Conscience Isn’t Their Guide, Yet

Twenty-six species of rare plant life dot the rolling hills around Duke University.

The question is: What could unusual flora possibly have to do with dunks, rebounds and the Final Four?

The answer is nothing. But that did not stop Duke from including this fact amid statistics and player bios in the basketball team’s media guide.

Not to be outdone, Connecticut -- which faces Duke in a semifinal game tonight -- devoted a section of its guide to the virtues of nearby Hartford, otherwise known as the “Insurance Capital of the World.”

It seems no part of major college sports is too incidental to be hyper-competitive and commercialized, not even these once-mundane booklets intended to help sportswriters on deadline.

Media guides have become glossy marketing tools, some approaching phone-book proportions at 500 pages, handed out to boosters and high school recruits. Even as universities struggle with budget cuts, athletic departments spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on thicker and slicker volumes.

“Everyone is trying to keep up with the Joneses,” said Shane Lyons, an Atlantic Coast Conference official. “If you’ve got 250 pages and someone else has 400, you’re always trying to put more and more stuff in there.”

This is no small matter to the NCAA, which is considering proposals that would limit or even do away with printed guides.

While some call the legislation much ado about nothing, proponents see it as a hedge against an “arms race” that in its grander forms has rival colleges building expensive training facilities and giving coaches million-dollar contracts.

“We’re in a runaway mentality with no one in control,” said William Friday, who chairs the independent Knight Foundation’s Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. “Something needs to be done.”

The four teams remaining in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament at the Alamodome in San Antonio have guides that run 250 to 300 pages. All have shiny covers and heavy bond.

There are sections about classrooms, dorms and the surrounding community.

“Let’s be honest,” said Lyons, whose conference sent two teams -- Duke and Georgia Tech -- to the Final Four. “How much of that is for the media and how much is for recruiting?”

By comparison, the UCLA basketball guide is a relatively economical 232 pages, with only a few of those devoted to photos of surfers and roller skaters, Westwood Village and the downtown skyline.

If basketball guides have grown in size over the past decade, as some athletic department administrators contend, they have been far outpaced by those for football.

“I can’t even quantify it,” said Marc Dellins, the UCLA sports information director. “My first year, the 1976 football season, I believe the media guide was 96 pages and it was the 4-by-9 format that theoretically fit into your pocket.”

Now, the standard is set by Texas, whose guide weighed in at about 600 pages this season. It included a short history of a nearby swimming hole and mention of local caves.

Notre Dame’s had almost 500 pages, USC’s about 400.

The cost associated with such heft can be considerable. Tennessee spent $210,000 to print 29,000 guides at 372 pages each last season.

Of those, almost 3,000 went to recruits, 4,000 to the media and 12,000 to lettermen and boosters. The remaining 10,000 were sold to the public, recouping about $75,000.

“It’s our front piece,” said John Painter, an athletic department spokesman. “We’re trying to promote good things about our campus.”

Concerns about the guides are not new. In the late 1980s, the NCAA restricted color photographs to the front and back covers.

This time around, a subcommittee has proposed a ban on distributing guides to recruits. The ACC went a step further, suggesting that guides be limited to digital format -- either on-line or on CDs.

Both proposals have won initial approval and will be reconsidered at an NCAA management council meeting April 19-20.

Not everyone supports a change.

Coaches in smaller sports such as swimming and golf have complained that they don’t have enough money to bring high school prospects for a visit. A stylish media guide -- usually much thinner than those for football and basketball -- is a useful recruiting tool.

Sportswriters say they need something in hand to check facts as they write after games. Given larger problems associated with college sports excesses, Bill Eichenberger, president of the Associated Press Sports Editors, is skeptical about the proposed reforms.

“I think it’s an easy target [for the NCAA],” said Eichenberger, also deputy sports editor of Newsday. “It’s a way for them to say they’ve addressed the problem without getting to the nut of it.”

Eichenberger and others have received support from an unlikely source -- the school that initially proposed the ban.

At North Carolina, spokesman Steve Kirschner said that after hearing complaints, the athletic department has backed off its original stance and now favors a compromise that would limit the number of pages.

Looking at the guide for his storied basketball program, Kirschner said “we could easily trim out 100 to 150 pages and still have a great book.”

The same thing might happen if the NCAA approves the lesser proposal -- the one that would outlaw distributing guides to prospects. With no recruiting benefit, several schools said they might cut back on printing and mailing expenditures.

Could that mean an abridged guide from Texas? Might fans lose the list of pop bands that originated in Austin and information about the continent’s largest urban bat colony?

“There will be some ground for compromise I’m sure,” said Friday, the Knight Foundation chair and president emeritus at North Carolina.

“The cost problem is really getting to be enormous. This is one step and there will be others.”