National Collegiate Athletic Association
NCAA News Archive - 2007
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Evolution of Media Guides 2006-07
Whether large or small, printed or online, guides continue to meet many purposes at member schools
Whether large or small, printed or online, guides continue to meet many purposes at member schools
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By Michelle Brutlag Hosick
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
In some ways, the college athletics media guide has come full circle. After the recent implementation of page limits in Division I, for example, one school reduced its guides from the common 8½- by-11 to 4-by-9, the same size that the guides were in the early days when reporters would stick the missives into their sport-jacket pockets.
But the reversion to the smaller size was not necessarily made to help the broadcasters and print reporters (the reason for media guides in the first place). Instead, the intuitive media-relations staffer reasoned that if several media guides were stacked on a coffee table in a recruit’s home, the smaller guide would probably be placed on top.
Such is the evolution of a product initially intended to conveniently convey information but that has since been morphed into a publicity tool. No longer just a way to communicate stats to reporters who need “just the facts,” today’s media guide is often a slick, souped-up version of the old recruiting guides, designed to catch a prospective student-athlete’s eye. Especially in Division I, where page-count regulations have attempted to level the playing field, the media guide is caught in a tug-of-war between two constituencies — the prospects and the press.
Some media-relations professionals point to the consolidation of the media guide and its once-companion publication — the recruiting brochure — as the point where media guides began to change. In the 1990s, Division I adopted legislation prohibiting institutions from producing both a recruiting brochure and a media guide and distributing both to prospects.
“The limitations of what coaches can send to recruits made a big impact, because now they’re restricted to either the media or recruiting guide,” said Joe Hernandez, associate athletics director at Ball State University. “So the media guide has to contain all the information that both books did.”
The regulations on athletics publications and the more recent page-limit policy in Division I, which require media guides to be 8 ½-by-11 inches or smaller in size and 208 pages or shorter in length, were both instituted as a method of containing costs, though some question whether the policy has had its desired effect.
But to media-guide advocates, the page restrictions were far better than the original proposal calling for the elimination of the printed guides. Supporters of that measure felt that the “arms race” of media-guide production had become so out of control (some football guides exceeded 500 pages) that they needed to be eliminated altogether. But that proposal was referred and returned with a gentler outcome.
Promoting the institution
In Division III, some institutions no longer compile media guides at all, choosing instead to assemble only recruiting guides that showcase their individual campus and athletics program. Blake Timm, sports information director at Pacific University (Oregon), said his institution is one of only a few in the Northwest Conference to still offer a media guide.
In all three divisions, more attention seems to be turning to the recruiting sections of the media guide, an area where a sports information director can highlight not only the achievements of an athletics program but the strengths of the broader institution.
Judy Willson, sports information director at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, said that in the last few years, she has expanded the section in her media guides that tout the university. For example, Louisiana-Monroe has seen significant facilities improvement in the last 18 months, including new dormitories, new student union areas and a new building for the pharmacy school.
“It gives you an opportunity to brag about your school and point out all the good things that are going on and to show that your school progresses with the times,” Willson said.
She called today’s media guides more “coffee-table pieces” than functional literature for the media, though she thinks most of her colleagues do attempt to supply the media with the information they require.
In Divisions II and III, with no page limitations, some schools are still growing their media guides. Many institutions hired full-time media-relations specialists only within the last 20 years, so much of the history of a program often included in a media guide is still being compiled. As those SIDs painstakingly comb through microfilm and old newspapers, the information they glean expands the size of their books.
But both Divisions II and III are also using the guides to pay more attention to recruiting. Timm said coaches at his institution see enough value in the recruiting aspects of the media guide for him to devote 32 pages of his football guide to a recruiting section detailing the school, the academic-support program, facilities and other aspects of campus life.
“Obviously, a student is not going to choose a school based on the media guide. They’re going to choose it based on facilities and coaches and the quality of the programs,” Timm said. “But having that media guide out there helps convey the quality of the program.”
Function vs. format
Pete Moore associate director of athletics communications at Syracuse University said Divisions II and III might rely on the media guide as a recruiting tool even more than Division I schools do. Moore, who spent several years at Division III Ithaca College before coming to Syracuse, said he still believes the primary function of the media guide is to inform the media, regardless of the division.
No matter the audience, the media guide is often an entry point to the specific program, and in some cases, the university overall.
“The guides are a means for an institution, and specifically a program, to put its best foot forward,” said Doug Dull, current president of the Collegiate Sports Information Directors of America and associate athletics director at the University of Maryland, College Park. “It’s one part of an overall strategy for the program to communicate with all the people it has to communicate with: the recruits, the media, other teams, national contacts.”
Dull said the shift to a greater focus on recruiting has changed the look of the guides, too.
“Books now will usually include a significant section, a well-designed, very graphics-oriented section, that is meant to convey a positive message about the environment of the university: great photos of impressive buildings on campus, much more of a view-book style that might be put out by a university’s admissions department or marketing and communications group,” Dull said.
“We realized it was important to better communicate with those recruits and those people who were going to use the book for that function. Instead of a prospective student-athlete being interested in the fact that the person who was the 12th all-time leading rusher has 2,314 yards, that prospect might be more interested in the fact that he can major in one of 106 programs of study, or photos of the weight room or library.”
Willson said that if coaches and administrators want to continue to use the guides as recruiting tools, the changes will continue as the culture changes. The current “showpiece” came about, she believes, because the target audience is more sophisticated.
“You’re trying to target 17- and 18-year-olds who have grown up in the MTV, ESPN.com generation where everything has to be flashy,” she said. “It has to catch your eye. You’ve got to have all the bells and whistles.”
The future for the media guide might be more bells and whistles geared toward the recruits, not necessarily the media. Dull and many of his colleagues believe the future for the media guide is electronic — either via a school’s Web site or in a CD or DVD format. Using that technology would allow for embedded video clips of highlights from a previous season or audio clips of great plays.
Dull said that Maryland, like a number of schools in all three divisions, already puts its media guides online to rave reviews. That success contributed to the Atlantic Coast Conference proposing the legislation in 2003 that would have eliminated the print version of the guides.
While some in the profession believe the demise of a printed media guide would be detrimental to the enterprise, others see it differently.
“The Internet changed the lives of athletics departments, particularly media-relations departments in that we can communicate directly with our fans now and send our own messages crafted in the format that we want,” Dull said. “Who knows what the next wave will be?”
But the reversion to the smaller size was not necessarily made to help the broadcasters and print reporters (the reason for media guides in the first place). Instead, the intuitive media-relations staffer reasoned that if several media guides were stacked on a coffee table in a recruit’s home, the smaller guide would probably be placed on top.
Such is the evolution of a product initially intended to conveniently convey information but that has since been morphed into a publicity tool. No longer just a way to communicate stats to reporters who need “just the facts,” today’s media guide is often a slick, souped-up version of the old recruiting guides, designed to catch a prospective student-athlete’s eye. Especially in Division I, where page-count regulations have attempted to level the playing field, the media guide is caught in a tug-of-war between two constituencies — the prospects and the press.
Some media-relations professionals point to the consolidation of the media guide and its once-companion publication — the recruiting brochure — as the point where media guides began to change. In the 1990s, Division I adopted legislation prohibiting institutions from producing both a recruiting brochure and a media guide and distributing both to prospects.
“The limitations of what coaches can send to recruits made a big impact, because now they’re restricted to either the media or recruiting guide,” said Joe Hernandez, associate athletics director at Ball State University. “So the media guide has to contain all the information that both books did.”
The regulations on athletics publications and the more recent page-limit policy in Division I, which require media guides to be 8 ½-by-11 inches or smaller in size and 208 pages or shorter in length, were both instituted as a method of containing costs, though some question whether the policy has had its desired effect.
But to media-guide advocates, the page restrictions were far better than the original proposal calling for the elimination of the printed guides. Supporters of that measure felt that the “arms race” of media-guide production had become so out of control (some football guides exceeded 500 pages) that they needed to be eliminated altogether. But that proposal was referred and returned with a gentler outcome.
Promoting the institution
In Division III, some institutions no longer compile media guides at all, choosing instead to assemble only recruiting guides that showcase their individual campus and athletics program. Blake Timm, sports information director at Pacific University (Oregon), said his institution is one of only a few in the Northwest Conference to still offer a media guide.In all three divisions, more attention seems to be turning to the recruiting sections of the media guide, an area where a sports information director can highlight not only the achievements of an athletics program but the strengths of the broader institution.Judy Willson, sports information director at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, said that in the last few years, she has expanded the section in her media guides that tout the university. For example, Louisiana-Monroe has seen significant facilities improvement in the last 18 months, including new dormitories, new student union areas and a new building for the pharmacy school.
“It gives you an opportunity to brag about your school and point out all the good things that are going on and to show that your school progresses with the times,” Willson said.
She called today’s media guides more “coffee-table pieces” than functional literature for the media, though she thinks most of her colleagues do attempt to supply the media with the information they require.
In Divisions II and III, with no page limitations, some schools are still growing their media guides. Many institutions hired full-time media-relations specialists only within the last 20 years, so much of the history of a program often included in a media guide is still being compiled. As those SIDs painstakingly comb through microfilm and old newspapers, the information they glean expands the size of their books.
But both Divisions II and III are also using the guides to pay more attention to recruiting. Timm said coaches at his institution see enough value in the recruiting aspects of the media guide for him to devote 32 pages of his football guide to a recruiting section detailing the school, the academic-support program, facilities and other aspects of campus life.
“Obviously, a student is not going to choose a school based on the media guide. They’re going to choose it based on facilities and coaches and the quality of the programs,” Timm said. “But having that media guide out there helps convey the quality of the program.”
Function vs. format
Pete Moore associate director of athletics communications at Syracuse University said Divisions II and III might rely on the media guide as a recruiting tool even more than Division I schools do. Moore, who spent several years at Division III Ithaca College before coming to Syracuse, said he still believes the primary function of the media guide is to inform the media, regardless of the division.No matter the audience, the media guide is often an entry point to the specific program, and in some cases, the university overall.
“The guides are a means for an institution, and specifically a program, to put its best foot forward,” said Doug Dull, current president of the Collegiate Sports Information Directors of America and associate athletics director at the University of Maryland, College Park. “It’s one part of an overall strategy for the program to communicate with all the people it has to communicate with: the recruits, the media, other teams, national contacts.”
Dull said the shift to a greater focus on recruiting has changed the look of the guides, too.
“Books now will usually include a significant section, a well-designed, very graphics-oriented section, that is meant to convey a positive message about the environment of the university: great photos of impressive buildings on campus, much more of a view-book style that might be put out by a university’s admissions department or marketing and communications group,” Dull said.
“We realized it was important to better communicate with those recruits and those people who were going to use the book for that function. Instead of a prospective student-athlete being interested in the fact that the person who was the 12th all-time leading rusher has 2,314 yards, that prospect might be more interested in the fact that he can major in one of 106 programs of study, or photos of the weight room or library.”
Willson said that if coaches and administrators want to continue to use the guides as recruiting tools, the changes will continue as the culture changes. The current “showpiece” came about, she believes, because the target audience is more sophisticated.
“You’re trying to target 17- and 18-year-olds who have grown up in the MTV, ESPN.com generation where everything has to be flashy,” she said. “It has to catch your eye. You’ve got to have all the bells and whistles.”
The future for the media guide might be more bells and whistles geared toward the recruits, not necessarily the media. Dull and many of his colleagues believe the future for the media guide is electronic — either via a school’s Web site or in a CD or DVD format. Using that technology would allow for embedded video clips of highlights from a previous season or audio clips of great plays.Dull said that Maryland, like a number of schools in all three divisions, already puts its media guides online to rave reviews. That success contributed to the Atlantic Coast Conference proposing the legislation in 2003 that would have eliminated the print version of the guides.
While some in the profession believe the demise of a printed media guide would be detrimental to the enterprise, others see it differently.
“The Internet changed the lives of athletics departments, particularly media-relations departments in that we can communicate directly with our fans now and send our own messages crafted in the format that we want,” Dull said. “Who knows what the next wave will be?”
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