By Mark Story
HERALD-LEADER SPORTS COLUMNIST
The long knives are out, baby.
Those flowery media-guide biographies? Life history of every assistant athletics director right on down to the Assistant AD for Back-Slapping and Boot-Licking?
At the University of Kentucky, they're headed for the cutting-room floor.
That full page of gushing tribute to former North Carolina basketball players -- more than 40 -- with a jersey hanging in the Dean Dome rafters?
Headed for the scrap heap (well, cyberspace).
Whole pages of detailed information on every single South Carolina basketball opponent?
Trash 'em.
"And I personally use the heck out of those," said Michelle Schmitt, Interim Sports Information Director at the new Steve Spurrier U. "But something's gotta go."
This summer, the most action-packed venue in major-college sports is the publicity office.
The NCAA -- which seemingly will not rest until it has a rule for every single conceivable variation of all human activity -- has enacted a new regulation for 2005-06 that limits to 208 the number of pages schools can put in their media guides.
That giant "whoooooosh" sound you hear is the sports information types taking a giant machete to their department's signature P.R. instrument.
UK will have to cut 96 pages from its men's basketball book (304 pages last season) and 80 from its football guide (288). Hoops national champion North Carolina must axe 124 pages from its men's guide. Indiana must reduce by 120 pages its hoops edition (no, they will not get there by erasing all official recognition of Bob Knight).
Almost assuredly, the all-time cut job awaits the good folks in Columbia, Mo. A year ago, the Missouri football program -- not exactly Southern Cal when it comes to football prominence -- turned out a media guide of (drum roll, please) ...
... 614 pages!!!!
One would think you could start at "In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth" and tell the entire history of mankind in fewer than 614 pages.
"We joked around here that this came about when everybody saw our football guide," says Chad Moller, Mizzou's Director of Media Relations.
Actually, the move to restrict the size of media guides started in Chapel Hill of all places.
Over the years, North Carolina Assistant AD Steve Kirschner had watched in amazement as schools began to produce thicker and thicker guides -- even in sports that attract little media or fan interest.
Back in the day, media guides -- which historically have included player and coach biographical information; team historical records; items about the traditions of sports programs -- were little more than background for reporters.
However, in a cost-cutting move during the early 1990s, the NCAA passed a rule that said schools could put out a media guide. Or they could put out a recruiting guide designed to lure high school prospects.
But they could no longer put out both.
Ever resourceful, many schools simply folded all the info from the recruiting guides into the media book.
Aided by the advances in desktop publishing technology, "media" guides started to get thicker than blocks of cement.
So, UNC's Kirschner began calling the ever-expanding books to the attention of his boss, North Carolina AD Dick Baddour.
Deciding that the bulging media guides represented expensive excess, Baddour took the proverbial bull by the horns and soon a proposal was put forward by the Atlantic Coast Conference to eliminate them entirely.
That didn't fly, but eventually a "reduction compromise" was reached.
"We noticed in the early 1990s the guides were about 200 pages," says Shane Lyons, an ACC associate commissioner. "That seemed plenty enough to tell the story of your program."
The magic number of 208 was settled on because printing presses are set up in increments of 16 (meaning that 208 pages cost no more than 200).
No, you can't just make your pages bigger. The NCAA also mandates that page size cannot exceed 81/2 by 11 (told ya, they will soon literally have a rule for everything).
All of which forms the back story to why the sports P.R. departments at many major universities now have the chain saws running.
Given the epic history of Kentucky basketball, you'd think one of the toughest cutting jobs will be here. Yet, the man overseeing it, UK Assistant AD Scott Stricklin, didn't seem especially daunted.
In addition to the departing administrative bios, information on UK's opponents will also be drastically reduced, Stricklin reports.
In other cases, pages will be consolidated. Where Kentucky used to give a page to each of its national championship teams, the school now plans to consolidate and have two past champs to a page.
That kind of decision -- what part of a rich past do you cut? -- turns up the heat. "You risk hurting somebody's feelings," says Indiana men's hoops publicist Pete Rhoda. "I worry about that. You don't want anyone to think they've been forgotten."
As for the money, a year ago Stricklin says Kentucky printed 16,000 men's hoops guides at a price of some $71,000. This year, the decrease in pages should lead to a reduction in cost of some $15,000.
Missouri's Moller figures his school's savings will be in the same range. "And that's not gonna save Olympic-type sports or protect anybody's job," he says. "It really isn't saving that much money."
But it does mean that, this summer, the cruelest cuts (in pages) are coming in the unlikely venue of college sports information departments.
Though some schools are finding the slashing easier than others.
UNC's Kirschner says the 2005-06 Tar Heels basketball guide will save significant space in its "returning players section."
Alluding to the mass exodus to the NBA that decimated the national champions' roster, he joked "we don't have any returning players."