By Ed Daigneault
Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American
Pay attention. This is the first time, and probably last time, that these words will be typed by my fingers.
Bravo, NCAA.
The omnipresent organization that oversees most of college athletics has made few good decisions during its history. But one of its most recent decisions deserves a standing ovation.
The NCAA has mandated that media guides can no longer exceed 208 pages.
OK, so it doesn't rate highly on the urgency scale. Joe Fan could care less about the size of a media guide, unless you're one of those who inexplicably buys the things to "read" them. In which case, your reading list won't be as hefty during the coming school year.
Limiting the size of media guides is a bit of compromise on the NCAA's part. It had wanted to abolish the things altogether, asking schools to publish all of the information on the Internet. Fortunately, sports information directors around the country saw the problems in that, foremost being that reporters hardly have time on deadline to try getting a connection to the web and then proceeding from there to look up some arcane piece of information.
Kudos to the SIDs for that one. They recognize a couple of simple truths: Many reporters don't have the technology to download massive pieces of data in seconds. Just as many reporters only have rudimentary laptop knowledge, such as how to turn the thing on, write the story and then send it on its way. Asking for more than that is asking for trouble.
One might wonder why the NCAA put a mandate on such a seemingly mundane thing. Simple. These tomes, some of which make "War and Peace" look like a short story, are erroneously called media guides. They are recruiting tools, yet another weapon in the ongoing recruiting arms race. A nice, glossy, heavy media guide recruits a lot better than a thin, not-so-glossy one.
The NCAA may have its collective head buried most of the time, but it's smart enough not to buy the argument floated by Purdue University sports information director Tom Schott.
"Every company has an annual report," Schott told the Chicago Tribune last year, "and that's essentially what a media guide is."
Um, no.
An annual report does not require 440 pages, which is what Nebraska's 2004 football media guide contains. An annual report doesn't include a picture of four scantily clad co-eds with P-I-T-T etched on their tank tops. You'll find that on page 25 of Pittsburgh's 2004-05 basketball media guide. You'll also find a different foursome in the same outfits on page 26.
While the media may be in favor of such photos, they're a long way from necessary for the media. But hey, if you're a 17-year-old looking for a place to play, such a photo just might push you to Pittsburgh.
The NCAA recognized this and at least tried to even the playing field a bit. The nation's big schools routinely produce monstrous media guides, but the likes of Toledo and Fairfield aren't capable financially of putting out 300-page guides. Now everybody has the same amount of space in which to get their message across.
Not surprisingly, a lot of schools are unhappy about this. They'll have to find a way to cut pages. Pitt (hate to pick on the poor Panthers) probably could do without the four-page bio of Mark McCarroll. Four pages on Mark McCarroll? UConn devotes seven pages to Jim Calhoun, who certainly has accomplished a lot more than McCarroll.
Any SID needing help in cutting pages need only consult the media about their, ahem, media guides. This is how it usually goes among sportswriters when the media guides are handed out:
We'll take one to keep in our cars. That one stays intact. We'll take a second and proceed to rip out extraneous pages. By the time we're done, the UConn football and basketball media guides are 100 pages or so and much easier to take on road trips and haul around in a computer bag. Let's face it, we don't need the two pages describing all that Hartford offers (who knew that could take up two pages?) and another two pages describing Springfield, New York, Boston and Providence.
Call me crazy, but I don't need a listing of every UConn basketball letterman and his career stats. But it's in there, taking up 15 pages, stats for everyone from Ray Allen to Ace Watanasuparp. It's a pretty safe bet that the couple of pages in nearly every media guide describing media coverage isn't for the media.
Media members everywhere thank the NCAA for this latest move. My surgically repaired back -- you won't convince me last year's surgery wasn't partially due to lugging huge media guides around for 15 years -- thanks the NCAA.
Bravo, NCAA. Bravo.