Are schools really that bad at announcing recruits?

The Toronto Star's high school and university sportswriter David Grossman had a post which some athletic administrators might want to mull over.
"I find it surprising that, with the exception of the University of Guelph, not a peep from Canadian universities and colleges about the student athletes they are luring or have already accepted - and with those small entrance scholarships. I guess it's something. I am not so sure those athletic awards or bursaries or grants (Ontario universities don't like when we call them scholarships) are widely known."

" ...Canadian universities need to become more aggressive promoting their new recruits.

"Oh yes, and the existing ones too."
It is fair comment.

By the same token, it is a bit rich to say there has not been so much as a "peep" about recruiting and newcomers. A quick check of cisblog.ca's archive shows that since the recruiting label was added in March, there have been posts on newcomers for the following CIS schools and teams:
  • Acadia (men's basketball)
  • Alberta (football, men's basketball)
  • UBC (football, men's hockey)
  • Carleton (men's basketball)
  • Guelph (men's hockey, men's basketball)
  • Lakehead (men's and women's basketball)
  • Manitoba (men's hockey)
  • Queen's (football, men's hockey)
  • Regina (men's hockey)
  • Saint Mary's (women's basketball)
  • Western (football, women's basketball)
  • Windsor (men's basketball)
  • UVic (women's basketball)
Please bear in mind that is limited by how much time the authors have to dedicate to this aspect of university sport. The reason for not doing it is (A) there are plenty of message boards and sites such as HoopStars Canada for basketball and All Canada Gridiron for football which already focus on this very well; (B) it's assumed that our readers also visit the athletics websites of the schools they follow, so a regurge can waste good time and bandwidth and (C) it's hard to determine sometimes how much space you should give to incoming players who were heretofore unknown to you.

For this site's purposes, it's far more productive to sit down in July, August and September and try to project lineups for the marquee team sports such as football and basketball.

Related:
Calling all recruits (David Grossman, School Sports Blog, Toronto Star)
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4 comments:

  1. This is Grossman's way of taking a jab at the OUA/CIS for their scholarship position, and probably at U of T & York for having not announced any football recruits to this point.

    It's not like he would have written anything about them anyways - not until his season preview at least. That's what makes his post so disingenuous.

    This is typical. As a niche community with the Canadian sports scene, CIS fans like myself need people like Mr. Grossman to report on the goings on of University sport - and with that, you have to take the bad with the good. It's been my experience with him, it's more bad than good.

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  2. In case anyone is interested or has forgotten, here is my story on Guelph's big signing day:

    http://news.guelphmercury.com/printArticle/447234

    And my blog post:

    http://guelphmercury.blogs.com/big_man_on_campus/2009/02/sign-here-.html

    It was quite the event. I was impressed.

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  3. That's what happens when these schools hire one person with the expectation that they do marketing, graphic design, game promotions and sports information. There's not enough time for everything so a lot the job of dealing with media goes to coaches, who have their main tasks. I understand a lot of schools simply can't afford to hire one person for each job, but you do often get what you pay for.

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  4. Umm, I totally disagee with Grossman...almost every CIS school sends out releases to the media and post to sites etc...he was just whining because he didn't get them sent directly to him and he was too lazy to check the various school's websites...the CIS schools still have a way to go in terms of information but it has improved immensely and the TO Star is a huge paper but get off your ass Grossman and be a reporter and don't be such a spoonfed baby...

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