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.
I do think that SID’s are under appreciated in D-III. So are assistant coaches in many sports on D-III campuses. These coaches are underpaid and work as many if not more hours than SID’s but I never here any of them complain about the hours. I do here them complain about how much they are getting paid because a lot of them are making less than $30K but they don’t break down what they make per hour. The plain fact is that if you want to get rich becoming an SID then don’t take a D-III job. You’re going to work your butt off! But if you are getting into the business because you love athletics and making a difference in young people lives then you shouldn’t worry about the hours your working. It will pay off in the long run when you make a difference in some athletes’ life.
I agree with coacher1. I am an high school educator in Minnesota. Believe me, a good teacher never gets paid for the hours that they work. However, all educators know that going into their profession.
I certainly did not choose my career based on dollar signs and hopes of living in mansions. It was my love for students, my subject area, and a chance to have a positive impact on young people every day that steered me in my decision.
So, thank you SID’s for everything that you do. You may not hear it every day but your efforts are appreciated by everyone you work for!
As an aspiring SID, having experienced many of the same trials and tribulations I do my best to defend SID’s on every level. I never knew who or what they did until halfway through my college experience. I saw how underappreciated SID’s were in my radio days. Now that I am “all grown up” I want nothing more than to be one. I guess that makes me sick in the head.
SID’s are underappreciated on all levels but especially in the small schools like the ones you see in Division III. I work with both an Ivy League school and a Division II school. I know how much harder and broader the scope of responsibility is for the latter. I know what the SID’s in the OAC go through. These guys put their heart and soul into it and I do my best to always show my appreciate for an SID that pours his heart and soul into their work.
My hats off to the SID’s.
I’ve oftened pondered the SID career path going so far as to volunteer a season at a rival school to learn StatCrew. Then I realized even the best in the business make pennies for the time they put in and I couldn’t justify it. I know many SIDs do it for the love of D3 sports but providing for a family is pretty important too.
If Administrators would take a moment to realize how important an SID is to the institution, especially with the recent breakthroughs in technology, I’m sure they would increase the compensation.
A school’s athletic website is the first connection for a potential student athlete when considering a school. Highlight videos, webcasts and other features can entice a student to check out a school. If he likes it, he enrolls, has 4 great years and hopefully gives back to the school.
Now ask yourself again. Who was responsible for his first contact with the school?
There you go.
oAs
Let me first start by saying I read this item a day or two ago on the hoops site and I’m just responding now, so my thoughts might be disjointed…
I think SIDs are an underappreciated resource except by those of us who know what they do … I wrote a story, that I think eventually made it into CoSIDA monthly or whatever (without permission, by the way) that detailed the life and level of involvement an SID must have.
There are great differences between the big-school SIDs (multi-person departments) and our one-person operations. Those folks rely on lots of student help, work awful hours and have to spend much of their time serving people who make unreasonable demands on their time (administrators and media, among others).
However, as someone who uses school-produced materials frequently, I think many SIDs aren’t very efficient with their time, which contributes to the long hours. If I thought there were any money in it, I would start a consulting business advising sports information departments on ways to get the coverage they seek and ways to use their resources more wisely, at least with regard to media.
I understand that the above sounds presumptous … I know that staffing a weekend cross-country meet is not optional, and there are SIDs who accept the bad parts of the job because the good parts are rewarding because of the relationship with the kids. I myself could never do it. I had a hard enough time being a writer and chasing coaches and athletes who feel you’re a pest (although one of the great things about D3 is that people rarely seem that way) I couldn’t imagine having to kiss-up, in effect, to media, adminstrators, coaches, fans … The demands placed upon some SIDs are amazing, and I very much admire them for caring so much about what they do and working so hard at it.
I’ve never known an SID to make much above $20,000, although that’s not bad if college housing is included … so seeing that $30-something average actually made me feel a little less bad for some of them … but at a lot of places in D3, it’s fresh-out-of-school type career where it seems the school will hire just about anyone who can do the math and will take the job. At some place, tt’s not really a support-the-wife-and-kids, career-type job, in my opinion.
It’s also very hard to make blanket statements about the profession, because SIDs come in all sizes and shapes, from the ultra-professional, organized career man/woman who seems to enjoy it to the person who seems in over his/her head and frazzled.
But the main point I want to make is that SIDs are very helpful to someone like myself. I use the records and the media guides and the web sites to the fullest … but at the same time, I’ve seen pages and pages of game notes for a midseason basketball game where writers only get there 15 minutes before tipoff and couldn’t read them if they tried, not to mention already had storylines in mind, and SIDs who send endless sheets of faxes to newspapers who don’t do anything but throw them right in the recycling bin.
(more to come…)
The best pieces of advice I would have for young SIDs, from my end, is to try and focus on building personal relationships with the media in your area, and don’t be afraid to contact them with story ideas. But “news judgement” often separates good reporters from average ones … the local press will not consider everything news, but they will have an ear for a wonderful story, even if it’s “just” field hockey or wrestling. Writers try to be an extension of the communities they cover. Writing isn’t all the job entails … it’s trying to have an idea about what people will find interesting. And once you get off campus, people often don’t care just because it’s school x.
I think there are SIDs (as in departments) who could combine publications, make theirs smaller, more handy … there are things people spend hours updating that I bet no one ever uses. Conference media guides are great, as are opponents’ details and phone numbers (most media would rather make their own calls) and player profiles (for radio). Forget buying game-day inserts that cover a sliver of D3. Combined media guide/Game programs with the day’s roster inserted by hand work fine … well-updated websites are a godsend.
A self-analysis would not be a bad idea during a slow season for an SID.
And as far as relationships, I think you have to make yourself known among the president, trustees and such so they know how valuable you are as the “face” of the institution in a lot of ways. I bet the Mount Union trustees know who Michael DeMatteis is, and you’d like to think they appreciate him. Mount Union probably has a reputation in Northeastern Ohio, but outside that football probably does more to get their name out to prospective students, even non-players, than everything else combined.
I don’t know how schools are organized, but I’d bet there are schools whose SIDs don’t know their public relations department who don’t know their alumni department … even though the three really could/should function in concert with each others.
Again, I’m just an outsider rambling to maybe keep the discussion going … Thoughts?
Despite hearing all of the scary and horrible stories about SIDs and Assistant SIDs, this is a job that I think I could do and have fun with.. it wouldn’t be a job for me.
OAS,
Don’t you already work for pennies?