By Josh Robbins
Sentinel Staff Writer
Those 31 pages.
They offered a window into Florida State football history -- a glimpse how the
football program evolved from its 1973 winless season to its 1993 and 1999
national-championship years.
Rob Wilson loved that part of last year's FSU media guide. He and his colleagues
within the school's sports information department had poured over statistics,
starting lineups and game-by-game results to give each season since 1973 its own
page.
What came next almost induced physical pain for Wilson, the school's assistant
athletic director media relations. Those pages would have to go.
In April, the NCAA voted to limit media guides in all sports to 208 pages. The
move, its proponents said, would cut costs and stop the so-called arms race
between schools seeking recruiting edges with larger and larger media guides.
"I was very much against it from the outset, because I think the whole premise
of it is wrong," Wilson said. "Do they want everyone to have a 50,000-seat
stadium and the same color uniforms and the same-sized tackles? The differences
in universities are part of the appeal of college athletics to me."
Wilson and his counterparts across the country knew a change was on the way, but
they still had to scramble to cut the fluff out of their guides.
Consider the case of the University of Missouri, which produced a massive
614-page guide in 2004.
Loads of editing and winnowing also had to be done across the Sunshine State. In
2004, Florida published a 340-page guide. FSU's was 336 pages, Miami's was 320
and UCF's was 290.
"It was a lot tougher, I think, than people thought," said UCF's assistant media
relations director, Jason Baum, who was the lead editor on the Golden Knights'
guide this past offseason.
"The big thing was a lot less photos and smaller text in some areas. In one
regard, we're fortunate that UCF doesn't have a long football history like some
schools."
Mark Pray, Miami's assistant athletic director for communications, said the
cutting-down process "was accomplished without too much difficulty." For one
thing, he eliminated the season preview section because, as he said, "Once the
season begins, it's no longer a season outlook."
But throughout it all, there was a balancing act for every school. The guides
allow schools to market their programs to prospective players, give boosters
something to put on their coffee tables and, yes, serve as resources for
reporters.
"I like to look at the pictures, I like to read bios of guys and see what's
going on and just look through the book itself and see the old history," said
Georgia defensive lineman Gerald Anderson. "But it wasn't a deciding factor or a
recruiting tool."
There was a time not so long ago when media guides weren't much more than
afterthoughts. When FSU Coach Bobby Bowden arrived in Tallahassee in the
mid-1970s, guides resembled pamphlets. They could go fit into somebody's pocket.
That eventually changed, though.
"I think all of us tried to use them as recruiting tools," Bowden said. "That's
why they got so elaborate. What you'd do when you're trying to recruit these
kids is mail them a media guide, because that tells the whole story and they can
see everything. So, then, everybody started to outdo each other."
Several years ago, Steve Kirschner, North Carolina's associate athletic director
for communications, finally had enough. With media guides in hand, he told North
Carolina Athletic Director Dick Baddour that something had to be done to curb
the size of guides in sports other than football and basketball.
A few weeks later, at a meeting of Atlantic Coast Conference administrators,
league officials decided to propose NCAA legislation to ban hard copies of all
media guides. Instead, the books would be published digitally, on compact discs
or over the Internet.
That went too far for Kirschner. He and his counterparts within the conference
lobbied their athletic directors to withdraw the legislation.
It was withdrawn but not forgotten. It was the predecessor to the new rule.
Kirschner still wants to see sports information directors in Olympic sports
(such as track and field, gymnastics and soccer) spend less time producing
guides and more time getting to know their teams and pitching story ideas to
reporters. He also wants the NCAA to pass additional legislation to trim Olympic
sports' guides even further than the limit of 208 pages.
"What has happened is media guides have become the be-all, end-all of [being a
sports information director]," Kirschner said Monday. "It should be one
promotional tool, not the promotional tool."
"They're going to play the game whether we have a 600-page book or a newsletter.
And isn't that what it's all about?"
Kirschner also said that cost savings could be redirected back into non-revenue
sports.
This year, UCF officials ordered a 5,550-copy printing of their football media
guide at a cost of $16,355, Baum said. Because of the fewer pages involved,
that's a cost savings of $3,299 over 2004's smaller printing of 4,650 books.
Florida's assistant athletic director for sports information, Steve McClain,
said UF saved nearly $20,000 on printing costs this year even though more books
were printed. Wilson estimated FSU saved about $22,000 this year.
Still, Kirschner acknowledged that the new NCAA rule will force some difficult
cuts in North Carolina's men's basketball guide.
Schools like Notre Dame and Southern California, schools with two of the richest
histories in college football, also must make some tough choices.
Notre Dame's 2004 guide ran 464 pages butsignificant omissions had to be made
this time around. The Fighting Irish have kept the write-ups on Knute Rockne,
the legendary Four Horsemen and George Gipp in their guides but had to excise
the section on Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger.
Instead, said Doug Walker, Notre Dame's associate sports information director,
the school will publish a supplement to guide, which is perfectly legal under
NCAA rules, on the school's history and traditions.
The supplement was made necessary by the new 208-page limit.
"To say that their guides should be the same size as Florida State's, which
should be the same size as Nevada's, is ridiculous to me," Wilson said. "Why in
the world would Notre Dame or USC or Florida State not be allowed to record
their history in any manner they see fit?"