MPA Executive Director Michael Bisson on Classification, Heal Points and the Shot Clock

This week I sat down with Michael Bisson, the new Executive Director of the Maine Principals' Association. And no, this isn't an episode about complaining about the MPA. Bisson walks through what the MPA can do, what it can't, what it wishes it could, and how decisions actually get made. Spoiler: it's mostly not "Mike and Mike" in an office deciding things.

In this episode:

• Bisson's first weeks in the big chair, leaning on predecessor Mike Burnham, and the weekly Monday meetings with fellow Section 1 executive directors around New England, New York and New Jersey
• The start of a new classification cycle for 2027-28 and 2028-29, and what a 20-year enrollment study shows: nearly every school in Maine has gotten smaller, with only 5 schools over 1,000 students today compared with 13 twenty years ago
• Balancing Lewiston-sized schools against schools with a few dozen students, and why every region and school size needs a seat on the committee
• Enrollment versus program strength: Rhode Island's performance-based model, why Maine has been reluctant to go that route, and how one class of five good athletes can swing a small school for four years
• Heal Points: why other states can't believe Maine uses them, why every game on the schedule matters, and whether the old five-point class weight could come back
• How an idea becomes an MPA policy, using the indoor track committee's request for regular-season Sunday meets as an example
• Tournament logistics: flexing games between venues, and the push to keep teams that have to travel far from always drawing the last game of the night
• Esports as the change Bisson didn't expect to get over the finish line, and why it gives some kids their only connection to school
• The white whales: cooperative teams, the widening gap within Class A, and holding ticket prices for families as costs rise
• The shot clock: every tournament venue already has one, so what's actually holding it back is small and rural schools finding trained operators. Andrew Pelletier of Morse is leading the basketball committee's look at options, including letting schools use it in exhibition tournaments and phasing it in from the largest schools down. Plus my pitch for making it a tournament-only rule and letting schools decide for themselves
• Where to take a complaint: start with your school's athletic director, and the MPA would rather answer the question than let a rumor become fact
• Rapid fire: eligibility checks since the Cheverus transfer case, the MPA's long-standing policy of following Maine law on transgender students, and whether flag football is coming
• Sportsmanship, blowouts and the soccer mercy rule
• If he had a magic wand: indoor tennis courts, and one or two more big venues to take the pressure off tournament week
• A pitch to spread out the state championship games so each one gets the whole state's attention, and how close the MPA already is to that

Also in the intro:

• Episode 120, and a reflection on going from needing Don Shields to vouch for a press pass to hosting the MPA's executive director
• The Maine Basketball Rankings app is live in the Apple App Store and in the top 200 in its category, with Android on the way. You can enter scores from the bleachers, follow the statewide scoreboard and check the rankings, and website subscribers get everything included using the code in the newsletter