Media Guides

It's one of the toughest things about the job, but it's also one of the most fun and rewarding when it all comes together.

I'm talking about designing media guides, and most every SID in the country has their own different opinions about their worth or necessity. Depending on where you are, the media guide can have a multi-dimensional worth and an even more multi-dimensional purpose.

I've been designing and writing ETBU's media guides for the last eight years, and I just put the wrap on our basketball books last week. Just in the nick of time, too, with the season opener now just hours away, literally.

We do media guides at ETBU for just about every sport, which is a little different than some other places in our conferences. Most of our conference schools provide media guides, but there are a few that use other means of promotion, which is just fine, too. With the Internet today, there is the argument brewing that the media guide as we know it has very little use anymore. Updated, pertinent information about a specific athletic program is available with the click of the mouse, and just about everything you see in one of our media guides most likely at some point will find its way to our web site.

But media guides are just one of those things as an SID you have to do. It's just part of the job. I haven't met one colleague in eight years who would totally admit to absolutely loving to do their respective guides, but I also haven't met one who'd come right out and say he hated it with a passion, either. It's just one of those things that comes along at a certain time every year, like Christmas, you know? On one hand you absolutely love the holiday, but on the other hand you dread it because you know how much money you're going to spend.

That's the way I look at media guides. I love doing them because I get to soothe that creative fix I have, almost to a fault. As a former newspaper guy, one of the highlights of the job was to change and create a different look on the front page every day. It's a challenge and a rush, when you see everything come together and you just really feel good about your design, you know.

I've had some memorable media guide designs at ETBU that I'm proud of, and then there are some that I'm not so proud of. Designing D-III media guides is very tough because of the time crunch you have to endure with just about every sport. At bigger D-I schools, for example, a football media guide can be published in late spring or early summer with no problem because you have the signed scholarship right there in front of you. You pretty much know for sure who you have to cover and get info for.

At D-III non-scholarship you have to pretty much wait until the athlete arrives on campus before you spend time putting them in a media guide. The worst thing is publishing a bio on a student-athlete and then for whatever reason that athlete never seeing the field or court. It happens, fairly rarely, actually, but it's always a consideration when I'm planning for our annual media guides.

Depending on budgets and roster size, of course, football will always be our largest media guide. I can typically target a 78-82 page media guide, with just about every other book coming in between 16-32 pages. When I first starting working at ETBU both soccer and basketball media guides were combined books, including both men's and women's programs. A couple of years ago we split each into separate guides and we've been happy with the results.

Of course, the purpose of media guides is to provide media with a reference guide, basically, for whatever program is being featured. But the overall, larger purpose really, at least at ETBU, is a recruiting tool. We'll print, on average, about 500 guides for every program, and I'll keep about 30-50 of them in my office. The rest go to our coaches to use on the recruiting trail.

Knowing this, I try to include as much information as possible about ETBU in general -- admissions, campus, history, fast facts, etc. The basic questions a potential student-athlete has, hopefully, can be answered on those ETBU pages. The rest of the book also, hopefully, will provide an overview of the program currently as well as its past.

The stress level of each media guide rises for two main reasons -- my procrastination, and my creative mental blocks. The number one goal I have every year is to make sure our books are attractive, contain as much information about ETBU and our athletics as possible, and that I get them back from the printer in time for the first game. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. I've had to learn patience with media guides, too.

But I hope our fans and students enjoy the finished product, at least occasionally. When it gets right down to it, it's really fun while also being a big part of my job, annually. Basketball is now in the books this season, literally -- and as soon as I catch my breath, I'll begin work on our baseball and softball guides for next spring.

The clock is again ticking...