by John Brice
of The Daily Times Staff
John Painter settled onto the floor of his den and began breaking a rule he had no doubt stressed to his sons, Jackson and David.
Painter ripped page after page out of his book, -- the 2004 University of Tennessee football media guide.
``In our living room, I just started tearing out pages,'' Painter said. ``I thought `These pages can go.' I had already planned to shrink player bios from 40 to 26 pages. I tore out 14 pages there. I got it down to about 225 pages without trying too hard, but that doesn't mean everybody agreed with what I'm doing.''
The associate sports information director at Tennessee had a purpose, though. New NCAA legislation -- proposal 2003-32 -- was in the works to downsize the annual publications, and Painter, like many of his colleagues, fully expected the edict to pass.
On Friday, the NCAA's management council followed through, effecting the measure that prevents any media guide from surpassing 208 pages. A Southeastern Conference proposal for 240 pages was rebuffed. The changes, which apply to all schools and all sports, are to be implemented immediately.
Making the cut
``It's a challenge for our (sports information directors) to cut the content that has been in our books for years,'' said Charles Bloom, associate commissioner for the Southeastern Conference, ``and to cut it down to 208 pages.''
The University of Tennessee will send its football guide -- annually the school's biggest print venture -- to the presses by mid-June. It will be significantly lighter than a year ago -- the new 208-page standard rather than the 372 it spanned in 2004.
At places like Georgia (420 pages), Texas (500-plus), Nebraska (500-plus) and Missouri (500-plus), the lightening of the guides will require cutting the books to as much as one-third their previous size.
For a publication intended to please myriad audiences -- it must be handy for the media; appealing to coaches and the recruits they target; and fans who eagerly gobble up the guides for $15-20 -- choosing what to omit cannot be done haphazardly.
``We had a conference call (Thursday) amongst our SIDs,'' Bloom said. ``Everybody chimed in on what they're doing to cut pages. It's pretty tough to listen to when you have people who have so much time and energy invested talk about reducing (guides).
``I know that when you have so much pride in a product, it's tough to deal with.''
How they gained weight
Bud Ford, Tennessee's associate athletics director for sports information, believes changes to media guides more than a decade ago helped usher in the era of holographic covers and potato-sack publications. At that time, schools were told to cease generating recruiting guides and consolidate that material into the media guides.
``It began to escalate and so as most things, when they appear to be getting more and more expensive and some schools have resources and others don't, they voted to do one publication,'' said Ford. ``With that publication, there was a choice: do a media guide or recruiting guide. Almost every school opted for media guide but was now incorporating those pages that dealt specifically with recruiting into media guides.''
Bloom doesn't have to lure recruits with his SEC guide, but the new legislation mandates that schools and their conferences alike trim publications to 208 pages.
``In (the SEC) book, we have to cut 170 pages,'' Bloom said. ``Our book is mainly a factual book. We don't have a lot of what's called fluff to take out.''
Leveling or lessening?
Proponents of the measure -- initially introduced by the Atlantic Coast Conference -- insist it will level the recruiting landscape. A prospective athlete, for instance, might receive a 208-page book from Florida State and an equitable offering from Memphis.
``I think they're trying to put everybody on a level playing field, so to speak,'' said Bloom. ``A Nebraska media guide will be the same as Vanderbilt. Or a Texas media guide the same size as Florida. Everyone is on a level field in terms of pages to deal with, and it sort of stops the arms race among media guides.''
Ford believes the changes nearly force an imbalanced situation.
``They don't take into consideration how many years a school may have played football or how many championships it's won or whatever,'' he said. ``In essence, a school like UAB that's only played for about 20 years (since 1989) has the same number of pages as Tennessee with more than 100 seasons of football.''
NCAA proposal 2003-32 also is expected to save on the bottom line, an ever-increasing factor in college athletics. The bottom line was the target earlier this week when approval was given to adding a 12th regular-season football game. At places like Tennessee, that's a multi-million dollar boost to athletic department revenues.
``The base (budget) on this book is going to be about $135,000,'' said Ford. ``I could save probably, when all is said and done, $50- to 60,000. It's somewhat hard to project because even the printer is trying to figure...he's got 30,000 books that he was printing at 372 pages and now 30,000 at 208 pages. The production, paper, press time...there's less of a book to work with but it's going to be harder to do because we're redoing every page.''
A year from now, Painter doesn't figure to be sitting in his floor tearing apart the book. In fact, the process, he believes, is going to eventually mean less work. What Painter doesn't want to sacrifice are quality and usefulness.
``Our goal is to maintain the integrity of the book for media,'' he said. ``We don't want media to miss anything or potential student-athletes to miss anything.''