Mizzou Saving Some Trees on Media Guide

Missouri is one of at least three Big 12 Conference schools who will not print guides for the media this football season.

MU athletic director Mike Alden said the school would print up to 7,000 copies of its “media guide” for distribution to recruits and to its top level of financial contributors.

The guide as well as a records book is available to the media on-line, but in a password-protected area that is not available to the public.

Big 12 officials on Tuesday said Iowa State - as a cost-cutting measure - had decided not to print any football media guide at all and that Texas A&M planned to follow a plan similar to Missouri’s.

My initial reaction? Oh drat! Another 20-pound book I don’t get to lug around everywhere I go.

And my secondary reaction? Missouri’s “media guide” for football hasn’t even contained a records section for several seasons, that information replaced by equipment style and variety pages aimed directly at recruits.

“Last year we printed, total, in the area of 23,000 media guides,” Alden said. “This year we’ll print somewhere in the area of 5,000 to 7,000. There will be a limited number that we’ll be able to sell.”

Missouri’s savings - including more than $4 per guide in mailing costs - will amount to between $50,000 and $100,000, according to Alden.

Missouri’s media guides are actually printed as a donation by the Walsworth Publishing Company. That donation will continue, Alden said, with the “savings” helping to defray other printing costs in the athletic department.

There are two proposals being considered by the NCAA along these same lines. One would eliminate the printing of any guides. The other would eliminate their distribution to recruits.

That last one will never fly. Media guides have not been for the media for several years. They are precisely FOR recruits.