Story by Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune
June 13, 2005

The Glen Mason section of Minnesota's 2004 football media
guide spans 10 pages and includes no fewer than 20 photos
featuring the head coach. Not a bad tribute to a guy with a
career record of 110-109-1.

But schools such as Minnesota might have to cut back on the
bios after the NCAA Board of Directors recently voted to
limit Division I media guides in all sports to 208 pages.

The NCAA's goal was to help schools help themselves. Now
athletic departments can save money on printing costs
without feeling inferior to schools such as Texas, which
produced a 592-page football guide in 2003.

But many sports information directors fought the ruling
because of the problems associated with having to cut
hundreds of pages.

"There's not a lot of fluff in ours," said Northern
Illinois SID Mike Korcek, whose 2004 guide checked in at
256 pages. "But if you're at Michigan or Texas or Notre
Dame, how do you take out all that history, all those
All-Americans? SIDs have to be tearing their hair out...if
they have any."

John Heisler, an associate athletic director and former SID
at Notre Dame, said the challenge will be to determine what
belongs in the 208-page guide. How much space should be
devoted to recruiting material versus player bios, records
and history?

"There are going to be a million different philosophies on
how to do this," he said.

Notre Dame's football guides are perennially judged to be
among the nation's best, and about 15,000 are printed each
year. Its 2004 book was a hefty 464 pages, but only about
eight of those specifically targeted recruits.
Northwestern's 2004 guide contained about 40 pages of
information geared to high school football players, rather
than reporters.

"How much of a vehicle is this for recruiting?" Heisler
said. "That's what we need to talk to our coaches about."

Just like coaches who sidestep rules limiting practice
time, SIDs are determined to find ways to preserve their
information and research. Some will put it on their
schools' Web sites. Others will print a separate records
book. And others might beef up their spring football
prospectus.

For those reasons and others, some SIDs simply don't see
the benefits of trimming their guides. Many believe the
savings will be negligible considering overall athletic
department budgets.

"The type already gets smaller every year," Korcek said.
"Are we going to go to 5 point? I think this just creates
bigger headaches and is counter-productive."

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