A tale is told of a university president who, frustrated and overwhelmed by NCAA correspondence and publications, collected the material in a large box and dumped it at the national office in a show of protest.

Maybe the story is true and maybe it's not, but the membership no doubt is full of people who would love to make such a grand gesture. When it comes to producing words, the NCAA has few peers.

Every year, the Association creates about 1,500 printed pieces. They range in size from one-page championship handbills to The NCAA News all the way to the granddaddy of them all, the 576-page NCAA Football Records book.

The staff is aware of the volume and over the years has made a number of successful efforts to curtail paper communication. For instance, not so long ago, NCAA sports statistics were conveyed in paper form through first-class mail. In the 1980s, they were delivered through the News and fax-on-demand. Two years ago, the statistics staff took the plunge into exclusive Internet delivery -- a change easily accepted by the membership.

Likewise, few complained about the demise of the printed version of the Annual Reports, Convention Proceedings or graduation-rate reports. The News went from 46 annual issues to 26 in 1998, and the brickbats were minimal. As the new century dawned, the search for nonprint alternatives gained momentum as the staff saved money, reduced paper excess and met an Executive Committee commitment to use technology more effectively.

However, the low-hanging pulp may have been picked.

Some recent changes have affected the membership more directly and have produced at least a few membership yelps about whether the Internet is the best means of delivery for certain kinds of information -- in particular that found in the championships handbooks (used by the entire membership) and the Second Publication of Convention Legislation (SPOPL), which applies only to Divisions II and III.

Tuned-out audience?

Paul Engelmann, chair of the Division II Legislation Committee, especially laments the loss of the printed version of the SPOPL, a publication that provides the membership the opportunity to amend legislative proposals sponsored by the Divisions II and III governance structures.

"I don't think many people are going to read the whole thing online," he said. "It's pages and pages long. The only way to effectively read and digest this information is to print it off. If people don't read it, they aren't going to know if they're interested in submitting an amendment or not."

To access Convention proposals, users either can view a PDF version of the SPOPL in the publications section of NCAA Online or view the proposals in the Legislative Services Database (LSDBi). The entire 2003 SPOPL is 81 pages, although a Division II user can select that division's proposals, cutting the quantity to 53 pages. (Next year, the PDF version likely will be reformatted so that two pages can be printed at once, further reducing the print burden on the user.) If a user prints the LSDBi version of the 2003 Division II proposals, the different format requires 64 8.5 x 11-inch pages.

All of that strikes Engelmann, faculty athletics representative at Central Missouri State University, as inefficient. In his mind, a physical copy of the SPOPL triggers and enhances membership review of proposed legislation, and the best way to produce a physical copy is to print the information.

"This is our legislation," he said. "This is what governs our activity. There aren't a lot of things more important to the voting membership in Divisions II and III than the legislation."

The membership services staff also believes that the legislation is ultra-important, but it is committed to a technology plan that it believes will enhance membership understanding and save money that can be used for other, possibly more important, purposes.

As the accompanying table demonstrates, the Association has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by eliminating publications, reducing their frequency or cutting their quantity.

Sometimes, savings on individual pieces represent significant money. Earlier this year, the membership services staff moved the registration form for the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse online and therefore was able to cut the print quantity of the Guide for the College-Bound Student-Athlete by half (the form required for Clearinghouse registration previously appeared exclusively in the printed guide). Total print savings: about $165,000.

Add up all of the print efficiencies achieved over the last five years and the figure goes well into six figures -- and that doesn't include mailing expenses. As an example of how expensive postage can be, the last version of the printed graduation-rate report (743 pages for the Divisions II and III version) was shipped at a cost of about $81,000.

Is it really a saving?

Indeed, the NCAA has saved some big money on printing and mailing over the last several years. Yet, at a certain point a question develops about when a saving is really a saving. If the NCAA simply transfers the cost of printing to the membership, where is the benefit?

Mary White, faculty athletics representative at Lees-McRae College, is sensitive to the local cost question.

"I'm sure there is a point at which people say, 'We pay for our membership and now they are going to nickel and dime us to death,' " she said. "In Division II, we're small schools. We're not well-endowed. We're not getting state money and big tuition bucks."

In such an environment, small amounts of money matter, and over time, the cost of paper, toner and printers could become a drain if institutions were increasingly called upon to print NCAA material.

But the NCAA staff also has a number of reasonable arguments on its side. First, it is operating based on a mandate from the Executive Committee -- a membership body -- to make better use of technology. Second, while nonprint alternatives may inconvenience the membership in some cases, they also can free up funding for programs that directly benefit student-athletes.

That is at least indirectly the case with championships handbooks, which came with an annual printing and mailing price tag of more than $200,000 before being committed to the Internet in 2001-02.

"That money has gone back into the general operating budget for the championships group," said Sharon Cessna, NCAA director of championships. "When you're looking at bracket expansions and things like that, there are operational costs that come along with that. So, we can enhance championships across the board when we are able to put money back into our operating budget."

Mary Gardner, athletics director at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, misses the printed championships handbooks, but she said she will adjust if the result is a better use of the money.

"Most of us are more comfortable with a hard-copy document," she said. "However, we've got to get up to speed with the times. Nearly everything is electronic anymore.

"And it's a cost-saving issue, as well. Our field hockey team is in the national playoffs, and I think it's great that we're able to reward the participating student-athletes with additional souvenirs because those are the kinds of things that are most meaningful to the student-athlete. If it's a choice of hard copy or transferring the money to something like that, I'm all for doing something for the student-athletes and finding a way to adapt to the new age of electronics."

It could be that this issue has more to do with anxiety about what could happen than anger about what has happened. Perhaps the championships handbooks and the SPOPL aren't that big a deal in their own right; the real question may be determining the point at which the migration to digital technology should stop.

Need for portability

On that count, the NCAA may be near the boundary of what can be done with existing publications for the foreseeable future. After all, important products such as playing rules and records books have to be printed because they must be portable. Some members might extrapolate that the Official Notice is a digital candidate because of what has been done with the IPOPL and SPOPL, but the Official Notice has to be a paper product so Divisions II and III delegates can have it with them when they vote at the Convention.

Similarly, while the membership has embraced the LSDBi, it also has made clear that it wants to continue with paper versions of the Divisions I, II and III Manuals. The membership services staff encourages the membership to use the LSDBi to acquire the most up-to-date legislative information, but it has no plans to cease printing Manuals.

That should be comforting to somebody like Lees-McRae's White.

"I think one of the guidelines (for determining print vs. digital) would be, 'Under what circumstances are you using the document?' It seems to me that something that needs to be portable needs to be hard copy. ...(If) the primary use is in an office or a meeting, that would suggest to me that digital is fine."

That position is consistent with the NCAA's position. There always will be friction along the fault line, but Lynn Holzman, director of membership services, said the staff knows that limits exist.

"There is an understanding that the membership isn't the place where everyone is walking around with a PDA where they have access to the Manual right there," she said. "In some instances, a compliance officer will face a rules question where they need to have a book in their hand. Most of them won't be walking around with a hand-held computer to get that information off the Web.

"Is that something that may happen 10 or 15 years from now? It may be if the membership is ready for it."

If so, you can bet that the NCAA members of the future will engage in similar discussions as they seek to balance proven communications methods against the need to advance technically.

Technology grants help Division II members keep up to cyber speed

The membership services technology plan features a number of exciting features that will make life easier for the staff and the membership over the next few years.

The eight-part plan, developed in October 2001, is made up of elements that will heighten membership access to information while at the same time significantly cutting costs.

Initiatives include:

So far, the initial-eligibility waiver database is functional, and the athletics certification database and Compliance Assistant rewrite are near completion. Also, LSDBi enhancements have been and will continue to be made.

All of this has many positive ramifications for the membership, including Divisions II and III. Legislative proposals may be submitted online. Proposals can be co-sponsored through the Internet. At some point soon, the membership will be able to discuss proposals through online bulletin boards.

"We feel we can provide a more efficient and even more effective service to the membership by using technology," said David W. Schnase, director of membership services.

Of course, all of this is helpful only if you are connected to the Internet, and in some corners of the NCAA, that still might not be the case.

"I would not assume that everybody is connected to the same degree," said Mary White of Lees-McRae College. "People may be sharing computers. Not everybody has their own printer. At the conference level, not everybody has e-mail."

Schnase said that the membership services staff understands the problem but has made a conscious decision to move forward to benefit the substantial majority that is connected to the Internet. In cases where institutions can't access online material, Schnase said the staff would provide printouts on request.

And in Division II, institutions and conferences that are short on technology should be aware of the new technology conference grant. Beginning this fiscal year, Division II conferences may apply for $250,000 in grants from the NCAA to enhance technology at the conference and institutional levels.

"In Division II, we want to use whatever media are appropriate to achieve effective communications, and that certainly includes using the Internet," said Mike Racy, Division II chief of staff. "Nothing has more potential to involve more people and to improve the way information is delivered and used. Because of that, Division II's leadership has prioritized the technology grant program and has funded it at a meaningful level."

-- David Pickle