There’s’  something about sport administration that just gives me the screaming heebee-jeebees.
I’ve thought that once someone becomes a sports administrator, they become subject to some kind of moral disengagement – but then I did a bit more research on moral disengagement and found that might be a bit strong. I thought it might be some kind of bizarre extrapolation of Stanley Milgram’s experiment, in that sports administrators merely follow orders, regardless of how it fits with their beliefs.
Every sports admin job I have had, I’ve tried to be a bit laissez-faire, to be a bit adaptable and malleable, within reason.
The organizations I’ve run or been involved with have never run over budget, never had a pokie scam in the background, never had to hold back the truth in financial reporting.  The flipside to that is that none of them have ever been able to retain staff. They either get poached , a bigger administrator somewhere up the sporting food chain decides being successful isn’t good, or they just up and leave.
It’s the up and leaving that’s the killer. I’ve worked with and helped out several really good sporting managers who have met all their targets. They haven’t gone over their budgets, they’ve been hugely successful with their programmes, they’ve shown visionary tendencies for a bright future … and it has just about killed them.
All of them have worked long long hours – whether just getting the ship afloat or event management or whatever … and it has been for nought. They reach a point where despite the positive feedback from their community, the great response they get from their staff, the pressure of running everything just gets too much.
At the other end of the scale you have those sporting administrators who seem to have to justify their reason to exist.  I saw an email last week from one whose organization is falling to pieces who was introducing a rule that was completely unnecessary.  It was akin to counting angels – pointless, irrelevant and stupid.
Now we have the International Rugby Board telling SKY TV that under no circumstances during the Rugby World Cup coverage should Tony Johnston be referred to as “TJ”, Justin Marshall as “Marshy” or Grant Nisbet as “Nisbo”. Why? Because “the IRB was concerned the commentators’ habit of using nicknames would confuse an international audience unfamiliar with the personalities behind the microphone.”  Yep.  I can’t count how many times I’ve turned to a mate during a rugby game from offshore on the telly and said “Hey, who are the commentators?”
Memo to the IRB: no-one cares who the commentators are.  If they call each other Spongebob, we couldn’t give a toss.  It’s the game.  That’s what sports lovers are interested in.
The unfortunate thing is that those running sport seem to have forgotten that, by and large. They’re more worried about bottom lines (which they have breached, usually egregiously, before even worrying about them) and covering their butts.
Sport is about the players, the fans, the genuine love for it.  It’s not about pedantry and stupid rules.  Be malleable.  Be representative.  Be open.  But most of all, show some realism for what you are actually trying to achieve