NCAA Shrinks Media Guides for 2005
July 21, 2005 | Football
July 21, 2005
By Adam Lucas
The months of June and July are usually busy ones for Kevin Best, Carolina's director of football communications. That's when final adjustments are being made to the football media guide, the glossy album of information that serves as a combined record book, media reference, and recruiting publication. Usually, he spends this time of the year figuring out what to add and whether the book needs to gain pages.
This year, however, his time has been spent eliminating pages.
Legislation passed by the NCAA this spring limited once-bulging media guides to just 208 pages. That's a significant decrease from Carolina's 288-page guide last year, but it's an even bigger drop for other schools around the country. A quick sampling of the page count from other 2004 Division I football guides: Missouri (614), Florida State (416), Georgia (414), Southern Cal (408), Texas (398), Tennessee (372), Alabama (312).
"You saw some schools growing exponentially and there was no end in sight," Best says. "Part of the legislation was a cost-cutting measure."
It won't be a financial bonanza, as the decreased pages won't save UNC more than approximately $20,000. But the legislation was also designed to curb what was quickly growing into recruiting warfare, as numerous programs equated size of the media guide with prestige. Because the media guides can be given to recruits, no school wanted to be perceived as handing out a skimpy publication.
The 208-page rule was actually a major compromise, as one piece of legislation 18 months ago originally proposed eliminating media guides entirely. That proposal actually drew some support but was vigorously opposed by virtually all media members and sports information staffs, including the one at Carolina.
Once the final decision was made, Best and the athletic communications staff had to determine what information could be cut.
"In general, I tried to condense it as much as I could," Best says. "I took out a few pages in the records section, I took out a few pages in the player bio section. There aren't as many photos in the records section. We wanted to keep as much of the overall information as we could but obviously some things had to be cut."
But the cut information won't be gone forever. Everything cut from the 2005 media guide will be posted on TarHeelBlue.com in an expanded football records section.
The concern for members of the media who remember when a media guide was actually intended for the media is that they don't have internet access in every press box in America. So if vital records are removed--and with every school making individual decisions on what to cut, it's possible some schools may slice the records section substantially--the media may not be able to access it on deadline.
"I'll be interested in seeing what gets cut," says Neil Amato, the longtime Carolina beat writer for the Durham Herald-Sun. "It's likely that whatever I need to look up, I can find on the Web. But it was nice knowing that around page 218 in the UNC football guide was the year-by-year record section."
Amato said UNC was the only school in the area to contact him for input on information he considered essential. The 2005 media guide will make its debut at the 2005 Operation Football event this weekend in Homestead, Va., and will be mailed to Rams Club members in August. It will be posted online in time for the season opener.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and his book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about Going Home Again, click here.