Media Guide Perspective
I must admit to chuckling somewhat when Tiger Richardson asked me to author a column on media guides. Somewhere along the way I seem to have become an unofficial spokesperson for the hot-button issue of reducing the number of media guide pages. I suppose that logically occurs when your athletic director is the one who initially proposed eliminating them.
Background: This all came about as a result of trips I made over several years to my athletic director’s office with media guides in hand. I wanted to show him what our coaches were presenting to my staff with the idea that we, too, should be producing a 128-page men’s (men’s, not men’s and women’s) track brochure; and an 88-page women’s soccer book for a program in its inaugural year, while our 18-time national champion program limped along with its 80-page brochure.
Some think I took one look at the Texas football media guide or the Missouri book and scoffed at the notion that a school would publish something in excess of 500 pages. Actually, I love the Texas book and have never even seen the Missouri one. I know Coach Brown liked what SID John Bianco produced for the Longhorns when Mack was here in Chapel Hill and the book had gotten bigger and better since Mack went to Austin. Heisman Trophies, 10-win seasons and a massive fan base tend to warrant that.
I had no issue then or now with the size of football and basketball books, or other sports that draw extensive media coverage and fan support. I figure the competitive marketplace would identify which schools had the media interest, tradition and community following to produce whatever size book each school deemed necessary.
My issue was the exponential growth of most other Olympic sport brochures. In most SID offices, a number of people are available to produce the football and basketball books. Several people write and research the text and records and another person designs the brochure or the book is farmed out to a local graphics company.
However, with Olympic sports at most schools, the SID responsible for the brochure is likely doing most, if not all, of the writing and design, and is doing that for more than one sport. Our industry has countless interns and fulltime staff a few years out of college who handle multiple sports and are spending too much of their time chained to computers doing more graphic design work than other forms of public relations. Or they are adding pages like travel itineraries to get better judging points in the annual CoSIDA swimsuit contest for media guides.
I value media guides as a public relations tool, which is why I asked my athletic director to support the withdrawal of the initial Atlantic Coast Conference proposal that stood to eliminate them. My AD was the first to voice the possibility of supplanting the printed brochure with email, PDFs or black-and-white Xerox copies, but he also was the first to redirect the proposal once our office had a chance to advise him about the importance media guides play in media coverage, recruiting, fundraising and historical archives.
In my opinion, athletic communications personnel spend far too much time working on media guides and not enough time communicating with the media, getting to know their coaches and student-athletes, preparing for and learning crisis management, dealing with all the various constituents that interact with athletic programs, etc…
My objection to media guides was never rooted in finances. I agree with SIDs who say this is an arbitrary and misguided way for athletic departments with $40 or 50 million budgets to save $10-15,000. To me, it’s about public relations, human resources and the extraordinary percentage of time (day and night) SID offices spend producing media guides. (Although having been a part of our athletic department’s budget process, $10-15,000 is a pretty big deal to Olympic sport programs living on the edge.)
I have never met a student-athlete who selected Carolina because of the SIZE of the media guide. In fact, student-athletes I have approached on this subject have laughed at me. I have met more kids who were stressed out about whether or not they would be able to wear their high school number than whether the recruiting section met to their satisfaction.
I think the 208-page limit is low for football and a bit low for basketball We’ve had to cut 128 pages for men’s basketball, which certainly has a remarkable history with Dean Smith, Michael Jordan, four NCAA titles and so on. When I first sat down this summer to scale back the book, I highlighted all the pages both the media and the coaches could live without. I cringed when I marked through some of them, but I knew I could put them on our Internet site, TarHeelBlue.com, or print them out for the media. To my surprise, when I got through marking the book, I actually eliminated 150 pages and was able to put 22 back.
For years, we added pages to the history, records and recruiting sections because we had the means to do so. However, our program existed quite nicely before we added a page on all of our 100-point games or gave every one of our 40 former players who has an honored jersey their own page.
Now that we are designing the basketball book, I wish we had 16 more pages, but we’ll make do with 208. I did check with our beat writers and coaches to see what they could work without. We’ve kept most, but certainly not all, of the history and records section, eliminated the opponent section except for key contact information and tightened the book in other areas
Football has more than 100 student-athletes, the largest coaching staff, (in most cases) the oldest history and an extensive records section. In most schools, it requires a larger book, and I hope that is addressed prior to next year.
Where do I hope this goes? Well, if I had the power to make the rules (please stop laughing now!) I would consider capping football at 272, basketball at 224, and schools could designate one other men’s and women’s program to each be 128 pages. All other sports would be capped at 64 pages.
Regardless, when changes are inevitably made, I hope a group of athletic directors, SIDs, coaches and (gasp) media will have a chance to meet to discus common points of concern prior to legislation being submitted or enacted.