Related Content
•
CoSIDA.com/CoSIDA360 Magazine Archive
Note: This story appeared in the Spring 2021 May edition of CoSIDA 360 Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.
Also read:
Cover Story Part 2
The Evolution of Storytelling
What skills and traits will make for the best storytellers in college athletics in the coming years?
by Imry Halevi – Harvard University, Assistant Director of Athletics, Multimedia & Production @imryh
The game is over, the season has concluded, and your team has emerged undefeated. What do you do now?
Back in the day, the answer was easy. You’d write a compelling press release, head over to the fax machine, and start going down your contact list. From student newspapers, to local media outlets, to national networks. You’d press “send” and hope that some assignment desk editors decide they can spare a reporter and write up a story in tomorrow’s edition.
Alas, we are no longer “back in the day,” and you are no longer a Sports Information Director, or Sports Publicist, or School Press Officer. None of those titles truly describe your job these days. And, honestly, neither does the more modern “Director of Athletics Communications.”
These days, the buzz word is “content.” You don’t write press releases, you create “content.” You don’t send faxes, you distribute “content.”
So, what does that make you? A “creative communications content creator?” Oy vey.
“Truthfully, trying to get Puget Sound Athletics into the newspapers and on TV has never really been my priority,” says Gregor Walz, Director of Athletic Communications at the University of Puget Sound. “Seattle-Tacoma is a large market, and we’re a small school with a high percentage of out-of-state students.
“One of my top goals in forging our path is for us to look like we’re NCAA DI on social media. I know that Tacoma and Seattle sports reporters follow us on social media. They reach out to me via DM or text me directly from time to time. I know I don’t need to flood them with press releases — I think that would be counterproductive for us.”
Walz is not alone in his shift of perspective. SIDs are no longer reliant exclusively on other people to create content for them. They have school websites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the new social media platforms that seem to pop up every day, plus many essentially are creating their own broadcast networks.
Gregor Walz is the Director of Athletic Communications at Puget Sound.
With this change of media landscape, also comes a change of role for the SIDs, and a different answer to the question, “Do you still need SIDs in 2021?” (Spoiler alert — YOU DO!)
Legendary Northeastern University SID Jack Grinold used to complain that “People say that the computers are doing all the work, but it takes the same amount of people to input information into the computer, and keep track of all the games that are going on.”
So, maybe the question is not, “Do we still need SIDs in 2021?” but rather, “Who makes a good SID in 2021?”
If I were starting a brand-new athletics communications department today, and I were interviewing candidates to fill my team, I wouldn’t ask them to pitch me a lede. Instead, I would ask them to tell me a story. I would look for people who can innovate the way they tell stories, rather than the way they sell stories.
“In 2021, SIDs are storytellers, recruiters, brand managers, crisis communicators, social media experts and so much more. They have to know how to reach a 16-year-old recruit and a 65-year-old donor,” says Allison Fossner, the new Associate Director of Marketing & Communications at Drexel University.
Allison Fossner, formerly the Assistant AD of Communications, Creative Services and Licensing at Delaware, is the new Associate Director of Marketing & Communications at Drexel in the College of Arts and Sciences.
With the broadening of the fan base, and the exponential growth of the media landscape, communications professionals can no longer outsource the elements of the job that used to be called “new media.”
“When I started in communications, the ideal candidate was left-brained — analytical, methodical, stats oriented,” Fossner said. “Now, we’re looking for someone that is clearly right-brained — creative, visual, thinking about the whole picture.”
A good SID is a good videographer, and a good photographer, and a good social media strategist, and a good storyteller, and a good communicator, and…still…a good writer. Needing these skills has nothing to do with team size, or school budget. It’s just the reality of today’s world.
“Versatility is a must. Flexibility is a must,” says Derryl Myles, Assistant Athletic Director, Fighting Illini Productions at University of Illinois Athletics. “The vehicle has changed but the stories remain the same. How do we emphasize the WHO? How can I spin this story differently for different audiences in different platforms? When should we do it? All questions that were there 20 years ago but the vehicle is different.”
Standing on the field at the end of an unexpectedly close and exciting game with no one else around you what do you do? Do you ask someone to call the off-site photographer, or do you take the photo yourself? Do you look for the nearest videographer, or do you shoot a clip yourself?
You’re there. In the moment. You know the team. They’re comfortable with you. You should be the one to capture the moment, and “create the creative content.”
Does this make you any less of an “SID”? Do you need to start looking for new industry groups? Professional relationships? Work friends?
Of course not! Just like every other role in an athletics department, the role of the SID has evolved. Pushing back makes no sense. Putting on blinders, even less.
“Twenty years ago, I’d have nightmares about getting the weekend scores in the newspaper,” remembers Jeremy Hartigan, Associate Director of Athletics for Communications at Cornell University.
“It was hard to imagine exactly how different the landscape would be,” Hartigan added. “SIDs have had to adapt at an incredibly rapid pace or risk becoming irrelevant. The really good ones have used these vehicles to tell stories with more depth and impact, while becoming more efficient in the more traditional staples of the job, which still exist.”
The best people I’ve ever worked with start most conversations with the words, “What if we tried…” For many, these are scary words. They deviate from the norm. They introduce risk and uncertainty. But for innovators, these are exciting words. They open the door for creativity, and allow for passion and rule-breaking.
Those are the SIDs of the future. The ones who always look two steps ahead, and try to think about the next big innovation in storytelling.
Derryl Myles is the Assistant Director of Athletics, Video Services at Illinois.
So how can we, as an industry, encourage this evolution? After all, it’s much easier to change when you feel the wind in your back. When everyone around you is also changing, and when there is momentum to move forward or fall behind.
First, and most importantly, we have to completely erase the phrase “that’s the way we’ve always done it” from our vocabulary. Interns and new SIDs want to fit in. They want to belong. And when you, as a manager, tell them that they’re not doing something the way it’s always been done, you are signaling to them that innovation is not welcome on your team.
Try replacing “that’s the way we’ve always done it” with “these are the goals we’re trying to achieve.” Leave the door open for innovative ways to get from point A to point Z.
Second, we must not only accept failure, but we must encourage it. If you are afraid of failing, you’ll never take any risks. You’ll never try anything new. As managers, we have to provide a safety net for our team. Give them the space to try new things, and the confidence that failure will be seen as the first step towards future success, rather than as the last step in an unwarranted deviation from the norm.
As an industry, we must also acknowledge unorthodox ways of doing new things. Why must we only celebrate a well-written article, when we can also praise the accompanying video and social media post? Why should we measure success just by counting page visits or views, rather than a creative way of tackling an age-old problem?
Third, we must expand the scope of who we see as an “SID.” If the primary role of the SID is as a “creative content creator,” what separates her from a videographer, or a photographer or a social media manager. The quick answer — nothing.
We all focus on different things in our roles, obviously. We all have different passions, different tools and different ways we go about our job. But we all fall under the same umbrella. We all tell stories. So why are some people “SIDs” and some not? Must you operate StatCrew to be an SID? Must you know how to use a fax machine? Must you have the names and numbers of all the local assignment desk editors saved on your cell phone?
These are all archaic ways of separating people based on tools and technologies. That’s no longer the case. We have to be as inclusive as possible in how we see ourselves and our peers.
“With the rapid growth of different social media platforms, sports information directors are now having to get creative in the way they provide information to the masses,” says Sydney Sims, Notre Dame’s Associate Athletics Communications Director – Football. “That includes being heavily involved in social media strategies, creative creation, and content planning.”
According to Sims, SIDs can no longer afford to focus exclusively on the day-to-day. Without strategy, without looking ahead and planning ahead, you get lost in the minutia and lose focus on the goals of the job — telling the story and reinforcing the message of the University.
Finally, we must stop saying and thinking “this is someone else’s job.” SIDs are communicators and storytellers and content creators and creatives. If this is not your job, whose is it? Good SIDs know how to do many things, great SIDs always want to learn more things. Asking someone for help is very different than telling someone that something is their job rather than yours.
Sydney Sims is the Associate Athletics Communications Director - Football at Notre Dame.
Any and all barriers between different creative roles are 100 percent arbitrary. Not only are they counterproductive to the operation of an athletics department, but they are detrimental to the future development and career prospect of today’s young SIDs.
The more tools SIDs know, the more career paths they have ahead of them. We as an industry should encourage our teams’ growth and development. It’s why we’re here. It’s our job.
The SID world, of course, is not the first one to go through such a monumental change. Before “multimedia directors” existed as we know them today, there were “college radio announcers.” In the 1990s, 1980s and earlier, those were as close to multimedia directors as most athletics departments knew.
These radio announcers produced live sports shows, called live sporting events and marketed their sports productions around the region and the country. As in-house college sports radio gave way to in-house streaming and TV productions, radio announcers were called upon to evolve.
They could become “the voice” of live streaming broadcasts, they could grow into the role of producers, or they could lead through building and shaping video departments.
Some of them did just that, and have set the standard for college sports productions around the country. Others were never able to make the switch. They were too rigid in their understanding of what college sports broadcasting meant, and the evolving content consumption habits of the fan base around them.
The SIDs of yesterday, and the athletics communications professionals of tomorrow, need to remember that the future is not something they get to pick or choose. The future is coming, and standing still is no longer an option. You grow, evolve, learn and reinvent yourself and those around you, or you get left behind.
Beyond “SID” and “creative” and everything else, we are ALL students, we are ALL teachers and we are ALL leaders. Regardless of our title. We must see it as our responsibility to learn something new every day, teach someone every day, and encourage everyone around us to grow every day.
We’re all in this together.
Talk about these stories on the
CoSIDA Slack Community.