This post is partially to serve to remind schools that the nomination deadline is approaching for the Jostens Trophy. It’s also intended to explain what the award is and is not.

The award is not for the Division III basketball player of the year. The winner of the Jostens Trophy is chosen by a national selection committee (of which I am a member) that consists of college coaches, former athletes, college administrators, and selected members of the media. The members of the national selection committee cast their votes based on three criteria: basketball ability, academic ability, and community service.

It’s great to have an award that exemplifies the spirit of Division III. I just hope that voters remember the basketball portion of the award. There have been 16 winners of the award between men’s and women’s basketball since it was initiated for the 1997-98 season and I would say a half-dozen were very strong player of the year candidates.

To Sports Information Directors who are nominating players: If you’re borderline about your student-athlete’s academic and community service credentials, nominate anyway. Send it in and let the committee decide. The more nominees, the more credible the 10 finalists will be. I’ve seen finalists with GPAs below 3.00 (although that affected where I placed them on the ballot) and I’ve seen finalists whose only “community service” includes working basketball camps.

Those aren’t attractive on a nomination form, but they’re not unprecedented.

If you misplaced or did not receive the initial mailing from the award’s organizers, download it from the Old Dominion Athletic Conference’s Web site.

A nomination is complete upon receipt of:
1) the nomination form signed by the college president, VP, dean or athletics director.
2) a letter of recommendation from the college president, VP, dean or athletics director.
3) a letter of recommendation from the head basketball coach.

And ahem, if you’re not a coach, athletic director or Sports Information Director (I’m talking to you, parents) do NOT nominate your son or daughter. This isn’t high school.

I have candidates in mind, but I can only hope they will be nominated.

Case Western Reserve is doing something pretty interesting this weekend, celebrating its heritage by putting its players in throwback jerseys.

The men will wear jerseys from Case Institute of Technology for one of the weekend’s games and Western Reserve University for the other. The women will wear jerseys from Mather College both times out. They are playing in an old gymnasium as well.

Read more about the history of the school and the throwback weekend at their Web site.

Meanwhile, I’m really interested to know how Trenton State, Carnegie Tech, Upsala, Fredonia Teachers College, North Adams State, Western Maryland, Glassboro State, Beaver, Allentown and Penn Military do this weekend.

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.

Steve Solloway’s column in Sunday’s Portland Press Herald is a must-read. It provides heart-tugging insight into what it’s like for college students with what’s going on in the world these days.