teams.
So I suggest that the host school be guaranteed to play in the first game of the tournament — you write them in on the very first line. It levels the playing field a little by making the host school play and win the maximum number of times to win a sectional. That would also increasing the money generated at the gate since they are likely to have the highest following.
My second suggestion would be to start seeding the sectionals. The top two teams in each sectional, as voted on by the coaches and athletic directors of the sectional schools, would be put in opposite sides of the brackets so that they would not meet until the championship if they advance that far. The rest of the teams would blindly placed into the brackets as they are now.
I fought this one for a while, but I have given in to it.
The IHSAA’s staff would observe the sectional meetings via video sources like Skype or some other video service, and intervene to break ties if that became necessary.
For selfish purposes, I want to require all coaches in all sports to post their team’s results and individual and team stats on a single website (Maxpreps is most commonly used now).
We live in a world where fans have more information about teams than ever before. It is ridiculous for coaches to continue to hide their stats from those outside their program in the name of not aiding opposing teams from preparing to play against them.
My job is to educate my listeners about not only the Tigers, but also who they are playing and how they match up against each other. The same is true of print and online media outlets. We just want to be able to do our jobs, and at the same time fans can look at the numbers themselves if they choose.
And, I hate to break it to coaches, but their counterparts are have been watching the videos of their games for a long, long time—they don’t need to see your stats to know what to expect.
As commissioner, participation would be mandatory, and would give a team 24 hours from the end of their game to enter their stats, and fines against the school would be high enough to discourage anyone from being late.
When I starting putting together thoughts on this column, the IHSAA had not mandated that someone at each baseball sectional site be the “official pitch count person” and given them a standard way to chart every pitch thrown.
They have since mandated that, and I applaud them for doing so.
I also am working on a formula so that most tournament games in the major sports would be played on weekends. Haven’t figured that one out yet, but I still haven’t given up on the concept yet.
I wish Bobby well, and I hope that he will drift past me on his favorite vessel and say “hello” while I am anchored and trying to put a modest dent in the local bluegill population.
He’s earned some free time.
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