Pontiac Central played their final boys' basketball game last night. Birmingham Seaholm sent the Chiefs into the history books with a 67-47 defeat in a Division 1 district game.

With apologies to Denzel Washington, today, I find it apropos to make a statement about this quiet passing.

Remember the Chiefs.

There was no ceremony, no remembrance and none of the passion and pride for the city of Pontiac the Chiefs used to evoke. In that way, Central's last game was very Brooklyn Dodger-esque. The Dodgers played their final game at a decaying Ebbets Field on September 24, 1957 and sadness and bitterness converged for the Ghosts of Flatbush at the intersection of Bedford, Sullivan and McKeever Place. A scant 6,702 showed for the final game versus Pittsburgh. Brooklyn blanked the Bucs, 2-0.

There's a sense of sadness in Pontiac today because the Chiefs left the prep basketball landscape rather meekly, similar to Royal Oak Dondero's final football season. Central and rival Pontiac Northern will merge after this year. Teachers are being fired en masse. It's going to be a difficult transition, mashed into a five-month timetable. Pontiac's consolidation is considerably different than Royal Oak's Kimball & Dondero from three years ago. Some, including Coach Chuck Jones, thought the 'new' Royal Oak High School should be re-named with the 'old' name of Acorns and given a color combination of the blue n' white of Dondero and the blue n' gold of Kimball, merged into the 'new' blue, gold & white of Royal Oak High.

That's not an option in Pontiac. The Chiefs are Pontiac like the Tigers' olde English 'D' is Detroit. Only in the last 10-15 years did Central finally omit the 'Pontiac' from their uniforms and go with the word 'Central'. I'm researching Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries and the contribution from Pontiac Central High to metro Detroit's basketball heritage is comparable to what Catholic Central or Brother Rice added to the Catholic League.

~The Elusive Championship~

Of course, you might be inclined to tell me that Catholic Central and Brother Rice, the last two private schools to win a Class A boys' basketball title in Michigan, have indeed won championships. And Central's city rival, Pontiac Northern, won back-to-back Class A titles in 2001-02. Central never did.

True, it never happened when it mattered most for Pontiac Central. The Chiefs never won any of the five Class A title games they played in. But the NCAA tells us the 'Fab Five' never happened at Michigan, too. Does anyone really believe those Michigan Wolverines didn't leave a lasting impact on college basketball just because the NCAA says so? From 1959-79, Pontiac Central went to 11 MHSAA semifinals -- in 20 years! Zero wins in those title games might make them the Buffalo Bills or Minnesota Vikings of prep cagers in the eyes of some. It's fair. But Art VanRyzin and Ralph Grubb, Pontiac's coaches during this amazing era, never gave up, never quit trying. Further, the Chiefs didn't just compete but were a perennial power in the Saginaw Valley Conference. There was not a single prep league in the entire state of Michigan better than 'The Valley' during that time period.

Perhaps it was fitting that Seaholm and Central were paired for Central's last hurrah. Seaholm was formerly the original Birmingham High Maples and Central was originally Pontiac High's Chiefs. Birmingham and Pontiac were longtime prep football, basketball and baseball rivals for many years until the early 1960s.

The Chiefs shouldn't be forgotten as soon as the horn went silent to end their final game. Remember the battles that Pontiac High and later, Pontiac Central played that made your heart throb. Remember the Friday nights they made so memorable in so many different seasons. Remember the simetaneous hope and heartache they represented in Pontiac for so many years. Remember the Russell brothers. Remember Bill Glover, who was the heart and soul of Central for so many years.

Remember the Chiefs.

(Picture courtesy The Oakland Press/Feb. 1971/Rolf Winter)

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Rivalries, due August 2009 from Arcadia Publishing.

Yesterday Detroit Pershing took down fellow eastside rival Detroit Southeastern to win their first Public School League (PSL) championship in boys' basketball since the 1996 Doughboys. The Catholic High School League (CHSL) will play their girls' championship this weekend and their boys' title tilts next weekend.

Make no mistake, these are great traditions and any suburbanite who's never attended at least one of these tournament championships is missing out on a great day of basketball. It's a great thrill for the players, coaches and fans of the schools participating. It's a healthy exercise in fellowship within your community of schools. Finally, championship tournaments create buzz about school sports, and when is that not a good thing?

So why don't the bigger suburban leagues have a championship tournament? The PSL and Catholic League aren't exactly using dollar bills for scrap paper these days. In fact, these two leagues are hit harder than any of the suburban public schools by the recent economic hardship. ThePSL has had nearly 100 tournaments since 1904 and the Catholic League is less than a generation behind their PSL soul mate.

The suburbs? Zero and counting. In New York City, many of the public schools don't even bother to participate in the New York state tournament because the NYC title means so much more. Thankfully, nearly all our schools participate in the annual MHSAA tournament. We could have the best of both worlds -- why don't we?

Here's the facts. Suburban schools, specifically the Oakland Activities Association (OAA) and Macomb Area Conference (MAC), have a number of schools that could host games as neutral sites. Parking, seating, lockers and security in some of these modern schools is not an issue like it is in the parochial and Detroit public schools.

Let me take it a step further: How much fun would it be to include the OAA and MAC champions in an Operation Friendship Final Four? Are you kidding? A potential quarterfinal, semifinal or finals preview? Clarkston v. Pershing? How fast can you spell 'sold out' on the eve of the MHSAA tournament? Would it not be a great opportunity to share the respective communities with one another through school sports? There's great life lessons to be learned here through b-ball.

Unfortunately, it looks like the OAA could be a candidate to dissolve before an idea like a conference tournament, much less a super-conference Final Four, even takes hold. Maybe a tournament could help hold theOAA together. The MAC isn't going anywhere soon.

I hope someone grabs the ball and get things rolling.

Yesterday I worked with veteran Detroit-area prep official Mike Hesson for a boys' basketball game between visiting Avondale High and the Rochester Adams' Highlanders.

Hesson's a walking, talking memoir of officiating's local history within a 30-year time period that dates back to the heady days of his sports officiating class at East Detroit High in the mid-to-late 1970s. Among the fond memories we reminisced from Hesson's treasure-trove of recollections was the creation of the officiating uniform.

Yes, there was a day when even the niftiest officiating uniforms were piece-mailed together from stops at uniform stores, restaurants with yellow napkins and sporting good stores that carried BB's, golf balls or fishing tackle.

"You purchased the striped shirts from local sporting goods stores," Hesson began. "But there was no choice in material so you chose long sleeves or short sleeves and were happy to have that choice. Striped jackets weren't available, so on inclement days, officials wore clear vinyl or plastic jackets. On cold days you added sweatshirts and long johns."

"Knickers weren't available -- and you couldn't use baseball pants because there were no pockets on those pants -- so officials would buy 'Cook's Whites' from a restaurant supply store and cut the pants down into knickers," Hesson recalled. "And all officials knew the Detroit-area restaurants with yellow napkins. You would have dinner there and forget a yellow napkin in your pocket. The napkin would be filled with BB's, sinkers or possibly a golf ball, and that's how you made your penalty flag."

Even more inconceivable is the way all the other accessories were created, like the bean bag, timing devices, all-black shoes and the game's Back Judge (BJ). Yes, the BJ was a accessory, a luxury even, if you will.

"Without a doubt, the schools were shamed into the fifth guy. I think it was '82 or '83 when the MHSAA (Michigan High School Athletic Association) started using the Back Judge for playoff games. Most crews were bring five guys and splitting four checks by that point anyway," Hesson explained. Ironically, the back judge position is where most varsity crew rookies get their start, yet the few flags the BJ throws per game usually all have the potential to be the most-scrutinized calls of the night.

"I can't remember if a bean bag was required when I got started, but it was a process of taking material from an old shirt, filling it with popcorn and sewing it up," Hesson said. "There were no all-in-one socks, either. First it was a black stirrup sock with a white sock over the top. Then we changed to a baseball stirrup with three stripes until we changed to the socks we have today."

"And there were no timing devices!" Hesson told me. "Oh my god, you would wear a coaches' stopwatch with a wristband that railroad people used to wear the watch on your wrist." Hesson also explained black shoes were a rarity and choice was limited to Spot-Bilt or Ridell. Most officials would buy a pair of all-black shoes and have a new sole applied, because you couldn't use football cleats -- they weren't available in all-black back then.

Today, it's all point 'n click on the Internet with drop shipping included. In less than five minutes an official can have his or her entire uniform ordered and fulfilled. The two biggest national officiating apparel giants are located less than seven miles from each other in the same town, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Cliff Keen Athletic and Honig's Whistle Stop.

Back in the day it was about a Cup o' Joe, a diner's special and a stop at the marina or bait-and-tackle shop, all to make a few calls and few bucks along the way.

(Photo courtesy Stan Lopata family collection)

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries (already out) and Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, due August 2009 from Arcadia Publishing.

I was listening to WXYT's afternoon drive-time show called The Sports Inferno last week when I became amused with what I heard from New York native /reborn Detroiter Mike Valenti.

"Let's get down to brass taxes..." Valenti said as he began one of his legendary rants about whatever. Don't get me wrong --I enjoy Valenti, because he is like me and simply tells you how he sees it without any holdout -- but he's the classic example of a sports fan with a radio show, a point he'll readily admit. There's nothing wrong with it, either.

What amused me is the 'brass taxes' thing. It's brass tacks. This is an example of how time changes history in subtle ways. Brass tacks was a way of measuring cloth, linen or anything else by the yard on a counter. A person would come in and ask for so much of this or that, and the actual cost would be determined by placing the material on the counter against the ruler held in place with brass tacks, thus the phrase, "Let's get down to brass tacks."
Here's another one: Toe The Line. How many times have you heard it repeated as Tow The Line? Or the oft-heard phrase, "It's a dog-eat-dog world." I've heard that catch-phrase repeated many times as 'Doggy-dog' world.

Here's why I bring this up: History is important. It shows us the right and wrong in the world before us, thus the coined phrase, "Those who do not heed history are doomed to repeat it."
I'm writing a prep basketball history book and I'm waist-deep in the city of Detroit right now. Among the interesting facts I've learned from basketball research as it relates to metro Detroit? The 30-year absence by Detroit's public school teams from the Michigan High School Athletic Association's annual boys' basketball tournament from 1931-1961. The seed of racial mistrust in Detroit is one planted long before riots and failed urban renewal.

Here's another one: School sports might have saved the city before and after the 1967 riots. The divisive busing issue was so strongly contested that many coaches and players from that era were literally scared to travel outside of their neighborhoods, but school sports was a respected rite of passage, almost an institution in Detroit. Rival schools of various religious and ethnic backgrounds might not have gotten along on any day -- save for game day. It was on these days they respected one another, played hard and shook hands after the game. That very well might have kept the city from an all-encompassing implosion that would have made the '67 riots look like a small camp fire easily doused with canteen water.

If you think the Detroit PSL doesn't have friends, consider the Catholic League fought long and hard alongside the PSL schools in the 1970s to get millage and bond requests passed. What would Detroit's schools look like today had it not been for a lil' neighborly love 30 years ago?

And what of the other history not so easily interwoven into prep sports?

The decision to plow through neighborhoods with concrete freeways did little but speed up fears of intermixed, racially-charged neighborhoods. If you look at the pictures of football and basketball, schools and neighborhoods radically changed within a few years. Today our freeways in Detroit do little but expose the worst homes and buildings within eyeshot, because really, who wants to live next to a freeway and have to leave your garage at 55 miles an hour? When's the last time you heard a neighborhood benefited from have an eight-lane ribbon of concrete driven through its heart? And if you think a freeway is bad, what about displacing the many for a hulking auto complex -- remember Poletown?

Finally, I've learned that while Kwame Kilpatrick and Coleman Young weren't great leaders, neither were a lot of their white predecessors, like Charles Bowles, Louis C. Miriani and a laundry list of leaders remembered for their poor decisions as much as any positive accomplishments. The decision to allow auto companies to erect massive auto factories in the middle of neighborhoods without a lick of civil engineering 80-90 years ago has continually crippled a lot of potential re-birth. The refusal to replace trolleys with elevated or tunnel trains, eliminating the trolleys altogether and the final legitimate transit piece, the removal of the Inter-Urban lines. This straddled the city with empty buildings and no motivation to turn them into anything but gravel lots to park suburban cars upon.

There's a ton of unique story lines and historical references that continue to co-exist with us in our daily lives. In that way, Detroit is just as compelling as Chicago, Boston and New York City. We have a lot of things wrong about the Motor City but an open canvas to remake the city, the region and the landscape we call home for the better.

All that and more is possible if we heed history and stay away from brass taxes, whatever those are.

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, due August 2009 from Arcadia Publishing.

Pontiac Central High is closing in what's become the worst-kept secret since Major League Baseball's strike of 1994. Schools come and go all the time, but Central is more than a come-and-go school.

Pontiac Central is Pontiac's heritage, history and heartbeat. The school's nickname of Chiefs honors the city's namesake, Chief Pontiac. The school's colors of black and orange are as time-honored in prep circles, in some respects, as Michigan's maize n' blue. Finally, consider Central's premiere basketball history. Certainly city rival Pontiac Northern would stake a claim in any supremacy argument but the Huskies aside, what Oakland County school not named Country Day can make such a boastful claim?

Pontiac's public school leadership has a scant eight months to avoid the mistakes Royal Oak made, mistakes it had three years to overcome. When Royal Oak announced in 2004 that Kimball and Dondero, described by The Detroit News as 'historic rivals', would merge as one high school in 2006, a war of cultures ensued. The Dondero contingent, heartbroken their school would shutter in favor of hated Kimball, embarked to destroy the cultures at both schools, ensuring Kimball's legacy died, too. The 'new' Royal Oak High, with new nickname, school colors and traditions, hasn't overcome the legacy of its' former Kimball name.

The Royal Oak rivalry had been dead for years because Kimball dominated the final 15 scholastic seasons, but instead of making the combined school colors blue, gold and white or hanging banners from each former school in the new school, Royal Oak choose to bury their prep sports history of the past 100 years.

Central and Northern in basketball was very much like Kimball and Dondero for 35 years in football. Do you think the kids in Pontiac will have more than a few verbal and physical battles over their former school's legacy? Let's hope the 'new' Pontiac High School represents the contributions from each former school instead of shuttering their considerable past, as was done in Royal Oak.

FIGHT NOT RIGHT: Birmingham Seaholm's 69-46 win at Ferndale last week was marred by an ugly fight that prematurely ended the contest. Game officials declared the contest complete with 6:45 remaining in the fourth quarter after fans not representing the participating schools commenced a fistfight in the bleachers and risers that spilled onto the court, says Ferndale Athletic Director Shaun Butler.

"This was the result of non-students from either school -- it was not a problem between students of Ferndale or Seaholm," said Butler, who declined further comment except to say only Ferndale students with current, valid student identification cards will be admitted into Ferndale home games for the remainder of the season. There's a long history of good relations between both schools for over 50 years since Ferndale opened in 1958 to replace outdated Lincoln High. Birmingham High was remaned Seaholm in the early 1960s. The two cities paired their public schools against one another in all sports for over 80 years.

Butler and Seaholm athletic director Aaron Frank have plenty of experience hosting marquee events that will draw larger-than-usual crowds for prep sports. Ferndale has annually hosted one of the most prominent MHSAA boys' basketball quarterfinals in the history of the Class A or Division 1 bracket, and Seaholm has hosted one of the biggest quarterfinals in baseball, as well as some of the biggest prep football games in metro Detroit's history.

It's safe to say neither of these men are candidates to fall asleep at the wheel in their duties of stewarding their school's athletic department. The perpetrators of this fight have only hurt themselves and prep fans around them who don't have family-related interest in Ferndale's basketball team, and that benefits no one.

RIVALRY REPORT: Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries might not have changed much in the present except improving memories of prep football's past, but I can say I've noticed a slight change my book may have cultured.

Most metro newspapers big and small now make a concerted effort to highlight the rivalry games between inter-city schools, league foes and tournament tilts, even in the roundup, agate-like listings. While I would never be so bold to claim anything more, I'm proud that my book, in an innocuous way, brought a bit more cache and attention to prep rivalries in metro Detroit.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries from Arcadia Publishing. Cameron's 2nd title, Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, is due August 2009.

Editor's Note: Content updated at 5:00pm on December 28 to correct references to Butch Jones, mistakenly identified as Butch Davis.

DETROIT -- The catcalls, snickers and jokes remain, but if accepting a bid to the Motor City Bowl means Central Michigan University is playing football every year after Christmas, CMU coach Butch Jones welcomes all barbs.

Jones guided the Chippewas on Friday night in a hard-fought 24-21 loss to Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in front of 41,399 at Ford Field. The Owl win was the 12th edition of the annual game, which has more than earned its' keep in 12 years of successful pairings. The Rose Bowl it's not, but the Motor City Bowl (MCB) is no Cherry Bowl, the ill-fated game that managed just two turns in the mid 1980s in the Pontiac Silverdome. In 1984 Michigan State helped bring around 70,000 into the 'Dome for the inagural game but the Spartans dropped a 10-6 decision. The next year the game was broke before kickoff and Cherry Bowl unceremoniously fell from the vine of college football bowl games.

MCB immediately struck an alliance between two neighboring conferences, the Mid-American Conference and the Big Ten. Aside from revenue giant sports football and basketball, the two conferences are competitive in many sports, the rare upset on the gridiron or hardwood notwithstanding. But Motor City Bowl has helped the MAC -- a bowl-starved conference -- attain a footing among major college football's elite, and perhaps no school or coach has been a better beneficiary than CMU and Jones.

Jones has succeeded former CMU coach Brian Kelly's success without missing a beat, in part because the Chippewas have made the Motor City Bowl a three-year tradition that means more than simply playing a football game on Boxing Day. In short, it allows the Chippewas to be a major player within recruiting circles that encompass metro Detroit's talent-rich, three-county footprint. "Without a doubt, the access created by playing a bowl game in our backyard, so to speak, is priceless," Jones said. "Our staff made a commitment to recruiting Michigan, and our success is predicated on how well we recruit Michigan. Playing in the Motor City Bowl has made such a huge difference in our program's success in recent years."

To wit, the Chippewas boast 16 players from the tri-county area, including seven from Oakland County. Three players hail from Lake Orion, a runner-up in this year's MHSAA Division 1 football finals. There's four players from Detroit's proper and three from Warren's De LaSalle High, making CMU's roster one stocked from all corners of Michigan and fortified with a large bounty from metro Detroit. Playing in the Motor City Bowl three straight years has contributed to Central's success on signing day.

Like Florida Atlantic, a school with hardly an ounce of name recognition in major college football just a handful of years ago, the Chippewas are a rare story that few schools could even hope to emulate today. In the early 1970s, Central Michigan and fellow in-state rival Eastern Michigan University were powerhouse NAIA schools who made the leap from small-time Christian athletics to Division-I status. While Eastern struggled in the late 70s and early 80s, Central Michigan flourished and thrived under a former Oakland County coach, Herb Deromedi. When Roy Kramer left CMU in the late 1970s, the former Royal Oak High grad and Kimball High coach began a 20-year reign in Mt.Pleasant that landed him in the college football hall-of-fame.

However, a not-so-rare story followed Deromedi's departure. The Chippewas struggled to regain that winning form. After Kelly quickly made CMU successful again, he was poached just as quickly by Cincinnati. Enter Jones, with an already strong acumen for recruiting and chalkboard strategy. Add CMU's trifecta of bowl appearances in Detroit and the Chippewas have re-chartered their path for annual success.

"We're very proud to represent our conference and our state in Detroit," Jones said."If being successful means coming to the Motor City Bowl three straight years, I'll take that success every day of the week as opposed to staying home for the holidays."

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, due August of 2009 from Arcadia Publishing.

For all the nay-saying and negative news pouring out of Michigan these days, there's still a lot to brag about in our state. We still have the charter game of the marquee weekend in pro football's regular season with the Thanksgiving Day matinee. Yes, the Detroit Lions haven't been compelling theater in nearly three consecutive presidential terms, but I'll address that later.

Following the annual Turkey Day game, the Michigan High School Athletic Association holds it's yearly football finals at Ford Field, another Michigan tradition since the mid-to-late 1970s at the Pontiac Silverdome. There was a tremendous crowd for yesterday's Lake Orion - Rockford matchup, the gold stamp contest among eight different championship games over Friday and Saturday. I would guesstimate the assembled masses at near 20,000 for the Division I final, and I'm surprised it wasn't significantly more.

I'm surprised because we've all heard so much about our dying economy's terrifying effects of the last nearly two years. There's thousands of houses in foreclosure, jobs literally evaporating, credit virtually impossible to secure, the list is endless. Yet the Lions, at 0-11 and practically begging for people to buy tickets, get a sellout on Thanksgiving at over $40 a ticket and parking around the stadium going for $50 a car. The MHSAA? Despite the great turnout, they still had seats to spare in the endzones of the lower bowl in Ford Field. For the cost of a $10 ticket, a fan gets four games and parking locked in at $6 per car at a handful of lots, making the day-long experience of four games at Ford Field less than dinner for two at a coney island.

I'm very surprised that more fans don't take advantage of the incredible value that is the MHSAA football finals. Yes, this is a Lions town and Detroit fans have supported their team in even the most head-turning times (for example, this year, right?), so that much I understand. It's this loyalty that makes Detroit one of the nation's great sports towns.

I've sometimes been critical of the MHSAA, like many coaches, administrators, fans and fellow officials have been on many different issues. That's life. Sometimes my writing and refereeing is seen as dead-on and other times it's viewed with a less complimentary eye. After two years of attending the football finals in two different capacities, I'm floored at how effective a small army of dedicated athletic administrators, aka the MHSAA, are at transforming a mammoth, 65,000-seat facility that earned a SuperBowl and a Final Four into an incredible experience for 16 competing schools and all the marching bands, cheer squads, pom-pon teams and dance corps that accompany the championship teams. The MHSAA is to be applauded for that.

Last year I volunteered as a down box linesman for two of the eight games, and this year I covered the Lake Orion - Rockford matchup for The Oakland Press. You can read my championship game sidebar story that ran in today's edition here, and the Lake Orion - Dearborn Fordson retrospective that ran last week is linked here. I've often wondered aloud why the MHSAA doesn't share it's championship experience with a greater pool of officials, and the MHSAA has begun to address this very issue in a more proactive manner. Yet after this weekend, I can say with absolute conviction that Michigan's football finals is an incredible experience in a mesmerizing venue and it's something anyone associated with prep football should support in earnest. That might mean pushing hard to earn a finals assignment as a contest official, or volunteer as an administrator or coach, or simply purchase a few tickets and bring the family.

It's really an incredible undertaking and one that is done for the kids, which makes it all the more remarkable in today's economic climate. There are game site options available to the MHSAA that would be much more cost-friendly than Ford Field. The MHSAA gets no discount to play their championship at the Lions' facility because to Ford Field, it's just another date that could be booked with a different event, and you don't stay in business giving your product away all the time. There's no media discount either -- the cost to hook up to Ford Field's BlueZone internet service on a per day, per reporter basis was $30, the same as a Lions game. Yet the finals continue to be held at the state's premiere facility because our Michigan schools, stocked by Michigan families, expect no less of an experience than the generation before them, and the MHSAA is committed to delivering on that promise.

Our state's communities get a SuperBowl-quality experience in a SuperBowl venue -- and how many prep football fans around the country can say that?

~ T.C. Cameron is writing Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, due in August 2009 from Arcadia Publishing.

This morning Detroit Free Press preps writer Mick McCabe grabbed the attention of every official in the metro Detroit area, and probably many statewide, too.

McCabe wrote about the standard to bear for a game official to be assigned the tournament finals, including the way an official receives a rating, a lack of accountability if an official makes a mistake and finally, why the best officials aren't always on the biggest games because the state has a five-year respite rule for officials between finals' assignments.

A great read and a good snapshot of the officiating culture in the MHSAA footprint, except for one missing point, a large point of contention if you ask me and many others, and it has to do with why officials who work the finals can't receive the same assignment for another five seasons.

The five-year respite rule is in place because the same officials from the same zones got the same championship assignments for years and years and years under former leadership. Why did that happen? One, there was no such rule to prohibit the practice. Second, every officiating association is asked to submit a list of 10 names for the annual, championship tournaments. Many years the favorite sons of the power brokers in these associations were penned in at the expense of other deserving officials, sometimes under an erase-and-replace scenario. I know -- it's happened to me and many others.

That's politics, to make it short and sweet. Give MHSAA Associate Director Mark Uyl and the MHSAA credit for trying to share the playoff experience by expanding the field of qualified officials. This motivates more officials to work harder to polish their craft and helps extinguish the belief that the playoffs are an exclusive club for a select few officials. McCabe points out a handful of mistakes in last week's games as evidence that this policy is misguided. That's a fair complaint. There's a few growing pains, but expanding the pool of qualified playoff officials won't come without a few bumps and bruises. No one wants to see a mistake impact a game, and no athletic director wants to have that mistake happen in their school's game, but how do you expand that pool and expect perfection? Something's got to give.

I used to wonder how I can work three sports collegiately, one at the Division-I level, and not get past the quarterfinal in every state tournament since I became eligible except one. Then I got a good look at the nomination process, and the truth is, being a good politician goes a lot further than being a good official. I'm not saying good officials don't get good assignments, but I am saying I'm not the first official to feel this way. On the other hand, it's always easy to feel slighted because every good official feels they're not moving up the ladder the way they should. I've made some mistakes in my officiating career, so I'm humble enough to be thankful for what I have been assigned and not lament what I haven't been assigned.

McCabe points out a fairly accurate number of flaws in the ratings system but there's a caveat to the coaches' ratings that was overlooked. A lot of officials pass on the right call, the tough call and sometimes, the call that is both of those things to keep a good rating in tact. That's not wrong, that's simply playing by the rules. That McCabe has never seen a flagged waved off all year could be a possible example of this. Most qualified officials know some coaches don't know the rules or don't recognize all the indicators of a good official, so they protect themselves from a bad rating from the coaches. That's simply insulating yourself from a bad mark from those who have the most influence.

Is that any different than any other workplace culture in America? No.

The MHSAA represents the schools, so ultimately, it's the schools that are comfortable with these decisions. The flaws in the ratings system that McCabe illustrated are correct. Trust me when I say the schools, the MHSAA, the coaches and officials across the state know the rating system is flawed when it comes to giving an accurate picture of an official's true acumen. But there's little resource to offer anything else at the high school level. It's not a perfect world.

I think the MHSAA is doing the right thing, slowly but surely, in expanding the pool of qualified officials. It will take some time. The officials will make some mistakes. The MHSAA will make an assignment or two they regret. Mistakes will happen. There's some conflict-of-interest issues and some repetitive assignment issues to still be ironed out. It takes a long time to change long-held beliefs and cultures. Be patient.

The MHSAA and the schools they represent can't expect their best officials to be able to officiate forever. Officiating isn't a growth industry and the MHSAA is doing what they can to change that, so you can't expect progress without a few mistakes.

Prep sports is ultimately about doing your best, working hard to improve yourself and your team and being a good representative of your community. The MHSAA's officiating platform has to be allowed to expand under the same guidelines.

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, due August 2009 from Arcadia Publishing

I'll be presenting an interactive Image of Sports presentation tomorrow night at the Dearborn Public Library Main Branch (Michigan Avenue), starting at 7pm. After the program, I'll be signing copies of my book, Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries. The program's beneficiary is the library itself.

Not doing anything on a ho-hum Wednesday evening? Come join me! I'll have pictures and images of all four Dearborn high schools. Has there been a better season of recent memory in Dearborn? I think not. With Fordson at 6-0 , Edsel Ford and Dearborn and Divine Child at 4-2, all four schools have positioned themselves to make the Michigan High School Athletic Association playoffs. These are never-seen-before pictures and images representing the rich history of the Pioneers, Falcons, Tractors and Thunderbirds!

Come check out the new table skirt with all the varsity letters on it! Have one to donate? Come on up! The Dearborn Public Library is on Michigan Avenue due east from the Southfield Freeway across from Ford Motor Company and nestled in with the Dearborn Police Department and the city's Amtrak station.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, available for purcahse and signing this Wednesday, October 8th at the Dearborn Public Library. Show starts at 7pm!

Yesterday I received my monthly edition of The Scoreboard, the newsletter for the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association, and the member spotlight was none other than Paul Carey.

Besides being nicknamed 'The Voice Of God' and being recognized as Ernie Harwell's fantastic play-by-play partner for 19 seasons of Detroit Tiger baseball, Carey was a tireless advocate of prep football and basketball in the state of Michigan from his WJR studio seat. Carey hosted the Michigan High School Football & Basketball Scoreboard Show at midnight on 'JR for nearly 30 years. In an age of pre-Internet media, Carey was the only source for the lion's share of scores that mattered most to metro Detroiters until the Saturday papers came out.

It's time to recognize Paul Carey for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of prep sports in Michigan.

I'm proposing an idea to the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) to create the Paul Carey Award. Presented at the association's football championships at Ford Field, the award would recognize a state media member for their contribution to covering prep sports, a deserving writer or broadcaster of high school sports in the state of Michigan. The award's recipient should be decided by a committee after culling a list of deserving nominees from the athletic directors of the state association. Yes, it would garner a little additional attention to the state football finals, but more importantly, it would bring light to the outstanding contributions of so many dedicated media members statewide that treat prep sports like most writers treat a SuperBowl.

Speaking from personal experience, I'll never forget waking up on a Saturday morning and finding a picture of myself and my Ferndale High rival on the cover, above the fold, mind you, of The Daily Tribune sports section. Royal Oak's public schools had many great athletes in the last 50 years -- trust me, I wasn't one of them -- yet there I was. It's a thrill many of us never forget and something I notice still today, how hard the local media works to bring positive attention to prep sports in their respective communities. This is one of the facets of prep sports that make me proud to still be around school sports today, and I can't think of a better namesake for such an award than Paul Carey.

Carey wore a touching yet compelling foreword for my book, Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, and for my money, the foreword alone is worth the price of the book, a great retrospective of Detroit prep football. Paul Carey grew up the son of a highly-respected high school football official, the referee on many a Saginaw High-Saginaw Arthur Hill Thanksgiving Day game. After a stint in the military, Carey returned to Michigan and took up the craft of radio. Because of his upbringing in and around Michigan prep sports, he developed a strong vernacular for the who and why of The Mitten's high school scene, like how to pronounce Ishpeming and Escanaba, which games were most important for schools like Muskegon and Marysville, and who were the emerging powerhouses in Detroit's rapidly-emerging suburbia like Southfield, Utica, Dearborn, Pontiac and Grosse Pointe.

After being hired by WJR, he asked permission of the station's programming director to do the scoreboard show, and WJR jumped at the idea. It was free programming and it tied the station in with every community it reached in a very passionate way. If you think high school football is big today, it was everything back then. And so it began, a programming addition inserted at the midnight hour that became the song and verse of prep football long after the marching band had played it's last note on Friday night.

It didn't take long to catch on. Carey added a basketball show on Tuesdays and Fridays of the prep basketball season, and for one season, it was sponsored by the Detroit Pistons, even though the basketball show didn't stick like football. If you were a prep sports fan like so many of us are in metro Detroit, you were up until midnight, waiting for Carey's scoreboard show at the twelve o'clock hour. Sometimes Tiger baseball ran late, pushing the Tiger postgame, WJR news report and SportsWrap back -- it didn't matter-- the football show went on, even as late as 12:45 am on one particular Friday night / Saturday morning.

I can still remember Carey reporting the Friday night scores vividly: "It was Detroit Pershing 20, Detroit Denby 16, Cass Tech defeated Cody 14-9, Detroit Martin Luther King 36, Detroit Chadsey 9..." Carey would read every Detroit Public School League score first, a clear nod the the city WJR operated within, and after the final PSL score, Carey would declare, "I'll be back with the suburban scores after this." Back from the commercial, Carey would rattle off every metro score with unfettered clarity and resonance. No one score was more important than any other, because Carey knew every score mattered to someone.

Carey worked nearly four decades at WJR, broadcast with a Hall-Of-Fame partner for 19 seasons of baseball with one of the charter franchises of the American League and was the soundtrack to the Tigers Bless You Boys' championship season of 1984. Yet as many people in metro Detroit remember Carey for the Michigan High School Football Scoreboard Show as they do for Tiger baseball, in a city that will be a baseball town above all else, no less. Even today, from his home in Florida, Carey still collects the All-State teams from the Detroit dailies and the Associated Press.

That's a great, lasting legacy if you ask me, and one that deserves to be remembered by the state's prep sports leadership.

(Photo courtesy Ernie Harwell collection)

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing

The Michigan High School Athletic Association's scholastic season of 2007-08 ended this past Saturday as four baseball champions were crowned at the same complex the MHSAA hosted their softball championship.

Birmingham Brother Rice became the second-straight Oakland County champion in Division I when the Warriors pounded out a 8-0 win over Saline's Hornets. In Division II, Dearborn Divine Child took home the championship by mercying the Oilers of Mt. Pleasant High, 14-3. In Division IV, Lutheran Westland came within a run of making it three championship metro teams in four divisions when they dropped a 2-1 decision to Bay City All-Saints High. Only Division III had a public school champion as Grass Lake mercied Allendale 14-4.

Notice a trend here? Three championships in four divisions won by private schools. Of course, this hot-button topic is not a new thread but rather a never-ending debate about the advantages private schools and public schools have over one another. Private schools recruit! Public schools are state-supported machines! This is unfair! We need weighted or separate championships!

Blah, blah, blah.

Private schools do recruit -- I've watched it first hand, and I'm tired of the dirty lil' secret being glossed over by the wink 'n' nod crowd who say, with stone-faced resolution, that recruiting doesn't take place. It does. And before we go further, what exactly is 'School of Choice' and 'Open Enrollment? I seem to remember this crafty program keeping two public high schools open in Royal Oak for almost 10 years. Nothing was accomplished by simply putting a your shingle out there and saying, "We're open for business!" It takes some sweat equity to make something like a private high school become a viable option versus the local, public school. Now that the state money well is dry, the public schools will be catching up quickly in the recruitment game that never goes on (wink, wink).

What's comical is how fans like to pick 'n choose their battles in this debate. Brother Rice recruits and it's an outrage, but the small christian and lutheran schools, like Lutheran Westland, are almost never mentioned in these debates. Today, those other Warriors are the feel-good story locally, like Southfield Christian was a few years ago, or Rochester Lutheran Northwest was a handful of years ago, because they don't win year after year.

Translation? Those schools aren't annual contenders for the biggest prize like Brother Rice is, so there's no threat about Westland Lutheran's Warriors. Here's more evidence: Do you notice how no one was upset the U-D Jesuit lost to Berkley 1-0 at Berkley's regional, or that Royal Oak's Ravens defeated Warren De LaSalle? Not one Catholic League fan complained about the advantages those two schools have over their private school. And when Macomb Dakota defeated Royal Oak, where was the furor there? Oh, it was two big, state-funded public schools, so I guess all is right with the world in that regional.

When Bob Riker's team defeated Jenison High on Friday in the Division I semifinals, Brother Rice became the first Oakland County school to reach five finals in either Class A or Division I, eclipsing Frank Clouser's Royal Oak Kimball teams that went to four finals in 10 years from 1971-1980. What's ironic is when Kimball went to those four finals, it was because Kimball was that good, right? It wasn't about Kimball having 3,600 students and the state's tax-stipend per student to fund those efforts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Kimball remains the only school to go to three consecutive Class A or Division I championship games, so where was the uproar over that state-sanctioned machine our tax dollars created?

Maybe it was because Frank Clouser was a good coach. So is Bob Riker, as is Tony DeMare at Divine Child.

When Rice reaches the finals in the present day with 1,408 students, or Divine Child with 891 students, it's because Rice and Divine Child recruit, or because they had an easy road, or all the other reasons except why they really got there. It's really because they have a very good coach. Their players are talented. They dominate their opponents the old-fashioned way, by not making defensive mistakes, by manufacturing runs with precise execution and by out-pitching their competition.

Brother Rice didn't have an easy road to the finals; they made beating some tough competition look easy. They mercied Birmingham Groves 10-0 in a five-inning, no-hit mercy, the same Falcons who came within a game of winning their OAA division. Jim Crosby has won about 600 games at Groves, where's the uproar about that? Rice then made Plymouth Canton and White Lake Lakeland (remember when the Eagles were known as Milford Lakeland?) look helpless by 12-1 and 13-1 counts to earn the regional crown. What's omitted in this discussion is that Canton beat Novi, who had previously topped No. 1 ranked Northville, so either the rankings mean nothing or sour grapes mean everything when the big, bad private school wins. It's either that or Ferris Bueller's cousin's girlfriend who's brother sits in chemistry class really did get him sick at Baskin Robbins while sampling one of the famous 31 flavors.

Bueller.... Bueller?

Brother Rice and Divine Child are the bullies in the local Detroit prep baseball scene but when football season is upon us, DC takes a back seat while Rice remains a schoolyard bully. Who do they all answer to? Farmington Hills Harrison. I've lived in Farmington Hills for 18 months now and I've watched countless cars come through the neighborhood, stop and ask me or a fellow neighbor, "If we buy this house, do our kids go to Harrison High School?" That isn't Harrison recruiting -- that's parents finding a way into the district to make sure their kid is at Harrison. And today, finding a house on the cheap is easy in every Michigan community.

In Farmington and Farmington Hills, Harrison is known as the sports school when compared to North Farmington and Farmington High. What's funny is Harrison isn't dominant in any other girls' or boys' sport - not even close - the way they are in football. And the huge, public school argument? It doesn't exist, because coach John Herrington's Hawks, who have reached 16 finals and earned 12 titles, have played the big, bad public schools with enrollments between 900-1000, picking between 400-500 boys, while thumping schools with enrollments between 2000-3000 students.

All of these other tired, ancillary arguments conveniently omit the obvious fact many fans don't want to admit: A good coach with good athletes has a better chance of winning the title than a school without a good coach and good athletes. That might explain why they usually do win the state title.

There's a concept, huh?

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, now available online at Border's Books and Barnes & Noble and available in stores August 25th, 2008.

Last week I umpired a Catholic League doubleheader between visiting Orchard Lake St. Mary's and Birmingham Brother Rice, played behind the Birmingham YMCA Center. Rice took a pair of victories from the Eaglets, who are rich with young talent but not yet blessed with the depth and experience that befitted Coach Bob Riker's Warriors last week. Orchard Lake St. Mary's will be ready when it counts, because they usually always are and are led by good coaches.

In researching my book, Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th of this year, I interviewed hundreds involved on a daily basis within Oakland County's high school sports infrastructure. Naturally, a few good-hearted souls took up the cause to lament the Catholic League's advantage of plucking students from public school boundaries for the betterment of wins and losses in after-school athletics.

I listened and did my job as the dutiful reporter, but a couple of points stuck out to me. First, does anyone else notice that it's never the 0-9 football team that is complained about, just the playoff qualifier from a private school like Rice or Detroit Country Day? Naturally, this is a bit hypocritical, and no public school ever complains about their fate when their team's results are average or worse. Many public districts are openly courting students in today's open-district, open-enrollment, school-of-choice fight for survival. Michigan's economic woes have created a virtual free-for-all within competing districts and private institutions.

But the other point makes me proud to be from Oakland County. Just how lucky are we to be in this county to have so many outstanding public and private schools in one square swath of land called Oakland County? Think about it -- most counties would love to have just one private school the caliber of Novi's Catholic Central, Royal Oak's Shrine High, Madison Heights Bishop Foley or Waterford's Our Lady Of The Lakes, in addition to the aforementioned private schools above. Certainly space prevents me listing all of the worthy candidates on either side.

Then you have tony districts like Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, West Bloomfield, Farmington Hills and Troy. Clarkston, Lake Orion and Oxford are all immaculately maintained with highest standards for achievement and opportunity. The same can be said in Walled Lake, Novi, Northville, Rochester, South Lyon and many other Oakland County public school districts. How many Oakland County schools have played for and won the MHSAA"s football tournament? Last season Farmington and Lake Orion staged perhaps one of the greatest baseball finals in the state's biggest division and it was just the latest example of an Oakland County school shining brightly on the state's big stage.

I could write an entire column on the academic achievements of Oakland County schools in our state and national scope. And yes, Wayne and Macomb counties would argue they have some strong entries into this debate as well.

We get caught up in winning and losing in our hyperactive, American culture -- it's in our blood, I suppose. And yes, I'm doing a bit of cheerleading, but maybe that's what we need in Michigan right now. There hasn't been a lot of good news in the past few years as it relates to the issues that matter most in our region. So it's nice to drive home from a hotly-contested game and realize that competition we stage and officiate produces the opportunity to excel against the best the county has to offer.

As a parent, that's what any parent wants for their children, to be able to offer then the opportunity to get to the highest level of competition and achievement. Oakland County certainly affords a parent or student those opportunities. This alone should make everyone worry less about balls & strikes and safes & outs.

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing.

The modern blog, as it relates to real professional journalism, is about sharing ideas, spreading the wealth of information and creating opportunities to read many opinions as possible about an array of different issues. That doesn't mean a blog has to be destructive, mean-spirited or irreverent to standout from the more established mediums in daily, weekly or monthly journalism we've grown comfortable with.

This blog has been linked more than a few times in the past weeks and I'm grateful and appreciative of the favorable response it's received. Adding to the links I've already mentioned in previous posts, this page was propped at The Writing Life, Thumb Sports and Michigan HS Football. Terry Whalin, a literary agent, author and expert on the genre of writing authors The Writing Life, while both Thumb Sports and Michigan HS Football are primary destinations for prep sports, with The Thumb being an all-sports site and Searn's being an all-football source as well as a forum for fans offering differing opinions.

I've blogged twice about the judgment handed down to the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) for $7.4 million in legal fees stemming from a gender-equity case. I'm both referee and writer, thus the title of my blog, TheWriteReferee. The most commonly-posed question from the past three weeks remains, "T.C., aren't you worried the MHSAA will blackball you for writing about the trouble they're in?" I haven't written a particularly scathing editorial of the MHSAA; I've tried to present both sides of the story in a digestible format. Does the MHSAA have a reputation for blackballing those who don't toe the company's line that I'm unaware of? Further, am I a public dissenter for offering fact and opinion without making it personal?

The truth is the MHSAA's Mark Uyl called and asked me to indulge him about the purpose and intent of my blog when I started it in August of 2006, then called TCCameron.com, now my static site. I was under no obligation to oblige Uyl; I had thoroughly cased the MHSAA Guidebook For Officials to ensure I didn't endanger my good standing as an independent contractor through registration with the MHSAA. Rather than be adversarial, I told Mark I had began a journey to rediscover my writing passion and I needed an avenue that provided both a forum and topic to knock the rust off the wheels. My initial 6-8 months of writing wasn't strong, but I started to find a style that fit and today, I'm a better writer for the time I've taken to author this site.

However, two questions arise when I dig deeper into the idea of being blackballed. Do my peers think of me as lazy, self-indulgent or both to simply start a blog without a speck of self-introspection? Second, did my peers believe my blog would simply be a rip-and-shred destination for all things officiating or was this an indictment on the general synopsis of the blogosphere? The truth is the MHSAA has let me write freely and has offered opinion rather than edict when it comes to this blog.

Blogging comes from all people in today's self-publication, self-author world. The credible blogs that offer opinion based on actual insight and fact come from real writers, their public accreditation coming from a credible resume rather than scathing opinion and wit shot straight from the hip. Ultimately, it's up to the reader to decide if the writer, the content and writing style speaks to them.

The nervous days and tough decisions facing Michigan's caretakers of prep sports intensified yesterday as the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) finally responded to last week's stunning $7.4 million judgment against MHSAA for legal bills stemming from a gender-equity case the associated high schools fought and appealed with little success for approximately 10 years.

MHSAA released prepared statements revealing that its decision to continue appeals, as it related to potential legal costs and awards, was guided by prior case decision stemming from an affirmative action lawsuit involving the University of Michigan, where fees and costs were reduced 40-percent across the board by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. MHSAA also admitted that the award made by Judge Richard Alan Enslen 'exceeded even our worst-case scenario preparations'. MHSAA admitted they are considering an appeal of the award but are also preparing to file for protection from creditors. In short, MHSAA is preparing for bankruptcy.

As a three-sport official, I can tell you I still do not believe the MHSAA was hampering female student-athletes by playing girls' basketball in the fall and offering girls' volleyball in the winter. I admit my scope on this issue is narrow; I'm just a referee. Speaking as a contractor of the MHSAA as well as a taxpayer and property owner in Michigan, the prepared statements make me wonder if this is MHSAA's best course of action when it mentions the possibility of appeal.

Appeal is what got the MHSAA in this predicament in the first place, isn't it?

I wonder how the MHSAA will survive this, as many of us who care about high school sports are wondering. There is a lot of uncertainty and conjecture being offered about the survival of the MHSAA and what it, not to mention prep sports offerings, will look like if it manages to survive this.

I'm not familiar with all the case law that went into this 10-year battle, but I do know if this bill, which is adding interest at approximately $1,000 per day it remains unpaid, isn't settled soon, a judgment of lien will be placed upon the MHSAA, meaning any dollar going in and out of the MHSAA coffers would have to be first offered towards the outstanding bill. Attorney Kristen Galles, lead attorney for Communities For Equity (CFE) that brought forward the suit against MHSAA, remains unpaid after 10 years of litigation and could effectively control the MHSAA.

High school sports was never intended to be about litigation costs, judgments and awards or insurance policies for legal costs. How did this get so sideways so fast? Sadly, the ones who will answer those questions will be the student-athletes because they will mark the passing of this lengthy case as successful or not.

In the past two years, they’ve played three times and played 29 frames of gut-check baseball. Each school has scored 13 runs against the other. Since 2006 they’ve split three games.

Who splits three games? Birmingham Groves and Birmingham Seaholm do, going 1-1-1 versus each other since ‘06, when the Groves-Seaholm varsity baseball game went an amazing 15 innings and was suspended in twilight at a 7-7 standstill. The two Birmingham rivals have found they have more in common with each other than zip codes, toney restaurants and designer coffee houses. They’ve found bragging rights to be harder to secure than anyone would have believed without seeing it first-hand. In 2007 the two Oakland Activities Association (OAA) rivals split a pair of one-run games at Seaholm, with Groves taking a 5-4 nightcap after dropping a 2-1 decision to the Maples in the front end of a doubleheader.

Usually a good high school rivalry is more-commonly associated with football or basketball. Pontiac Central and Pontiac Northern's basketballers meet twice a year on an annual basis and the gym throbs with energy. Birmingham Brother Rice and Novi Catholic Central is must-see football. Novi and Northville High battle for the Baseline Jug while Clarkston and Lake Orion is must-see football and basketball. So why is Seaholm – Groves becoming a contest circled in red on the diamond?

For one, many of the kids that play youth baseball together end up scattered among the two schools. A healthy group of Maples and Falcons started playing travel baseball on teams named the Mariners, Red Sox or Motor City Pride. That familiarity breeds a healthy respect, but also a working knowledge of their rivals’ strengths and weaknesses, meaning every pitch and subsequent play is contested to the last available inch.

A second reason would be a refusal to roll over when the rival rallies, as was the case in the 2006 game. Jamey Sackett saw it first hand – he sat on the Groves bench for five innings, up on the varsity as a freshman with his brother, Jay Sackett, who started the game at catcher. A captain of the ’07 Groves team and current member of the Alma College baseball squad, Jay Sackett was summoned to the pitcher’s mound in the 6th inning of the game with two Maples on and nobody down and younger brother Jamey replaced him at catcher. When you’re a freshman and you enter the game with two innings to go, the last thought on your mind is the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s (MHSAA) 30-out rule, but they found out soon enough. Brothers Jamey and Jay teamed as a battery for the next 10 innings, which equaled 30 outs. Jay Sackett could no longer pitch to another hitter, by rule, and the game was suspended after the final Groves hitter was retired in the bottom of the 15th inning against a setting sun.

"It went so fast, I can barely remember it today, "said Jamey Sackett, now a junior and Groves' starting catcher. "At the time, I was caught up with so much energy and emotion. It was an amazing game to have played and at the end, I was too excited to even know how tired I was." The Sackett brothers played travel baseball as youngsters in 2001 with Seaholm’s catcher in '06, Casey Starnes, who logged all 15 innings for the Maples that day. If the average high school at-bat is five pitches, and the Maples faced approximately 75 Groves hitters, Starnes caught close to 400 pitches in the game. On the adjacent diamond next to Falcon Field, the junior varsity Groves –Seaholm game started and finished, and a youth game to follow also started and finished before the 15-inning marathon was suspended.

The Sacketts have a unique look into the Birmingham rivalry. While their two sons wear the green & gold of Groves, as does father Mark, an assistant coach under Jim Crosby, both parents are Seaholm grads. To top it off, Don Sackett, father to Mark, led what many call the most famous championship in the history of the Michigan high school baseball tournament. The 1988 Seaholm team, christened the ‘Miracle Maples’, finished third in the now-defunct Southeastern Michigan Association (SMA) behind now-closed Royal Oak Kimball and runner-up Troy High. Both Troy and Kimball lost in their district openers but Seaholm, after winning the district, thundered to a dramatic championship by winning the regional final, quarterfinal and semifinal in their last at-bat. The Maples captured championship gold after defeating Steve Avery and Taylor Kennedy 11-9 in the MHSAA's title game.

In 2008 the Maples and Falcons are scheduled to lay it on the line at Groves on May 10th for a doubleheader. Will another 15-inning classic be played? Will a walk-off victory or no-hit performance grace the rivalry? One thing is for certain: Nothing will be surrendered easily when bragging rights are at stake between two of Birmingham’s diamond gems.

T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit’s High School Football Rivalries, due August 25, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing.

How did prep sports ever get so sideways in Michigan that stories of million-dollar lawsuits and judgments jumped off the professional sports pages, skipped past the college roundups and ran smack-dab into the high school vernacular?

By now most who follow high school sports know about the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) being handed a $7.4 million bill Tuesday to cover legal fees absorbed by the victors in the gender-equity lawsuit the MHSAA ultimately lost. The MHSAA contested a lawsuit brought forth by an entity called Communities For Equity (CFE), a Grand Rapids-based group of mothers who felt their daughters were unfairly disadvantaged by Michigan's former fall girls' basketball / winter volleyball season schedule.

In public communication as it related to the lawsuit, MHSAA Executive Director Jack Roberts assured the public and private schools he represents, as well as the public served by the media outlets covering the legal battle, that the MHSAA was fighting this battle with an insurance-funded dollar as it related to legal fees. That much seems to be true. What insurance seemingly didn't cover was the legal fees for the plaintiff should the MHSAA lose. Tuesday District Judge Richard Alan Enslen awarded lawyers representing CFE with an award that could potentially devastate the MHSAA as we know it today.

The MHSAA's leadership fought a long but continuous losing battle, lasting more than 10 years, all the way to the United States Supreme Court, who ultimately rejected nearly every MHSAA argument and subsequent appeal, as did the lower courts below it. In delivering Tuesday's bad news to the MHSAA, Enslen also tacked on interest upon the initial $4.65 million award at 5.003%, instantly ballooning the bill to $7.4 million. For every single day the judgment goes unpaid, interest adds approximately $1,000 to the bill. The MHSAA issued a statement that it would have no comment for at least a week to 10 days.

Understandably, they're probably as shellshocked as the rest of us.

In the past few days, chat boards, blog sites and water coolers have been inundated with discussion about the latest chapter of this state's seemingly endless reality game, This Week's Biggest Loser in Michigan. As if Michigan's mortgage crisis, flagging job market, energy crunch and a state economy sieged by credit obligations wasn't enough, now school sports is in jeopardy? But the biggest loser in this crushing judgment isn't the leaders of the associated schools. It isn't taxpayers who fund public schools or those that pay tuition for the private institutions. It isn't officials or coaches, either.

It's our kids. The ones we turn the Friday night lights on for. The kids who sweat, toil and dream of achieving something noble and worthwhile. High school sports is about wearing a varsity jacket. Seeing your name in the paper on Saturday -- that's prep sports. It's a hug from your girlfriend or a pat on the back from your uncle after the game. High school sports was never intended to be about legal fees, bankruptcy discussions and squabbling over gym time.

The solvency and future of the MHSAA is unknown, but this much is clear: The MHSAA and it's constituency of public and private schools have some heavy questions to answer, both internally and to the public at large. Tenuous would best describe the relationship between Michigan's public schools and the tax dollars that fund them -- that relationship will certainly be strained further.

This million-dollar award could potentially change high school sports as we know it today. Will the games go on? Yes, but will there every be a carefree discussion as it relates to scholastic athletics? Nope. That innocence was crushed under the weight of a 10-year war that did nothing but move seasons around and potentially ruin a state association. Does anyone really think that a talented volleyball player doesn't get to play collegiately because she's from Michigan?

The possibility of a rudderless conglomerate of schools offering prep sports going straight to the top of the list of issues like pay-for-play, admission cost, liability for athletes and coaches, eligibility, travel limits, television, licensing, advertising, officiating fees, vendor contracts and facility issues, just to name a handful, is scary. Michigan's worries now include high school sports legislation and that's good for no one.

Our student-athletes deserve better.

Between the rusted fences, crooked baselines and lumpy outfields lies a game, unfettered by negotiations, eight-figure egos and contracts to define every person's shuffle and step. It won't be seen by millions but rather, a handful or friends and neighbors. There's no fireworks or heart-throbbing music before an at-bat. No gimmicks, trivia questions or foul balls to keep. There's no advance ticket booth and the only season-ticket holders are usually the local volunteer, a man who gets senior discounts and watches every game from his folding chair.

That's the difference between prep baseball and professional baseball. Prep baseball is still baseball. Major League Baseball is The Show.

Pictured to the left is longtime Birmingham Seaholm baseball coach Don Sackett, coaching his last game against his school's longtime rival, Frank Clouser and the Royal Oak Kimball Knights, on May 11, 1990 at what is now Royal Oak High. Sackett's 'Miracle Maples' won the 1988 Class A state title when his Seaholm team won the regional final, quarterfinal semifinal and championship game in their last at-bat. Clouser's Kimball teams went to the title game in '71, '72, '73 and '80 and captured the 1972 title. There's no media relations or sports information department in high school sports. It's hand-written notes and facts committed to memory.

Major League Baseball is a heavy metal band's six-month gold album tour compared to prep baseball, and Opening Day commands our attention in Detroit like a Black Monday automotive press conference. Everyone knows about it, many will be there to witness it first hand and nearly everyone has an opinion about it, too. That's metro Detroit. We love our sports and the Tigers will always own this town in that regard. It's the one game we've all played at some point in our lives. Prep baseball, by comparison, is hundreds of scores and names jammed into agate type in your local paper.

It was amusing to watch and listen to the fans, many sporting a double-fisted 16-oz opinion, talk baseball yesterday in Comerica Park. The game is the same at either venue but the presentation at the major league level distorts the reality of what wins and loses a game. Most fans walked out of Comerica Park yesterday describing a gas can with arms and legs, that being the Tiger bullpen. The Tigers dropped yesterday's opener because they stranded about a dozen runners on the bases yesterday in what should have been an 8-3 Tiger win instead of a 5-4 extra innings loss. Today we're talking about the failure of the Tiger bullpen. The high school coach will talk about all the runners his boys stranded on the island.

That's the difference of prep baseball. It's a game worthy of following or attending. Why do prep players hustle every single ball out when it looks like major leaguers are on cruise control? Because anything can happen in a prep game; a good major leaguer errs about once a month. A prep player gets 20-30 games to prove himself; a major leaguer will play another sold-out concert tomorrow, and the night after that, and the night after that. A prep player doesn't make millions and still has algebra homework to finish after the game.

We don't apply the scrutiny to our kids that we do to million-dollar adults. Prep baseball is what we can improve on; pro baseball is about what didn't get done more than what did. There's going to be 161 more chances at glory for the Tigers. Losing the one game you'll play for first place all season makes high school special in it's own way, too.

If you love baseball as much as you love the Tigers, you'll get to high school game this spring. It's still baseball the way Abner Doubleday saw it. It's gritty, emotional, raw and pure. It's a history teacher who has prepped for 25 dates for the 10 months since last season ended. It's a neighbor or nephew who gets dirty at the first chance he gets. It's a fight to the finish, a handshake at the end and a hug from a girlfriend after it's all over.

That's a real baseball game, and it doesn't need a 40,000-seat stadium to be important.

(Photo courtesy The Daily Tribune, Royal Oak, Michigan/Craig Gaffield)