In the midst of budget cuts and to adhere to nation and conference-wide trends, Ohio University has stopped printing and distributing media guides to writers and recruits.
Director of Athletics Jim Schaus said the decision, which was made last spring, will save the university $62,000 this year.
We knew about the budget cuts that we were going to be facing
and this was one of the ways to get there Schaus said.
The $62,000 saved is 10.3 percent of the $601,279 Athletics cut from its budget this year.
During the summer, the Southeastern Conference proposed legislation to the NCAA to further restrict the role of media guides in major college athletics.
Under the new resolutions, which took effect Aug. 1, schools are no longer permitted to hand out media guides to a prospective student-athlete his or her parents or legal guardians
the prospective student-athlete's educational institution or any individual involved in the coaching of a prospective student-athlete
according to NCAA bylaws.
Schaus said he made the decision before he heard the new rule, but also said coaches said the decision wouldn't have that great an impact on their jobs.
With an increased level of technological literacy from recruits and their families, the new legislation should have little impact on recruiting, said Greg Ladky, managing editor at rivals.com, a college athletics recruiting site.
It will probably end up being another irrelevant
tiny recruiting rule that schools don't pay any attention to anyway
Ladky said. Recruits are much more tech-savvy than they were 20 years ago.
Recruits and their families do a lot more research than people give them credit for. They don't need a big, glossy book to tell them about a school. That's what schools' websites are for.
Recently
schools have relied on their websites as a way to pass information out to both media and recruits interested in finding more information about their athletic departments.
The trend of eliminating media guides has spread across the Mid-American Conference. Nine schools responded to a questionnaire distributed by The Post
and all said they did not print media guides.
All MAC schools have posted their media guides on their websites
and some
such as Northern Illinois
