It's time for Stars on Sports! A podcast-radio show dedicated to sharing stories about our athletic program at Lansing Community College. LCC athletics has a strong tradition. 24 national championship wins! Over 170 All-Americans! 19 MCCAA All Sports trophies! Stars on Sports will introduce you to individuals that have contributed to our program success and give you the backstory on what it takes to develop it. We'll also dive into and break down the topics and issues facing athletic departments across the nation and right here at LCC. This is Stars on Sports!

Podcast radio show dedicated to sharing stories about our athletic program at Lansing Community College.

LCC athletics has a strong tradition. 24 national championship wins, over 170 all.

Americans, 19 MCCAA all sports trophies.

Stars on Sports will introduce you to individuals that have contributed to our program success and give you the backstory on what it takes to develop it.

We'll also dive into and break down the topics and issues facing athletic departments across the nation. And right here at LCC, this is Star Sign Sports.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Thars on Sports. I'm joined today by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter, and our producer, Daedalian. And gentlemen, as we record this podcast, we're right in the heart of election season and we're not going to talk politics today, but in our world, we have our share of voting and elections and way that impacts sports. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that today to have some fun with what's going on in our country right now. And, and there are some politics. When you talk about voting in sports, there's a lot of politics probably. But you know, when I first thought of this topic, I thought of captains voting for captain. That was the first thing that came to my mind when I thought of voting in sports. And we can dive into that, but there's so many other areas where voting comes in this action of sports. And we have polls, we have ranking that in a lot of sport that people pay a lot of attention to. We have awards that get voted on by different groups that generate a lot of discussion. We have organizations that set rules and policies and determine fates of schools that we vote on too. So. And there are different criteria for all those things. So any initial thoughts before we get going on? What's your first thinking when you think of voting in sports?

I think of preseason polls and how they mean almost nothing and they're based off of what the team did the, you know, the prior season. So I always somewhat smile at those and, you know, maybe I'll take a screenshot or something and kind of look at it at the end of season and they're always significantly different. So it just shows that there's not much base on those. But it's based off of what you did prior. And captains, that's a whole nother one. We could talk for quite a while about that and the diff the both sides of the sword on the captains rankings awards. I think you've got a lot to unpack here.

Yeah. Again, what about you Daedalian.

I don't really have a lot of thoughts on that actually, except for the fact that I did want to ask, so do you typically for your team, is that what you do? Like, is it a player's vote for the captain? How does it work? Well, do you have a captain?

I haven't really been a big believer in captains. I'm a big believer in overall leadership and that everybody can be a leader. And I really feel strongly that captains should not be at high school level and below just because it's a popularity contest.

That's kind of where I was thinking.

And so at our level I've stayed away from it too. And we'll do things like a leadership council and in leadership every week and everybody's getting the same stuff and getting the same opportunities to lead. I feel like with captains sometimes people will look at them if they're not a captain and say, well, it's their job to do that. It's not my job. So it limits leadership. This year we decided to go with captains, just try it out and see how it went. And it's, you know, we're still rolling with it, but it's been incredibly difficult because it's a very similar peer group, similar ages and everything else. And so the, the experience isn't greater from one person to another. It's. It's very similar. And there's a cost to leadership, a very large cost to leadership. And so those captains are now experiencing that where they, in a group setting, they never really did.

What made you decide to give it a try this year?

Last year's team lacked certain leadership qualities that is absolutely necessary to have success. And it wasn't their fault, it was my fault for not being able to provide them with the right stuff to learn that kind of stuff. And I felt like we would just go in a different direction and see if we could identify some leaders that, that could hold people accountable. And accountability is not a bad word. It's just looking to hold yourself to a higher standard.

Makes sense.

Keep going dadaly and you're on fire. Taking over.

Well, I guess my other thought would be on the collegiate level is not having a captain a rarity? Is that approach a rarity then?

Okay, yeah, certainly. And I think there's some merit to it. When you're at a four year institution where you have people that have been there in the program for three or four or five years, they do have more experience than the people that have been there for one or two. And so there's some merit to it, but not all leaders. Leadership is not something that's age specific, it's not grade specific or anything else. The high school level, I would see freshmen that had incredible leadership traits and seniors that did not. You know, so it didn't have a, it didn't really have a, an age thing. And we experienced that here too. So whether we have a freshman or a sophom, they'll start at a certain level with leadership qualities and traits and then we just hope that they continue to build on those.

I think one of the biggest issues in sports with captains is it's such a tradition. I think everything thinks they have to have them because all teams technically had them. And I agree. I don't know if we do enough though to make the most of them or implement them or as your team does. And I think more and more teams are doing is training our student athlete to be leaders. But I think there's value to having leadership on your team from your student athlete. As we talked about before, about the role they can help play to help a coach lead the team. And as we talk about voting today, what I've learned, in my experience, voting is probably one of the most ineffective ways to determine leadership of a team, but I think it's the most common way. When I, in my previous job, we had one team that they, we had an interview committee and they interviewed, they had to apply for it and then interview why they wanted. And I thought that was very effective, finding your best leaders. But far too often it could be a popularity poll or who the best athlete on the team poll is. And it's such a big decision. And I was trying to search one of my favorite lines in a movie and I don't have it now, but maybe the Italian can find it for us is at the end of A Few Good Men, Tom Cruise and the Marines are walking out of the courtroom and it's something like, you know, you don't have to be in the Marine to be a good Marine or you don't have to be a, you know, sergeant. And my point is, just because you're named a leader doesn't mean you're a leader. And the reverse is true. Just because you're not named a captain, you can still be one of the best leaders on the team. And I think we forget that, you know, that you don't have to have the label to do something. You can prove yourself to do it. And I think we forget that sometimes. And I don't want to get into depth about captains because you're Right. That can be a whole nother podcast and it will be but more of the selection of them and whether or not I've seen teams that pick them every week. I've seen teams that pick them at the end of the season. So there's a lot of different ways and I would agree with you on at what level should you start to have them or even having these leadership councils where you meet with a group we that's the other thing. You know, having captains and meeting with them, helping them, you know, getting developing those chains of communication. But it all starts with the selection process. And I think so many use a voting system and maybe I'm wrong in that system which mirrors how we, you know, pick presidents and other political offices. But you also bring up another one that I'd like to it always goes to you can't handle the truth one.

I couldn't find it. But you know, you got Harold, you don't need to wear a patch on your arm to have on yeah, that did actually. Is that the one you were thinking.

Of actually, you know, and again, you don't need to be named captain to be a leader. You don't have to have a patch on your arm to beyond that you.

Can'T handle the truth.

Most people didn't go past that part of the movie. But I love that line at the end when they're walking out of the courtroom and he figure now that he does not but the other big one you hit on is preseason polls and there's other ones I'd like to talk to but this is a big one because I agree with you. I think you know when we talk about biases and like perceptions of teams how how many people grab onto a preseason poll and there's so much uncertainty in that and there's been some movement lately to not have preseason polls to maybe wait the week four or five of a season to to determine team. But we all know you generate conversation. It generates controversy that fans love preseason polls when you're right. There's so much that unknown into especially.

At our level our levels significantly different just because there's so much turnover every year. You know, with two years just significantly different.

Yeah. And I've been on some committee that do preseason polls and what you look at is talented student athletes coming back. But so many things change even a year an injury or they get stronger in the weight room or eligibility things so and it's hard to research enough to know. But you don't even know as a coach. You don't Even know like I always talk about on this podcast how having scrimmages or the first contest really tell you more about your team than anything you've done in the off season. That we're going to pick, you know, how good we think you're going to be. And that's really what it is. But it doesn't change throughout the season. You know, again being on those committees. Rankings help determine seeds in tournaments, rankings help determine at large bids. And there's controversy there even at the end of the season every year, right? Yeah.

I mean if you think about like a sport like volleyball districts or any of the other ones those are seeded and I mean there's always going to be somebody that feels like they got a bad seed, right?

Yeah. And then you most know in some of those the formulas spelled out pretty clearly and they still might disagree with that formula. I don't want head to head competition to be over returning state champion or be over strength of competition. I played a tougher schedule so there's always that debate there, a ton of.

Focus on things that you don't have a whole lot of control over.

No. And you don't have control and. But I've also heard coaches say, you know, it can dictate, you know, your path in a tournament can dictate the success you have, as can health and other things too. But there is still human element of voting into a lot of those determinations of polls and post season tournaments that create a lot of discussion, a lot of back to your point frustration or animosity that I think you have team voting too.

I think teams look at each other, especially after they've practiced or played for a while, they start looking at each other. They know who the better players are and sometimes the better players might not play for a wide variety of reasons, coaches, decisions, things like that. And then teams kind of start making some noise because you know, the certain players not playing. So you, I do believe you have the voting and I think it's consistent and I think it lasts throughout a whole season.

I agree. I had that about what teams vote on on a regular basis throughout the season. Some informal, some formal, some meaningful, some not meaningful. It could be even your uniform combination that you wear or where you go to E or you know, but the kind of. Some decisions can't be, you know, at some point you're a leader for a reason and you can gather information, but it's your decision and it shouldn't go to a vote such as like playing time or discipline of a. Of A student athlete. And I've had issues with that and there have been big issues. If you, you know, bring to the team, you know, what the punishment of this student athlete should be and let's vote on it. Those usually don't end up, well, not great.

But, but the voting, it, there is some really great stuff that can come out of it too. I, I, we just had something fairly recently when we started our season. We did a team vote and asked if the players would be more interested in their workouts being in the morning or in the afternoon slash evening. And from my assumption, because they're student athletes and they're used to competing in the afternoons or evenings, I figured, well, they're going to gravitate over these afternoons, evenings. And it was an overwhelming response to do 7am workouts. So I was shocked.

It's a great way to get the day started, though.

Yes, fully, I fully agree with that. But I was very surprised, especially at this age level. Yeah. So the voting sometimes really works because that's what the group wants and that's not maybe what you would assume. Right.

But I think that's a key point in the sense of we need to hear from our student athlete. That's who we're here for. That's what our decisions are based on. And we might think differently than they do because I would agree with you, I would think college student athletes would want to sleep in in the morning, but why not get there, hear them and get their voice back to even leadership councils or our student athlete advisory council, you know, giving them a voice. It's just again, what, finding the right thing for them to be able to have decisions on.

Absolutely. I think there's lines on it too. They're going to want some things and they don't necessarily know what they need. And so the, the voting can only go so far. There's going to be decisions made by coaching staffs across the country that the players wouldn't necessarily vote for. But then when it's all said and done, they kind of see like, okay, now I kind of understand why we were, we were doing this, but they didn't necessarily know it at the time. And I'll kind of treat it as they go in and they're, it's awful tasting medicine, but they didn't know that they, they really needed it.

Yeah. And that's a great point in the sense of wait too. I mean, like the date with our presidential election right now is the electoral college versus the popular vote. And I've had coaches before say the team is 50% of the vote and I'm the other 50% of the vote. So they can kind of match that weight if they. Because you're right, in some cases, the student athlete might not get the whole picture or have the experience to it. And we have that in our league decisions. The, the bigger decisions we make, the higher the percentage the vote needs to be to pass. You know, for the easy decisions, it's majority vote, but for league expansion or changes in our constitution, it's usually 2/3 or, or 3, 4 vote. And I'd get a little frustrated with coaches sometimes when they made those decisions, like I'm 50%, because then you're not saying you trust your team really, that they're going to come up with the best decision. But you know, again, that parallel to some of the decisions that we make, you know, in our democracy voting system.

Too, I think that works at the professional level or it could work well at the professional level, but at the collegiate or the amateur level, it's. It'd be much more challenging to be 50, 50.

And I agree. And even again back to if you need to go 50, 50 as a coach, then knowing what you should have your student athlete vote on and not vote on would be, you know, a better solution to that problem than if you're worried about what the outcome could be. Because once you hand it over, then it could lead to frustration, a conflict if, you know, they vote. And you know, I've seen that with postseason awards where someone won that you didn't think was going to win or people are wondering, well, that's not, you know, we all didn't vote for this person. And we have that even with some of our league voting. But there's got to be transparency there. And again, that's another thing that we want from our democratic process is transparency, validity, security, trustworthy of the process. And you know, we struggle with that in sports sometimes more so probably with our postseason awards of, you know, at all levels, like who's all American or who is all league or all conference and what goes into that process. And as an athletic administrator, we're always working hard on improving that process where this year we're going to coaches meetings at the end of the season so they can discuss the process because we kind of went away and had did some online voting in the past. But, you know, accountability is another thing. You know, favoritism biases lead into that. And again, another thing we deal with in our democratic process, media wise or social media wise or foreign country influence wise that, you know, we also deal with in sports.

The other notion I keep coming back to is, and we're gonna bring up Cut's favorite program, Ted Lasso.

Love it.

I want to say it was season two or season three. There was the point where they're in Amsterdam, they're trying to figure out what. What to do. They're trying to do a vote, but there becomes a stalemate. They can't seem to decide. So you've also got that issue where a decision isn't made.

Yeah, that's my family. When we vote to eat out, we all pick something different. But that's one of the best episodes actually, the Amsterdam. Yes.

Because they do come together as a team too.

They do. They.

They experience something they didn't think they were going to do.

Yeah.

And.

And then come together and the way they interact when they do is pretty special. So. Which again leads to, even in sports, that the difficult division, the recognition you receive, even getting voted in a preseason poll helps your team's reputation and recognition and confidence. Or you could also use it as block room material that why are they ranked higher than us? So, yeah, it is what you can take from it too, to whether it's a good or bad outcome. And that's true in our country today. Whether you're party won or lost, you know, be in control yourself and help, you know, if you do certain things every day, then it minimizes the influence that others have on you anyway.

Certainly.

Yeah. Regardless of voting, I think you can make an impact on the world and starts with kindness and you know that. That sort of things. And you can make a large impact regardless of any votes and you can control all those things within your influence and not get so wrapped up in, you know, who, who received an all American vote and maybe wasn't as deserving as another person because for the most part you're not going to change any of it. So focus on those things that you can influence and if you can take something out of it, whether it's motivation because you didn't get it, or some, some happiness or joy because you did, then take that and run with it.

Yeah. And I think that the key way to end this is the ERO is how you respond to it and whether you use it as motivation or fuel or whether you use it as confidence or belief that you have the confidence of your people behind you to lead or be. And you know, it just. It's important to, you know, to be a leader in. But. But also to vote, you know, that don't Think that your vote doesn't count even on a team as a starter or a reserve or as an administrator in a big meeting. Like, I've gone to meetings where I've been the leader of the meeting with my idea of what should come out of it, and that didn't happen, but at least I generated the discussion or, you know, got some movement toward that. And the key is to follow the process, but. Yeah, but to use it as a way to move forward. So good stuff. So, again, great time. I love the democratic process. I love the way we use sports because it does give people a voice. And that's, in the end, what we want, you know, not a dictatorship or not. And teams that are dictatorships usually don't do well, even though we do believe there, you know, if you want to be successful, your choices may be more limited. That Nick Saban did an excellent job of talking about. But in the end, giving, you know, hearing from people that you disagree with can also help you grow and learn. I mean, one of my favorite quotes is, you learn most from your biggest dissenter that giving the student athlete a voice will help us be more successful, whether it's a vote or just a discussion. But. All right, gentlemen, I got a couple ways we can go with our last question for those that are still listening. So we're going to do a food one first, but then I want to do one of my would you things. So do we both like wings here? Do we all like wings here?

Oh, yeah.

All right, I'm done. What's our favorite sauce on a wing? I'm pretty simple. I'm not a real spicy hot guy, so I just like a honey barbecue or a barbecue sauce.

I really enjoy mango habanero, but the wings got to be smaller. I'm not a big fan of the large wings, so it's traditional, of course, but I like the smaller wings. Mango habanero. Right on point. A little bit of blue cheese.

Okay. Blue. I like. I'm not a blue cheese guy, but I like blue cheese with wings. I like ranch or blue cheese, but I like it on the side. I agree. But anyway, that's interesting. Habanero.

I would say I'm a traditionalist because I do like the buffalo sauce, which I am, but I'm not a traditionalist because I can't do wings on the bones. I can't do bone in.

Okay.

I just.

Chicken nuggets.

That was a whole other question, actually.

It feels too savage for me. I just can't, like, get. Get into that. Although I Can eat ribs. So, you know, I don't know.

So. So like. Yeah, I know. I thought you're just a traditional buffalo.

Person then I. Buffalo is, is probably still always going to be my favorite with some blue cheese dressing.

Do you try hot wings?

I have tried various ones. There is a particular restaurant which I'm sure we're. We're, we are all familiar with and I can't remember it. There's a jama one that's pretty good on there.

Yep. Jamaican jerk.

Yeah. Jamar Macon jerk. Which jerk chicken is just awesome.

I agree. Yep. Jamaican spices and then.

And then there's another Asian one that they call it Asian something. I can't. Zing.

Yes, I know, mom.

Yeah, you do.

Apparently our family loves. I'm always hinting at it and you're.

Like, oh, I got this one, I got this one.

So do you like boneless or the traditional bone in wing?

Bone in.

Okay. See, I started with, you know, when wings became popular, bone in seemed to be popular. Now I don't mind either one. Back to your rib point. I want my food to be easy to eat. I don't have to work for it. That's why I'm not a big lobster or seafood friend of the cut it.

But I don't like being messy either way.

Messy either. And I agree about the size too, because if it, I'm a chicken tender guy. But if it's too big, it's a chicken tender. It's not a wing. You know, my kids actually like the bigger ones I think you were talking about, so.

And I will still do the bone in when needed. But you know, I mean, if it's there because I do like wings no matter what.

Okay.

I'll be a savage when I need to be.

Well, they're pretty popular food nowadays and even at sporting events or when you're watching sporting events. So I thought that would be a fun one. So should we try one more? Would you rather or would you Are we got time or you're the host. All right, let's do it. Because we haven't done one yet.

You're running the show. We voted.

And I can still be addicted here and say yes or no. I don't know your thing, but okay. Would you rather be a really successful one hit wonder or a mediocre singer who enjoys a long career?

Wow, that actually is a tough one.

Well, I think it depends on, you know, the person. So if you're looking for fame and fortune, the one hit wonder is probably going to take care of that piece. Did you say mediocre?

Yep. Or a mediocre singer or athlete for a long time.

I extremely dislike that word to begin with. Agree.

I think that is telling.

So I'm gonna vote for third choice.

That's not on Extremely. This is right in my question.

Extremely consistent for a long time.

I actually am gonna go with the one hit Wonder. And my reason being is my thought process is you go through the enjoyment of having the fame, the fortune, and then after that you kind of. Because I'm not huge on being in the public eye anyway. So that would allow me then to kind of recess back and I'd still.

Be able to be like Vanilla Ice.

I was actually thinking of Ray Parker Jr. Because he is a prime example of that and that I remember seeing an interview or hearing about an interview where he was asked, do you hate the song Ghostbusters now? And he's like, no, that made my entire life. I do not have to work if I don't want to for my entire life. And again, if I saw Ray Parker Jr. On the street today, I doubt I'd recognize him. He'd be able to just walk in, just do whatever he wants.

And I agree. I agree with both of you. I would pick the one hit Wonder too. Cause I don't like the word mediocre. I don't like people that hang on too long. And I mean, I want you to be your best every day. So if you're a one hit wonder, maybe you can find a way to sustain it to your point of the third option. But I thought that would be fun. I got a couple others that we'll do on the next time, but that.

Was a good one, actually. I liked it.

All right, till next time. Go Stars.

Stars on Sports is recorded live at the WLNZ studios. Engineering and production assistance are provided by Daedalian Lowry and Jereny Robinson. You can listen to this episode and other episodes of Stars on Sports on demand at LCCconnect.org to find more information about our athletic program, visit LCCstars.com thanks for listening. Go Stars!