As a former Sports Information Director, the NCAA could have stopped this whole shenanigans a long time ago by setting regulations on media guides and incorporating the use of a recruiting guide. Because that's what media guides have become - recruiting tools. It got so out of hand a while back with schools printing these hard bound, 4-color books, the NCAA tried to combat it by allowing color only on the covers but that didn't help. And to be very honest the whole media guide misuse is way out of hand. For instance, the University of Texas spent more money on a Spring Football Guide than I had on basketball and baseball guides combined. That's just ridiculous. If the NCAA instituted a Recruiting Guide whereas all schools in all classifications had the same regulations and rules as far as guides are concerned it would do away with some of these 500-page, wire bound, tabs...etc. media guides that cost a fortune. Because let me tell you, media members don't use most of the crap that's in those things. Most just ask the SID or Asst. SIDs to find the information and spoon feed it to them.
Yeah maybe so, but I look at it from the fan's point of view. I get a free OU media guide in the mail every year, and I want my media guide to be as BIG and THICK as possible. btw, I've never seen one of those hard bound media guides that you speak of.
These media guides are getting so large and slick that their production is a major expense to the athletic departments. Even the bigger schools have the media guides filled with a bunch of stuff that ain't needed. They are just trying to keep up with the competition in looking like a top program. The NCAA shouldn't make a rule here, but I see the overslick media guides coming back down to earth for two reasons. 1. They are really expensive to print. LSU's media guide isn't even printed on campus anymore, even though LSU Graphic Services have some of the best pressses and pressmen in the business. It just costs too much, so LSU's media guides are printed elsewhere, perhaps out of the country. This is a lot of football money that isn't going to the team and there is a limit to how much $$ a school is going to put into promotional materials. 2. It's an online world and today's kids don't read much. They go online. Most of the sportswriters are working on laptops as well. LSU has had its media guide online for several years now and you are going to see more of it. Schools will begin to print a smaller media guide for the media at games, as it was intended. The online guides will be much larger, possibly interactive, and infinitely more impressive to recruits. And they will get around NCAA rules for printed guides. I'll bet you money that there will be Wi-Fi internet access in the new pressbox and sportwriters will have a searchable, online media guide in a window on their screens during the game.
So what? If a school has the money and resources to do a 1000 page media guide, why should anyone care? Where's the harm? Help me understand how a recruit would look at a massive media guide and say "yeah, that's the school I want to go to!" Maybe the NCAA should limit stadium size b/c that gives an unfair recruiting advantage as well. Maybe the NCAA should regulate all athletic facilities to level the playing field. Maybe the NCAA should regulate what town a university can be located in b/c schools like USC and Miami certainly have an unfair recruiting advantage over schools like Miss St and Ole Miss! When will this NCAA madness end...
Believe me, even most of the "big" schools were in favor of this new rule. This was not a "top down", micro-managing rule, this was a "bottom up", a "hey guys can we tone it down a bit cuz these things are getting out of hand" rule. The production of these media guides was costing more than several women's sport programs combined (exageration).:yelwink2:
Well, LSU charges season ticket holders an extra $20 bucks if they want a media guide. They are only free to media and recruits. I save 20 bucks and download the PDF version from the website.
Couldn't we have the same effect if we just printed and copied 4 or 5 pages from Yahoo! Sports or something, and then just stuff a couple hundred bucks in cash between the pages? Saves trees, and gets the same point across, while making sure the sorry little "mid majors" can't compete.
It wasn't free, "free" so-to-speak. It was free in the sense that I didn't have to pay anything extra for it. But it wasn't entirely free.
Well personally I don't really care how much money a school chooses to spend. And as much as I don't care for thing the NCAA does often times, cutting back on this is a good idea. Bickering about this is like bitching about the police department catching speeders when there are murderers running around. Yes, there are more serious things they have to concern themselves with, but it's something that needs to be handled. You have to understand that it's a total ridiculous amount of money being spent on these things under the guise of being called - media guides. Everybody tries to outduel everyone else. These guides are being used as recruiting propaganda - period. If these were truly "media guides" there wouldn't be anywhere near the amount of money being spent on them as there currently is. It's gotten so out of hand that schools are spending buckets of money on Spring Football Media Guides - for what?
