Late-arriving media guides

The 2008 Southern Miss track & field guide arrived on my desk today.

It was postmarked May 28 and maybe it languished in our mail room for a day or two, but it wouldn't have been of much use if it had promptly arrived on June 1.

The Conference USA meet was May 15-17.

I seem to dimly recall other legends of late-arriving guides, even in D-I "Big Three" sports. Others probably have some similar stories.

 

The St. Louis Rams are legendary for sending out their guide about three months into the season because the owner has to approve her picture.

That's not going to be an issue this year.

 

Several years ago, SID got the football media guide to us in time for the final home game. He was busy working on the baseball guide that he preferred to do first because he liked baseball better. The football coach was NOT happy. The SID wasn't around much longer.

 

Few years back, when the SWAC SID of the year was running the show at Alcorn State, we'd routinely get their football media guide sometime in mid-November. Maybe late October if we were lucky. Basketball would get to us around January. Dude always blamed it on the printing department. I think he could've handwritten enough copies faster than that.

 

FedEx Kinko's.

 

What about PDFs of the media guides?

That's how my shop manages for some of the major college sports we've covered.

 

Paperless office. Yes, I heard of that ... at the 1964 World's Fair.

 

Track and cross country ones always seem to be late.
I've had them come in after the season is over.
But hey, the NCAA Championships are this week. They've still got about five days of value.

 

The SWAC can be legendary.

 

I briefly dealt with Alcorn and the SID they had at the time didn't even bother making media guides, much less sending them late.

 

My first full-time job out of college was for a fledgling publishing company in the mid-90s that produced game programs for the Padres and a number of Division I colleges (football and men's and women's basketball). We would get the media guides and I remember we were missing a University of Washington women's hoops media guide, and didn't get until the season was three-fourths done.

One of my co-workers, who previously worked in the Pac-10 office, told me the person responsible for doing that media guide had most of it done when her computer crashed, wiping out ALL of her work on that book. She had to start over scratch to get it done, which is why it was so late.

 

For some reason a couple of weeks ago, the Michigan spring football media guide came in the mail after practice was over. (I got it because they sent them to all FWAA members). I think it was as big as the regular-season guide.