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NCAA News Archive - 2007
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CoSIDA turns 50
Today’s sports information directors face higher communication expectations
Today’s sports information directors face higher communication expectations
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By Josh Centor
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
SAN DIEGO — “The Cat in the Hat” was first published in March 1957. That same year, the Boeing 707 took its original flight and John Lennon met Paul McCartney for the first time. In 1957, Dwight Eisenhower began his second term as U.S. president.
Fifty years later, the Dr. Seuss classic has been made into a major motion picture and Boeing is set to release its 787 model made mostly of carbon-fiber composites. John Lennon is dead, but Paul McCartney is still going strong, even performing at the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002.
Much has changed in intercollegiate athletics over the last 50 years, too. While competitions still have winners and losers and fans still proudly wear the names of their favorite institutions across their chests, the way those fans want to receive information about their teams has dramatically changed the jobs of the people who provide it.
Sports information directors have always been noted for their work ethic, and that hasn’t changed during the past five decades, but the role of the SID certainly has evolved. No longer just a recorder of statistics and disseminator of press releases, the modern SID helps communicate the institutional message.
One of the constants during the last half century has been the presence of the College Sports Information Directors of America, founded in 1957 as a network for the industry’s media-relations professionals.
And the industry continues to grow. “It’s a popular destination among college graduates,” said Charles Bloom, associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference and incoming president of CoSIDA. “I see the profession, as well as the organization, growing more in years to come.”
To be sure, sports information has more than evolved. One hundred and two members attended the 1957 CoSIDA workshop in Chicago. In 1999, 1,195 of the organization’s 1,839 members were in Orlando. In 2007, more than 2,200 individuals belong to CoSIDA.
“And there are even more than that in the business of being part of intercollegiate athletics and telling the good stories,” said Doug Dull, associate director of athletics for media relations at the University of Maryland, College Park. “This is a group of passionate professionals who feel strongly about helping their institutions and wanting to serve the enterprise.”
Dull, who credits CoSIDA with helping him mature into an associate director of athletics at a major Division I program, believes that sports information directors will continue to find themselves ascending the ladder in athletics departments.
“Athletics directors are seeing the value of having an in-house communications professional who can help guide an institution in both good and bad times,” Dull said. “The current paradigm is to take more of a public relations perspective and have that be an important focus for a senior-level management position.”
Not only are athletics directors asking their public relations professionals to regularly weigh in on departmental issues, but sports information directors are even being promoted to the chair behind the big desk, as the institution’s athletics director.
“We get to see everything and we touch everybody in the department. That’s a pretty unique function,” Dull said. “It’s cool to be right in the mix and that may give us a perspective that would enable us to be successful over a much broader perspective in the athletics department.”
Technology drives evolution
When Dr. Seuss published “The Cat in the Hat,” the country had moved beyond quill and parchment to the typewriter as the communications instrument of choice. With advancements in technology, though, SIDs are no longer left with green eggs and ham — they can cook the whole omelet with an array of appliances.
“When I started, we were still using mimeograph machines. I would get blue ink on my shirt in the press box,” said Judy Willson, SID at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. “We didn’t have high-speed copiers, and fax machines were just coming about. You now have e-mail and Web sites, but those things are 24/7.”
Debby Jennings, the longtime media relations director in the women’s athletics department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, also remembers the days before new media.
“We used to recite statistics over the phone because we didn’t have fax machines. When I got my first fax machine, I was so excited, but unfortunately I wanted to send faxes to people who didn’t have one on the other end,” Jennings said.
Instead of being centered on game results, new technology has helped sports information evolve into more of a public relations profession.
“The business has changed. It used to be media guides, press releases and statistical information. It has really grown to where you want to manage the message and promote the message of the institution and your athletics department,” Bloom said. “It’s the Web site, the teleconferences, the satellite feeds and the television shows. It’s managing the content that you have available.”
With more ways to manage that content and greater responsibility than ever before, SIDs are spending even more time in the office than in the past.
“You used to be able to send out your story after a game, but then you didn’t have to spend another 20 or 30 minutes on the Web making sure pictures were updated and everything was immediately posted,” Willson said. “We’re still working 60 to 80 hours a week, but it’s doing different things now.”
New media has forced SIDs to focus differently. Message boards and weblogs now proliferate on the Internet and monitoring the conversation is more challenging than before.
“You don’t know who’s blogging and you don’t know what’s being written. You have no control over that,” Bloom said. “There are tons of fans out there who are passionate about their universities and have the ability to sometimes sway the message. It’s a lot more work for the SID in terms of looking at that information and trying to craft the message to counter the negative ones.”
The added responsibility brought about by new media is one that some SIDs welcome, while others do not.
“I think it’s a double-edged sword,” Bloom said. “On the positive side, it’s something that gives the university the opportunity to promote itself. On the negative side, you’ve got to really patrol it.”
Gender growth
One of the major changes during the past 50 years of sports information has been the growth of female professionals in the field.
“When I was a graduate assistant, I didn’t know there were other women in the profession during my first couple of weeks,” said Willson, who has been in sports information for the last 20 years. “I knew of a woman who was a basketball coach and the SID at her school, but nobody who was just an SID.”
An early pioneer in the field of sports information, Jennings has spent the past 30 years at Tennessee. She began her career as a student journalist who traveled with the school’s football and men’s basketball teams.
During her time at Tennessee, Jennings has seen her job evolve. Things are quite different today than they were when she was just starting out.
“I was asked to be on a panel at my first CoSIDA meeting in 1978, and I remember looking out at the audience and seeing three other women in the room at that time,” Jennings said. “The organization has grown as women’s sports have expanded. People have gotten into the business and stayed. The No. 1 thing we have to do as females in this profession is retain other females.”
As college sports have progressed to a year-round model, with the College World Series finishing in the final week of June and football practice beginning in early August, Jennings says it can be a challenge for women.
“Having children and a career is tougher than before, particularly if you want to be in media relations,” Jennings said. “There’s really only one sliver of July where there’s not much going on.”
Academic emphasis
NCAA President Myles Brand has spent most of his tenure discussing the relationship between academics and athletics. He is strong in his belief that intercollegiate athletics is an integral part of higher education. Brand believes SIDs are best positioned to help share that message.
“There’s no one more important to tell that story than the sports information directors on all our campuses,” Brand said. “The NCAA is an association of higher education and leadership. Of course we focus on sports, but it’s all about higher education in that context. So the message we’re expecting from our athletics departments is to make sure people understand what role athletics plays on our campuses.”
Brand said SIDs are on the front line of intercollegiate athletics and need to have a seat at the table for larger institutional discussions.
“SIDs have to understand a lot about what is happening at the university and they have to open the lines of communication,” Brand said. “They have to work with the rest of the campus to get out those campus messages.”
Throughout its history, CoSIDA has valued the academic excellence of student-athletes as much as their athletics successes. Each year, the organization selects 12 Academic All-America teams that include student-athletes who have at least a 3.2 cumulative grade-point average and who are important contributors to their teams.
SIDs are responsible for nominating and selecting candidates, and they value that responsibility as much today as they did 50 years ago.
“CoSIDA has done an excellent job of emphasizing the success of student-athletes both on the field of play as well as in the classroom,” Brand said. “The members deserve a lot of credit for that.”
In 1988, CoSIDA established the Academic All-America hall of fame to honor former student-athletes who have excelled professionally and in their communities. At this year’s meeting in San Diego, the organization inducted its 20th class into the hall as Julie Foudy, Joe Girardi, Lance Pilch, Amy Nordmann and Steve Smith received the special honor.
Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt received the Dick Enberg Award, given annually to a person whose actions have furthered the reach of the Academic All-America program while promoting educational values.
Girardi, who went to Northwestern University, played 15 seasons in the major leagues before moving on to a career in coaching. Last season, he was the National League manager of the year in his first and only year with the Florida Marlins. While that award is prestigious, Girardi said he may value the one from CoSIDA more.
“It’s probably my favorite award because when I look back on my life and the influence my parents had on me, my mom and father wanted me to do well in academics first,” Girardi said. “I think balancing athletics with academics teaches you a lot about discipline and hard work.”
With 50 years in the books, and 50 more on the horizon, what can be expected from SIDs in the future? Preparations are being made for more advances in the nonstop communications culture.
ESPN has constant programming on more than a handful of stations, every major media outlet has constantly updated Web sites, games are being streamed on broadband and conferences are beginning to launch their own television networks. More outlets mean more opportunity, which translates to more change.
“Intercollegiate athletics has changed so much over the course of the last 20 years, 10 years, five years,” Dull said. “We need to continue to have the kind of people who want to be part of intercollegiate athletics at this level — really smart people who are watching the changes in technology and games on the iPhone. We will go wherever the technology takes us.”
And as Dr. Seuss wrote in his 1972 classic, “Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!,” “The time has come. The time is now. Just go. Go. GO! I don’t care how.”
Technology will continue to change and so, too, will the sports information professionals. The time is now.
ESPN and CoSIDA honored six individuals for academic, athletics and community achievements at the workshop in San Diego. ESPN commentator Steve Lavin (left) hosted the event and Pat Summitt (second from left) received the prestigious Dick Enberg Award. Five individuals were inducted into the CoSIDA hall of fame (from left to right, after Summitt): Amy Nordmann, Julie Foudy, Joe Girardi, Lance Pilch and Steve Smith.
Fifty years later, the Dr. Seuss classic has been made into a major motion picture and Boeing is set to release its 787 model made mostly of carbon-fiber composites. John Lennon is dead, but Paul McCartney is still going strong, even performing at the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002.
Much has changed in intercollegiate athletics over the last 50 years, too. While competitions still have winners and losers and fans still proudly wear the names of their favorite institutions across their chests, the way those fans want to receive information about their teams has dramatically changed the jobs of the people who provide it.
Sports information directors have always been noted for their work ethic, and that hasn’t changed during the past five decades, but the role of the SID certainly has evolved. No longer just a recorder of statistics and disseminator of press releases, the modern SID helps communicate the institutional message.
One of the constants during the last half century has been the presence of the College Sports Information Directors of America, founded in 1957 as a network for the industry’s media-relations professionals.
And the industry continues to grow. “It’s a popular destination among college graduates,” said Charles Bloom, associate commissioner of the Southeastern Conference and incoming president of CoSIDA. “I see the profession, as well as the organization, growing more in years to come.”
To be sure, sports information has more than evolved. One hundred and two members attended the 1957 CoSIDA workshop in Chicago. In 1999, 1,195 of the organization’s 1,839 members were in Orlando. In 2007, more than 2,200 individuals belong to CoSIDA.
“And there are even more than that in the business of being part of intercollegiate athletics and telling the good stories,” said Doug Dull, associate director of athletics for media relations at the University of Maryland, College Park. “This is a group of passionate professionals who feel strongly about helping their institutions and wanting to serve the enterprise.”
Dull, who credits CoSIDA with helping him mature into an associate director of athletics at a major Division I program, believes that sports information directors will continue to find themselves ascending the ladder in athletics departments.
“Athletics directors are seeing the value of having an in-house communications professional who can help guide an institution in both good and bad times,” Dull said. “The current paradigm is to take more of a public relations perspective and have that be an important focus for a senior-level management position.”
Not only are athletics directors asking their public relations professionals to regularly weigh in on departmental issues, but sports information directors are even being promoted to the chair behind the big desk, as the institution’s athletics director.
“We get to see everything and we touch everybody in the department. That’s a pretty unique function,” Dull said. “It’s cool to be right in the mix and that may give us a perspective that would enable us to be successful over a much broader perspective in the athletics department.”
Technology drives evolution
When Dr. Seuss published “The Cat in the Hat,” the country had moved beyond quill and parchment to the typewriter as the communications instrument of choice. With advancements in technology, though, SIDs are no longer left with green eggs and ham — they can cook the whole omelet with an array of appliances.
“When I started, we were still using mimeograph machines. I would get blue ink on my shirt in the press box,” said Judy Willson, SID at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. “We didn’t have high-speed copiers, and fax machines were just coming about. You now have e-mail and Web sites, but those things are 24/7.”
Debby Jennings, the longtime media relations director in the women’s athletics department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, also remembers the days before new media.
“We used to recite statistics over the phone because we didn’t have fax machines. When I got my first fax machine, I was so excited, but unfortunately I wanted to send faxes to people who didn’t have one on the other end,” Jennings said.
Instead of being centered on game results, new technology has helped sports information evolve into more of a public relations profession.
“The business has changed. It used to be media guides, press releases and statistical information. It has really grown to where you want to manage the message and promote the message of the institution and your athletics department,” Bloom said. “It’s the Web site, the teleconferences, the satellite feeds and the television shows. It’s managing the content that you have available.”
With more ways to manage that content and greater responsibility than ever before, SIDs are spending even more time in the office than in the past.
“You used to be able to send out your story after a game, but then you didn’t have to spend another 20 or 30 minutes on the Web making sure pictures were updated and everything was immediately posted,” Willson said. “We’re still working 60 to 80 hours a week, but it’s doing different things now.”
New media has forced SIDs to focus differently. Message boards and weblogs now proliferate on the Internet and monitoring the conversation is more challenging than before.
“You don’t know who’s blogging and you don’t know what’s being written. You have no control over that,” Bloom said. “There are tons of fans out there who are passionate about their universities and have the ability to sometimes sway the message. It’s a lot more work for the SID in terms of looking at that information and trying to craft the message to counter the negative ones.”
The added responsibility brought about by new media is one that some SIDs welcome, while others do not.
“I think it’s a double-edged sword,” Bloom said. “On the positive side, it’s something that gives the university the opportunity to promote itself. On the negative side, you’ve got to really patrol it.”
Gender growth
One of the major changes during the past 50 years of sports information has been the growth of female professionals in the field.
“When I was a graduate assistant, I didn’t know there were other women in the profession during my first couple of weeks,” said Willson, who has been in sports information for the last 20 years. “I knew of a woman who was a basketball coach and the SID at her school, but nobody who was just an SID.”
An early pioneer in the field of sports information, Jennings has spent the past 30 years at Tennessee. She began her career as a student journalist who traveled with the school’s football and men’s basketball teams.
During her time at Tennessee, Jennings has seen her job evolve. Things are quite different today than they were when she was just starting out.
“I was asked to be on a panel at my first CoSIDA meeting in 1978, and I remember looking out at the audience and seeing three other women in the room at that time,” Jennings said. “The organization has grown as women’s sports have expanded. People have gotten into the business and stayed. The No. 1 thing we have to do as females in this profession is retain other females.”
As college sports have progressed to a year-round model, with the College World Series finishing in the final week of June and football practice beginning in early August, Jennings says it can be a challenge for women.
“Having children and a career is tougher than before, particularly if you want to be in media relations,” Jennings said. “There’s really only one sliver of July where there’s not much going on.”
Academic emphasis
NCAA President Myles Brand has spent most of his tenure discussing the relationship between academics and athletics. He is strong in his belief that intercollegiate athletics is an integral part of higher education. Brand believes SIDs are best positioned to help share that message.
“There’s no one more important to tell that story than the sports information directors on all our campuses,” Brand said. “The NCAA is an association of higher education and leadership. Of course we focus on sports, but it’s all about higher education in that context. So the message we’re expecting from our athletics departments is to make sure people understand what role athletics plays on our campuses.”
Brand said SIDs are on the front line of intercollegiate athletics and need to have a seat at the table for larger institutional discussions.
“SIDs have to understand a lot about what is happening at the university and they have to open the lines of communication,” Brand said. “They have to work with the rest of the campus to get out those campus messages.”
Throughout its history, CoSIDA has valued the academic excellence of student-athletes as much as their athletics successes. Each year, the organization selects 12 Academic All-America teams that include student-athletes who have at least a 3.2 cumulative grade-point average and who are important contributors to their teams.
SIDs are responsible for nominating and selecting candidates, and they value that responsibility as much today as they did 50 years ago.
“CoSIDA has done an excellent job of emphasizing the success of student-athletes both on the field of play as well as in the classroom,” Brand said. “The members deserve a lot of credit for that.”
In 1988, CoSIDA established the Academic All-America hall of fame to honor former student-athletes who have excelled professionally and in their communities. At this year’s meeting in San Diego, the organization inducted its 20th class into the hall as Julie Foudy, Joe Girardi, Lance Pilch, Amy Nordmann and Steve Smith received the special honor.
Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt received the Dick Enberg Award, given annually to a person whose actions have furthered the reach of the Academic All-America program while promoting educational values.
Girardi, who went to Northwestern University, played 15 seasons in the major leagues before moving on to a career in coaching. Last season, he was the National League manager of the year in his first and only year with the Florida Marlins. While that award is prestigious, Girardi said he may value the one from CoSIDA more.
“It’s probably my favorite award because when I look back on my life and the influence my parents had on me, my mom and father wanted me to do well in academics first,” Girardi said. “I think balancing athletics with academics teaches you a lot about discipline and hard work.”
With 50 years in the books, and 50 more on the horizon, what can be expected from SIDs in the future? Preparations are being made for more advances in the nonstop communications culture.
ESPN has constant programming on more than a handful of stations, every major media outlet has constantly updated Web sites, games are being streamed on broadband and conferences are beginning to launch their own television networks. More outlets mean more opportunity, which translates to more change.
“Intercollegiate athletics has changed so much over the course of the last 20 years, 10 years, five years,” Dull said. “We need to continue to have the kind of people who want to be part of intercollegiate athletics at this level — really smart people who are watching the changes in technology and games on the iPhone. We will go wherever the technology takes us.”
And as Dr. Seuss wrote in his 1972 classic, “Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!,” “The time has come. The time is now. Just go. Go. GO! I don’t care how.”
Technology will continue to change and so, too, will the sports information professionals. The time is now.
ESPN and CoSIDA honored six individuals for academic, athletics and community achievements at the workshop in San Diego. ESPN commentator Steve Lavin (left) hosted the event and Pat Summitt (second from left) received the prestigious Dick Enberg Award. Five individuals were inducted into the CoSIDA hall of fame (from left to right, after Summitt): Amy Nordmann, Julie Foudy, Joe Girardi, Lance Pilch and Steve Smith.
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