Sportsfan02,

I have worked as an employee, manager and now executive in private business for over 30 years. My current organization is subject to rules of the government and influenced by the work of elected political representatives at the state and federal level. We are also answerable to our organization's own Board of Directors. We have an annual audit and sometimes audits from outside organizations. All of this is something that is very common in every business that I have been involved in during my work career. A successful organization is aware of and accustomed to this type of outside scrutiny of their operations and they take the opportunity to grow from it. In my opinion from what I have read in the articles that you have provided and from my own recent correspondence with Mr. Musselman, the KSHSAA under his leadership is reviewing the findings of the audit, feedback from other people to the audit and they will take the opportunity to grow from it so they can achieve even greater success in their mission.

As far as your last comment about what I said in my previous post about questioning numbers and the motives of those who present them. I was speaking in general terms and not specifically about the motives of auditors who presented the Big 12 study in the audit. The KSHSAA itself was not responsible for this study being used. The auditors in my opinion wanted to be able to present some type of data that might show what type of effect that current KSHSAA policies might be having and the auditors just were not able to come up with data that addressed the issue. The auditors would have been better off not including the Big 12 study because it was not a large enough sample of colleges, it did not measure enough sports, it was just not comparing apples to apples and it was an unaudited study not even done by the auditors themselves but by another entity.

Sometimes people will present studies, charts, numbers, and other data at you with a motive behind the presentation of the data. Most of the time they are trying to sell you something, a product or possibly an idea. I am just trying to point out to any young people who might be following this topic that as the consumer or the recipient of the information being presented that you must be very careful before you buy the product or the idea. You need to critically analyse the data and you definitely should question the motive of the presenter.

When I first saw the results of this Big 12 study it was presented by the auditors as a possible example that would show that the policies of the KSHSAA were not hindering Kansas high school athletes in participating in college sports. I critically looked at the numbers behind the report as I have described in previous posts and I did not accept the Big 12 study as a fair or valid one for making that conclusion. I am hoping my son and other young people will use the same process to question and analyse information that is being presented to them in the future.


Vince Nowak
Kansas College Wrestling Fund Supporter
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