When Bob Brooks started covering Big Ten football in the 1940s, media guides did not exist.
“You’d be given a roster,” Brooks recalled. “And maybe a background of the head coach.”
As the years went by, an entirely different problem emerged. Football media guides grew like sewer rats, some swelling to 500-plus pages as schools beefed up their books to impress recruits.
“From the press standpoint, those things are terrible,” said Brooks, who talks Iowa football on KMRY-AM in Cedar Rapids. “What I did for years was go through them and rip out all the fluff.”
Brooks might not have to do that anymore.
The NCAA Management Council will vote April 19-20 on two proposals. One would bar schools from distributing media guides to recruits. The other would put an end to printed media guides, shifting all information to digital formats–computer disks and the Internet.
The latter and more drastic measure already has received support from the Atlantic Coast Conference, which sponsored the initiative, and the Big Ten. A source said Big Ten athletic directors voted 7-3 (with one school absent) in February to terminate all printed media guides, except those the conference produces.
The debate not only pits technology against tradition, it has created a divide at many universities, where the athletic director wants to save on printing costs and the sports information director sees media guides–which typically include coach and player biographies, statistics, records and opponent information–as the most crucial tool of their jobs.
“I’m sick and tired of getting pushed around by people who should respect us,” said Mike Korcek, Northern Illinois’ SID since 1984. “The whole NCAA is askew when you have a head coach at Central Florida (George O’Leary) being paid $700,000 a year, and yet our biggest printing cost was $18,000. For that we got more publicity than you could shake a stick at.”
Korcek said Northern Illinois spent $18,000 last year to produce 3,500 football media guides that helped the upstart Huskies garner attention from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, USA Today and the New York Times, among others.
“We’re not like Michigan or Notre Dame,” Korcek said. “Last year a lot of people were saying, `Who are these guys?’ They can look at the guide and say, `LeShon Johnson played there, Mark Kellar played there.’ That’s what it’s for. There are not a lot of puff pieces in ours.”
The Huskies’ 2003 guide checked in at 252 pages, a pamphlet compared to guides produced by tradition-rich schools such as Michigan, whose guide ran 424 pages, and Texas, whose 592-page beast is believed to be the nation’s biggest.
But Heisman Trophy winners and bowl game appearances explain only part of it. Michigan’s ’95 football guide was just 208 pages.
“I’ll be the first to say that there has been kind of an arms race in that area,” said Michigan State SID John Lewandowski, whose 2003 book checked in at 340 pages.
Northwestern’s 1995 guide was 188 pages, 20 of which were devoted to the “Northwestern community” and the football program’s mission statement, material that wouldn’t be of much use to reporters.
The 2003 book, which no longer even carries the words “media guide,” contained about 50 pages of so-called fluff. There were segments highlighting the school’s academic services and conditioning program, laudatory quotes from alumni about the Northwestern experience, entertainment information about Evanston and Chicago, a page on “Pro Timing Day” and a large photo of former linebacker Napoleon Harris, who’s clutching a phone while he speaks with a representative from the Raiders, who drafted him in 2002.
“We all know that nobody ever has selected a school based on the media guide,” Lewandowski said.
But that hasn’t kept schools from trying.
“We all want to give the media what they need to do their jobs,” said Northwestern AD Mark Murphy, who favors shifting all guides to a digital format. “But there’s a sense that we’ve really gone overboard on these.”
Northwestern SID Mike Wolf wouldn’t mind seeing the NCAA impose a maximum page count for media guides. NU produced 6,000 football guides last year, costing the school about $28,000 in printing costs.
“And if they say, `Don’t send them to recruits,’ that would help us out a lot,” he said.
But many SIDs are wary of going digital.
“I’m all for cost containment,” Lewandowski said, “but by the time you hire another full-time person for the Web site and buy all the tools you need to take video . . . that thing is going to spiral even more than publishing costs.”
Wolf brings up another point. A shift to the Internet could give big-money programs an even bigger recruiting advantage.
“If there are no guidelines in place in terms of streaming video and what you can put on a Web site, we’re opening Pandora’s box,” he said. “Everyone’s competitive.”
And then there’s a practical matter.
“If you’re on deadline and need to look something up,” Purdue SID Tom Schott said, “you’re not going to pop a CD in.”
Purdue’s football guide has grown even more rapidly than the success of the team–from 188 pages in 1997 to 396 last year. Schott, whose school spends $30,000 to produce 5,000 books, makes no apologies.
“I’m a stats–and records–junkie,” he said. “Someone’s going to ask for it eventually, and I’d rather be able to look it up then have to hunt it down.
“Our guide is not the flashiest or the prettiest around, but I think it’s one of the most informative. Coach [Joe] Tiller likes it, and that’s all that matters.”
Schott makes another point: “Every company has an annual report, and that’s essentially what a media guide is. People say to put it on the Web. The Web’s good for a lot of things, but not for everything.”
Some schools, such as Tennessee, use their guides to keep in touch with alums and fans. Tennessee spent $210,000 last year to produce 29,000 football guides, according to the NCAA News.
The school sent 12,000 to Tennessee lettermen and scholarship fund contributors and sold enough to generate $70,000 for the university. About 4,000 books went to the media and SID office, and fewer than 3,000 were used for the football staff and recruiting.
“To say we don’t need the printed product is wrong,” associate football SID John Painter told the NCAA News. “You can’t have the media guide on your computer at the game. You’d need three or four disks.”
Brooks, who has covered Iowa football for 61 years, said schools should do what professional teams do–produce guides that focus on information, not fluff.
Most NFL guides weigh a fraction of what college guides do. Although they’re often more than 300 pages, they can be half the size of the 8 1/2-by-11-inch college guides and typically contain thin paper, rather than the shiny and glossy pages.
“Why they have not done something about this in the past is unbelievable,” Brooks said. “Michigan wanted to have the biggest guide. Then Michigan State did. Now we’re up to the Webster Fully Unabridged Dictionary.”
The 78-year-old Brooks said if the guides go digital, he will be inconvenienced. But he will survive.
Michael Rosenberg, who covers Michigan for the Detroit Free Press, said he would have no problem getting by without printed guides.
“At this point, if you can’t use Adobe Acrobat, you’re in trouble,” said Rosenberg, 29. “It would be an adjustment, but I really don’t see us sitting in the press box in five years saying, `God, the quality of sportswriting has gone downhill.'”
Tower of babble: 7,198 pages, 52.8 pounds
Illinois: 552 pages, 3.9 pounds
Indiana: 656 pages, 4.8 pounds
Iowa: 694 pages, 5.7 pounds
Michigan: 704 pages, 4.8 pounds
Michigan State: 652 pages, 5.3 pounds
Minnesota: 552 pages, 4.2 pounds
Northwestern: 416 pages, 3.2 pounds
Notre Dame: 788 pages, 4.7 pounds
Ohio State: 616 pages, 4.3 pounds
Penn State: 568 pages, 3.5 pounds
Purdue: 552 pages, 5.2 pounds
Wisconsin: 448 pages, 3.2 pounds
