My turn to rant: Lousy SIDs

I'll get this out of the way early and then procede to rant. There are some truly awesone SIDs that bust their butts and do a great job. I love you guys.

But I believe the worst Division I SID is the guy I deal with on my beat. The football season opener is just a couple of days away. He still has not produced the weekly game notes release with a two deep, a roster with accurate numbers or anything else. No releases at all since camp opened other than one scrimmage report. The media guide is still waiting to be be printed because "they might change some of their numbers around."

On the athletic department's web site in the football section, there has been exactly one update since June 22 when he announced an assistant coach hire. The roster button still gives you the info from the 2005 team and obviously does not include the new recruits or changes on the coaching staff. The school just installed a spiffy new artificial turf on the practice field and installed a new video screen on a massive new scoreboard. There is no mention of this info on the website for fans or recruits to take a look at.

At the conference media days, he was leaning against the wall laughing at the other SIDs as they typed up releases and updated information on their websites with laptop computers. I guess he was at the meetings just for the breakfast buffet and the free golf because he did nothing else except make loud jokes that were not funny. The school I cover has yet to post the preseason coaches or media polls. There is no mention of it anywhere on the site. If I were a fan of the school, I would have to go to a different school in the conference's website to find some info on the preseason polls.

And he wonders why we will not be traveling with the team on road games.

 

Does this mean he has no assistant SID? Sounds like he should be looking for student help, at least. Scary situation and I, too, empathize.

 

I, too, empathize. This guy sounds like he'd be right at home in the SWAC, where their SID of the year a few years back didn't put out a football media guide until November, regularly answered "Was that today?" when you showed up for a pre-arranged interview with a player, never brought players in for the postgame press conference but did allow the school president's 8-year-old son to ask a question once (thank god it was an afternoon game), and devoted a full page in the media guide to his own bio (the head coach got half a page).

 

he has two assistants. The women's soccer and volleyball stuff is up to date on the website. Still no media guides, though.

 

Sounds like two other people should be in line for a promotion and one guy should be demoted or told to walk home from one of these road trips.

 

He's been there for 30 years or so. I've asked my editor to write a letter to the athletic director complaining about the lack of information coming from the information director.

I mean, he's a guy that when I call and ask to set up an interview -- you know, standard operator procedure when dealing with college coaches and athletes -- he asks why I didn't just call the coach or player. As if bothering him to set things up is against the rules.

 

I'm pretty lucky. I've got pretty good guys to work with. The most useless guy in the world just got an AD job elsewhere. He wasn't a bad guy -- liked him personally -- he was just useless as a SID.

 

Granted, it's not D-I in football, but my life's work has become setting up some kind of trust fund for the families of SWAC beat writers who have had to deal with those schools' respective Sports Information offices.

Or complete lack thereof.

 

Or Purdue University ringtones.

Seriously, there are some good SIDs out there. I'm lucky one of the ones we deal with is a distant cousin.

 

When I first saw this thread, I thought I read "Lousy STDs"

 

There's one SID in my neck of the woods who completely refuses to answer e-mails, calls, etc. I've asked several times to be on their e-mail list for releases, and have yet to see it bear fruit.

Oh, and they mailed their season football pass to us four days before the season began, which means it's too late to mail it to my correspondent, meaning I'll likely have to drive it to him.

Can't stand that prick.