This is the second "CoSIDA Corner" from Doherty which appears in NACDA's Athletics Administration Magazine's November issue. Each issue is sent to over 10,000 university and athletics administrators, with CoSIDA's voice, thoughts and expertise being shared with these key constituents.
This month, Doherty talks about media guide trends and CoSIDA's outreach to leadership groups in college athletics and how CoSIDA is being viewed as a resource and partner to these groups.
Athletics Administration is published each October, November, December, February, March, April, June and August.
Read the November "CoSIDA Corner" HERE
Here is an excerpt from the CoSIDA Corner:
Several years ago a significant piece of legislation that affected people in the college sports information/communications profession was passed when a 208-page limit was put on media guides.
SIDs had to decide what types of information would remain in their guides and many of the publications were simply turned into recruiting-oriented brochures. Whether that was a good thing or not is open for debate, but that isn't the point here.
The key issue at the time for the sports information professionals was that they had little voice in the discussion, let alone the decision itself. Some SIDs may have spoken to their athletics directors about the pending legislation, but the profession as a whole had no coordinated position on the topic. The current CoSIDA leadership is working to prevent something like that from happening again.
CoSIDA doesn't believe it should be any more a part of the actual decision-making on NCAA legislative issues than any other professional association. Our organization respects the difficult decisions that have to be made and will continue to abide by NCAA rules. CoSIDA's representation would simple like to be a part of the conversations that take place regarding issues that affect its membership.
The CoSIDA leadership, particular Executive Director John Humenik, has in recent months begun to reach out to establish relationship with a number of organizations across the intercollegiate athletics spectrum. Humenik has visited with groups like the American Football Coaches Association, the Division IA Athletic Directors Association, NACDA, various NCAA divisional representatives, the NAIA and others.
Developing working relationships with the leadership groups in college athletics is important on two fronts. First, CoSIDA want to be informed. Our leadership wants to be able to communicate pertinent information to CoSIDA members in a timely fashion. We would like to know about issues, as an organization, before they are decided upon.
Secondly, we believe that the CoSIDA leadership and general membership has something to offer to the conversations about issues that afect not only our profession, but the overall college athletics enterprise as well. We are very appreciative to the groups that have already opened their doors to our leadership and involved us - for the first time, in many cases - in the discussio of issues that relate to the communications profession.
The following is some of the language from the various letters CoSIDA is sending to leadership groups:
As you are aware, we are in the midst of the most incredible communications revolution in our history. The communications-based issues facing intercollegiate athletics and its professional have never been so numerous and complicated....The leadership of ... CoSIDA truly believes that is must play a significant role in helping (ORGANIZATION) and other divisional leadership groups throughout intercollegiate athletics deal with such issues and challenges ...We believe that we have many leaders within our profession and organization that have much to offer your organization's leadership ... At our heart, CoSIDA and its people are servants and want to help your organization ... in any way possible with such issues and challenges."We all know that one of the trends in communications is the elimination of printed materials in favor of placing information onto web sites. Media guides are no different .... Legislation that would prevent the printing of media guides has not yet been passed, but it is being discussed at the NCAA level. As I mentioned earlier, when the 208-page limit was being discussed, CoSIDA was not an active participant in the conversation.
That is not the case this time around. Our executive director John Humenik was invited to speak with the NCAA Recruiting Cabinet as that group discussed the printing of media/recruiting guides. John was able to prevent valuable information to that group and help establish CoSIDA as a resource on the national level.
