Q&A: CHSAA commissioner Paul Angelico on the focus of high school sports, transfers, and more
AURORA — Paul Angelico, now entering his sixth school year as the commissioner of the Colorado High School Activities Association, has his eyes facing forward.
During his leadership, CHSAA has been a pioneer in things like the NFHS Network, and its partnership with You Can Play! — a national organization which seeks eradicate homophobia in sports.
We caught up with Angelico this week to talk everything from goals for the upcoming school year to the transfer rule — and also took some questions from Twitter.
Q: Has your perspective changed sitting behind the big desk?
Paul Angelico: Probably. But I don’t know that I could define to you how, though. Every year is a different year, and based on what the issues of that year are, my perspective changes.
I always knew that when it boils right down to the bottom line, all we have to go by is our constitution and our policies. The membership doesn’t want the commissioner making decision based on what he wants or desires. I think every year that becomes a stronger reality to me.
On a purely technical level, sitting there, you realize, “I can’t just do what I want.” The constitution and policies, they work for us well, and I can’t stray from those. In eductation, a school’s principal is able to go, “Here’s the rule, but here’s Johnny, and here’s another thing.” He can use the rule as the guideline. I’m not able to do that.
Q: Let’s talk 2015-16. Goals, hopes, aspirations as an Association?
Angelico: I think we’ve established that this year will be the year of the coach. We want to make sure that we are trying to reemphasize the educational basis of what we’re doing — that coaches are teaching their kids how to be good citizens. And that’s how they’re going to become better teams.
Q: So, even beyond coaching, sportsmanship is a focus.
Angelico: Right. It’s about team, it’s about community. It’s about school. The whole concept of why we’re playing the game, why we’re offering the activities. Why do we spend millions of dollars on this activity? It’s not because we want to give somebody a trophy.
Q: Often, there’s that hypothetical question, “If you were commissioner for a day, what would you do?” Well, you are commissioner. Let’s say there wasn’t the process of a Legislative Council or a Board (of Directors): What do you change?
Angelico: I would require that coaches must be charged in educationally-based activities to ensure that what coaches are doing on the playing field is educationally sound and appropriate with high school kids. That’s not to say that many of them are not already, but then we could say to the public, “Here’s what happens in every program.”
Q: A big thing this year that’s going to go into effect in 2016-17 are the changes to CLOC. Can you sum it up? And what are the advantages of the new system?
Angelico: The new system was designed to do all we can to create equality among classifications, that approximately the same number of schools are playing in the same classification. We’re trying to level the playing field by saying there are the same number of kids in 5A or 4A or 3A competing for the title.
Q: Will there be some headaches in setting it up this fall?
Angelico: (Laughs) It’s going to be complex. There are a lot of variables, and every individual sport has to be determined individually. It’s going to take a couple of days to get it done.
Q: There are a number of different ways sports quality for the postseason. Is there an advantage to having similar criteria across the board?
Angelico: If we have the same criteria, or similar criteria, in every sport, at least schools would know what to expect and why they qualified or how to qualify. Whether that’s volleyball or baseball or any sport. The downside to me is that every sport might need to be a little bit different based on the nuances of the sport, how many teams are involved, geography, whatever. I think schools believe they want them all the same or similar.
Q: You chair the holding company of the NFHS Network. What does the future of that network look like?
Angelico: The future is inevitable. For any endeavor like (CHSAA), it’s got to be tied to emerging technology — visually, sites like CHSAANow, radio, all that stuff. It’s moving faster that we had thought it would. I believe what that means is it will be one of the reasons sports can continue at the rate is has been for the past 20 years.
In order to stay up with society, we need this technology to keep us relevant. If we don’t have CHSAANow, the NFHS Network, or whatever else it takes to keep us in front of the public, we would slowly wither and become secondary.
Q: The You Can Play! Project was honored at the ESPYs this week. CHSAA had a big role with them in being the first state association partner back in 2013-14. Why is it important for CHSAA to be involved with an organization like that?
Angelico: The reason we got involved was because one of our basic tenets was that when you’re in sport, because you now have a platform, you have to use it for good things. The LGBT community is one of the most prejudiced against. And no one should be bullying any kind of kid.
So you start from the most bullied, and work your way back: You can’t bully LGBT, you can’t bully someone because they’re fat, you can’t bully because they’re dumb, you can’t bully because they’re bald. You take the most extreme and you start there, and you say, “That’s not OK,” because then everything else falls into place.
We had an opportunity fall in our laps that gave us an opportunity to make a statement that we needed to be making anyway. It wasn’t about pride in doing this for ourselves, being the first to partner with them. We were thankful that the opportunity was there so we could make that statement. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had the vehicle to make that statement.
Q: The transfer rule. There are always proposals ranging from, “Let everyone play wherever they want, whenever they want,” to “Make them sit out a year, no matter what.” Will this debate ever go away, and is this a better transfer rule out there?
Angelico: We always look at every other state and what they’re doing. We have one of two options: We make it totally non-subjective, where if (a transfer) meets this criteria, you don’t play; if you meet this criteria, you do play, and there’s no ability to make any human choices in that. Or we continue to do what we’re doing where we have some ability to make exceptions for an existing rule.
Nobody will ever be happy with what we do. Normally that’s based on some controversial decision that just happened, and whoever’s upset with the rule doesn’t know all the stuff behind the scenes as to why a decision was made. There’s no way to not have controversy with a transfer rule.
Q: Do you think it would help if everyone did know all the behind-the-scenes stuff?
Angelico: It would really be helpful, but more often than not, we can’t make it public. Based on HIPPA, based on privacy, based on the fact that they’re minors, and most of the reason we make decisions would be personal issues that the parents would not want us to make public. So, no, we can’t do that. But, yeah, it would help. (Laughs) It would help a lot.
Q: Let’s take some questions from Twitter. From @2CuriousGeorge, “Do the Broncos give CHSAA any discounts at Mile High?” The question seems to be on ticket prices.
Angelico: The Broncos have been good to us, through outside organizations. The Denver Outlaws and the Hall of Fame, which are connected to the Broncos, actually get the rental on that stadium for us, and ensure that we make our needed profit. We don’t work directly with the Broncos, we work through third-person agencies, which, without the Broncos’ cooperation, we couldn’t do.
On ticket prices, you’re going to pay more to go to Sports Authority than you are to All-City Stadium. But we don’t set them.
Q: Another from @2CuriousGeorge, “When will CHSAA let teachers into playoff games for free?”
Angelico: As soon as the membership, which owns CHSAA, makes the decision. If the budget committee would like to go that route, they have that ability any time they want.
Q: From @thewhipshow, “Any hope of adding extra baseball games and starting the season around April 1?”
Angelico: We’ve asked the question, and we’ll continue to ask the question. But, again, the schools will have to make that decision. And, frankly, I think many of our high school baseball coaches that also coach summer teams are not in favor of that, because, frankly, we would be stepping on their toes in the summer league if we change the dates.
Q: From @big_bigote, “Why do teams from the same conference play each other early in the playoffs?”
Angelico: We always go so far as to say that the same league won’t play in the first round. Beyond that, it’s out of anybody’s control. If you were to consider second round and beyond, you wouldn’t have a true bracket. You’re going to affect lots of other teams who are playing wrongly-seeded teams in the first round.
Q: From @nhaas, “Will the basketball officials finally learn the block/charge call for this upcoming season?”
Angelico: Since that’s been a question for the last 40-plus years, I have no reason to believe that anything will change. My question is, “Will the public ever figure out what a block/charge is?” Starting with me, because I always question those calls. I think it becomes just as much an education problem with us fans as it is for the officials.
Q: Any big thoughts about the year?
Angelico: I’m looking forward to this year, because I think our numbers have been up, our ticket sales have been up a bit. I think the programs that we’re offering through the Broncos and through You Can Play! and Why We Play, we have an opportunity to educate the public on what high school sports really are centered about, not what society is pushing them to try to be.
