They’re the overworked and underpaid, talented yet unappreciated glue that holds an athletic department together.

No, they’re not assistant coaches (although they certainly qualify under every word except “glue”). They’re the Sports Information Directors.

Every school has one (almost) and almost none works as few as 40 hours per week. They’re the ones who make sure the media knows what’s going on in the athletic department. At the Division III level, it’s usually one full-time person (who works 50-70 hours per week) covering about 15 sports. They write and design media guides, issue press releases, write feature stories, update the department Web site, often traveling to away games. They’re often the department photographer, historian or technology expert.

Underpaid, overworked and disgruntled. Such is the life of a Division III SID.

I wasn’t kidding about them working 50-70 hours per week. That is the range cited by 72.8% of Division III SIDs who responded to a salary and job responsibilities survey presented at last summer’s College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) convention.

Well, for all that extra work and responsibility, they must be getting paid well, correct? Decidedly not. The national average full-time SID salary is $34,953, with the average brutally low in some of the areas with the highest costs of living ($32,637 in the mid-atlantic, with full-time SIDs in that area making as low as $20,000). At 60 hours a week for 50 weeks a year, that’s $11.65 per hour.

When you throw in having to deal with all forms of questions from people who don’t know a person’s job responsibilities (i.e., this is not the person you call to ask when the pool is open or how to get a booster club membership), this is a group of professionals seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

That pressure has led to a decidedly early 21st-century outlet, a blog called Disgruntled SID. This is for the parents who compile their own statistics of their son or daughter and complain to the SID when the official stats don’t match. It’s for the coaches who want a flyer for their summer camp or want to know why they don’t have a media guide two weeks after submitting the information.

I don’t know who posts on this blog, but to be honest, I don’t care. This is a brutally accurate picture of the profession as it stands in Division III. Talented people leave the profession all the time to take jobs where they are appreciated, where they can spend time with their families, where they can make enough to someday pay off their student loans, let alone afford a mortgage. It’s a job prone to breakdowns — I had colleagues in the business who were forced to take medical leave because of exhaustion. As the talent drain continues, we’ll be left with the lowest common denominator at the level at which a good SID is most helpful. When the local media ignores the small schools, an SID can be the most helpful in terms of getting the word out. Unfortunately, too many schools take a short-sighted approach and nickle-and-dime the position, rather than realizing the public relations potential and exposure one can gain with a top-notch SID.

I used to be an SID myself. Thankfully, my time in the business was short, but it doesn’t take away from my appreciation for the hard work these people do seven days a week.

These people deserve more respect, not just from the fans or the coaches, but the administrators as well.

Don’t dismiss a key part of your institutional mission.