How Much Guidance Do We Really Need?

Cutdown day had a different meaning for college football programs this season, especially at the schools of the BCS, which in terms of media-guide production had long stood for “Bigger, Costlier, Super-Sized.”

A new NCAA ruling has set a 208-page limit on football media guides, which to the casual observer doesn’t sound too stringent. Those observers, though, probably never saw -- or tried to lift -- the pre-limit media guides of Missouri, Texas and Texas A&M;, which basically resembled phone books with mug shots inside.

Last year, Missouri’s football media guide checked in at 614 pages, the heftiest in the nation. That’s right, 614 pages for Missouri football.

If you can’t beat Texas, Nebraska or Oklahoma State on the playing field, maybe you can sack them at the print shop.

Texas’ 2004 media guide was just shy of 500 pages, Texas A&M;’s hovering in the 450 range. Yes, they do everything larger in that state, at least until the NCAA came cracking down and forced them to go no bigger than San Jose State, Central Florida and Western Michigan.

The new limit was a predictable response to an old nasty habit: As with everything else in college football, media guides were getting out of control. Many of them, in fact, no longer served their express once-upon-a-time purpose, which was to guide the media.

It’s difficult to guide the media when the guides become too heavy to carry into the press box.

Over the last 15 years, the college football media guide became unofficially known as the “All-Purpose Recruiting, Alumni Appeasement, Donor Gratuity, Fan Collectible and Beat Writer Workout Guide.”

It became an arms race accompanied by tired arms. A glossy way to show off how rich and powerful your school is by pumping up the pages, jamming in the photos and piling on every conceivable statistic short of “Most Hernias Caused by Media Guide Clean and Jerk, Single Season.”

Clearly something had to be done to curb the runaway extravagance. And how many pages does a sports information director need for coaches’ and players’ bios, stats, records and a few hundred photos?

Yet to hear some big-college SIDs tell it, slapping a 208-page limit on media guides was akin to putting a 208-pound limit on offensive linemen.

USC had to shrink type, lose a bunch of photos and cut out 20 pages of eye-wowing but less-than-essential graphics.

“I don’t think the inside of the book is nearly as complete as it could have been,” said USC sports information director Tim Tessalone, who included a disclaimer on the first page of the new book that reads: “New NCAA legislation enacted this past spring limits the number of pages allowed in media guides to 208 pages. Therefore, USC’s football guide -- which was 408 pages last year -- had to be reduced by 200 pages!”

Tessalone said his staff “really felt [the new limit] devalued the book, that we were somewhat cheating the fans. We wanted to do something to keep its value.”

So with some of the money saved by cutting out 200 pages, USC decided to pad the slimmer volume with a shiny metallic hard cover.

UCLA, needing to cut back from 368 pages in 2004, also went the reduced-typeface route and eliminated photos, along with shortening its lists of career leaders from top 25s to top 10s and setting a 1963 cutoff date for its “UCLA in the NFL Draft” section.

“We tried to sit there and evaluate, ‘What does the media need to do its job?’ ” Marc Dellins, UCLA sports information director, said. “What are some of the features the fans like to have in there? And what may also help recruiting?”

Dellins and his staff took what was trimmed and organized it on the Bruin website as a “media guide supplement.”

Texas, meanwhile, appears to have pulled an ingenious end-around. In Texas’ new book, 41 pages come equipped with foldout flaps. Each of these flaps is the size of half a page. Unfolded, the 41 flaps give the book an extra 20 1/2 pages of content.

What is this, the Rick Neuheisel approach to new media-guide rule interpretation?

John Bianco, Texas assistant athletic director in charge of media relations, maintains that no sleight of hand went into the making of this year’s volume.

“It really wasn’t a unique way of getting around the issue,” he said. “Actually, it was something that we’ve done for, like, the last six years....

“The rule was that it had to be an 8 1/2 -by-11 [inch] book. Really, I didn’t think I was doing anything [along the lines] of creative thinking.”

Technically speaking, Texas’ media guide fits the new NCAA standard. Closed, the book indeed measures 8 1/2 by 11. But with flaps unfolded, 41 of those 208 pages measure 12 1/2 by 11.

The NCAA “is looking into” the matter, Bianco said. “I don’t know what their [decision] is going to be on it, whether or not that’s something they say you can’t do in the future or not.”

And what is the NCAA penalty for violating the 208-page limit?

“We have to sit out a game,” Bianco quipped. “One-game suspension for me. Without pay.”

Seriously, Bianco said, that question was posed to an NCAA representative at a recent convention of college SIDs.

“All he could do is shrug his shoulders and say, ‘I don’t know,’ ” Bianco said.

Dellins sees at least one advantage to this season’s leaner media guide.

“I think the media that attended Pac-10 football media day were excited about their ability to carry the media guides from all 10 schools without needing a crane,” he said.