College Sports Information Directors of America

Matt Oliver Inside Indiana

One man's gluttony is another man's crusade, or so it seems these days where the NCAA is concerned.

And these days, the NCAA is concerned with media guides, the glossy covered, information jammed, resource material and, yep, common recruiting tool that every media relations department in college sports produces for each of its interscholastic athletic teams.

Media guides, folks, serious business in the eyes of the powers that be in college athletics, once again proving that too much legislation isn't necessarily a good thing.

The books are also serious business for anyone who's ever been asked to strike a keystroke in the name of journalism or touch a nerve in the name fanaticism.

Media guides are a reporter's best friend and a fan's best source of fire power when arguing with other fans about what fans argue about - their teams.

It takes a lawyer's brain, or at the very least, a lawyer's vocabulary, to understand where the governing body of college athletics is with its witch hunt against the media guide, but here's what I've been able to surmise:

Sometime last year, the ACC made a proposal that would basically eliminate the print form of the media guide, and require every scribe in the country to become computer competent - yeah, right.

The conference saw the media guide as a threat to the equality of the recruiting process. There was also the mention of it being a cost-cutting measure. But the ACC's original proposal isn't very popular.

So, currently under review by the Division I Management Council is another, less severe proposal that would still allow for a print version of the media guide, but would limit its size and its length.

According to the NCAA web site (I stumbled across the site while trying to find solitaire on my instrument of technology), the effective date for this newest proposal, if passed, would be August 1, 2005.

None of this is new news, of course, but it's relevant because early last week, my IU basketball media guide showed up in the mail, all 328 pages of it.

One skimming of the guide brings one word to mind: hogwash.

Hogwash, I say, when the talk of the NCAA reforming the media guide comes up, for the mere fact that a university-produced yearbook just doesn't provide that much of an edge in recruiting.

But it does provide a plethora of, well, let's just call it "extra" information.

The following are highlights from my flipping through the pages of the 2004-05 Indiana Basketball Media Guide that prove my point.

For those of you who haven't seen them before, be prepared: none of Mike Davis' three assistant coaches have hair. Nope, the headshots of assistants Kerry Rupp, Donnie Marsh and Thad Fitzpatrick on pages 54-56 all appear sans locks.

The hairless men could definitely have an impact on recruiting.

Read page 68 and learn that IU has an all-time record of 0-3 against Bunker Hill Navy Base, the Indianapolis YMCA and Cleveland State, having lost to each team once.

Of course, of those three losses, the most recent, the 1986 loss to Cleveland State, seems the biggest.

According to the information on page 76, the Hoosiers have a wining record against every conference in the country but two: the Mideastern Athletic and the Southland conferences.

You see, IU has never played a team from either the Mideastern Athletic or Southland conferences. After further review, this may be frivolous information that could have been omitted from the guide.

But that's just an opinion.

The only Indiana basketball player ever to score 50 points or more in a game was Jimmy Rayl and he scored 56 points twice, once in 1962 and once in 1963.

Further scrutiny of page 112 shows that Rayl actually has four of the top 10 scoring games in Hoosier history, while the most recent Hoosier to be in the top 10 was Steve Alford, who scored 42 at Michigan State in 1987.

As numbers go, No. 22 and No. 35 seem to carry some weight for the basketball Hoosiers. Page 129 shows that All-Americans Damon Bailey, Archie Dees (Dees also wore No. 33) and Rayl wore double deuces, as did Big Ten Newcomer of the Year Dean Garrett, while All-Americans Walt Bellamy, Kirk Haston and George McGinnis all suited up with 35 on their backs.

All-American Jared Jeffries is the only Hoosier to ever wear No. 1.

On page 185, in the recounting of the Hoosiers' history, April 4, 1992, stands out as IU's then-seventh appearance in the Final Four. The Hoosiers lost to Duke that night at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, while a future Inside Indiana columnist and his father took the game in from a hotel room at the Bloomington Hampton Inn on Walnut Street, while loading up on Mother Bear's pizza and carbonated non-alcoholic beverages.

Page 286 features a listing of IU academic programs ranked nationally, but there is no mention of Indiana' designation as the No. 1 party school by the Princeton Review in the late summer/early fall of 2002.

Page 292 lists a sampling of the musical acts and comedians that have spiced up the student life at IU, included in those acts are Bob Dylan, Bill Cosby and the Dave Matthews Band. Here, I would like to register my protest that the Blues Traveler show that I bought scalped tickets to in 1995 at the IU Auditorium is omitted from the list. Johnny Popper was blowin' that harmonica something fierce that night.

The claim on page 296 is that "Over 440,000 Indiana University alumni live around the world."
The page has listings for alumni in 49 states, including Alaska, Rhode Island and South Dakota, and the District of Columbia, but there's not one darn Hoosier in Wyoming.

No one wants to be a Cowboy?

Page 316 starts a four-page photo spread of the IU athletic facilities. A viewing of these photos begs the following question: How is it that the Lake Lemon Rowing Center, where the IU rowing team rows, is featured before Bill Armstrong Stadium, where the IU soccer program that has won six national titles plays?

And finally, on page 328, there is a pseudo-advertisement for IUHoosiers.com, the web site for IU athletics. That's the web site where, if the folks from the NCAA get their way next year, the inquisitive will have to go to get the information that will be excluded if media guides are either made completely digital or reduced in size.

If that does happen, good luck with the surfing. I'll be in Wyoming.