At the End of the Day, Its About Time and Space

This is a truncated edition of the longer timeline within the Destin presentation:
Susie Gardner resigned at Arkansas as the women's basketball head coach. She made her intentions known to our AD back in Fayetteville in the middle of the afternoon on a Friday. Her hope was the news could be held through the weekend, perhaps with an official release on Monday. My bad news for her was I doubted it would make it until the 10 o'clock news. Little did I realize that I missed the target by four hours.
The moment the team meeting broke up at 4:30 p.m., we were on the clock but even I was shocked by the speed at which the news traveled. Team texting got the ball rolling. The media was on it within an hour and by 6:30 p.m. it was all over.
The news traveled through the Atlanta-based SEC women's tournament as quickly as if the games were being played at Walton Arena. For the sports information office, the rise of 3G phones and rampant texting have ushered in an era not seen since the turn of the century -- the 20th, that is.
When the telephone and telegraph reduced time and space, compressing a world that previously was dominated by the letter and the pony express, society was changed in profound ways. For the most part, it stayed that way for the next century. Think about it, until the last five years, the instantaneous nature of media still took some time. OK, that's quite redundant, but consider the case of Susie Gardner.
Five, ten years ago, that news from the meeting would be relayed to parents and friends by phone. There was a good likelihood that the land-line called had no one home, maybe a message left on a machine. The long-distance costs would make some think twice about calling more than the closest friend or family member. Fans at a distant tournament a whole time-zone away would have never gotten the call -- except maybe to their hotel rooms, but almost certainly not to the arena.
Media members that were stretched out across two states and separated by another two would have waited for a fax, maybe an email, of the official press release. They would not have felt the need to hurry, who was going to beat them to the public with the information anyway.
Distant fans or fellow coaches wouldn't learn about the decision for days, maybe weeks, until they picked up the gossip from a colleague that may have seen that fateful transaction in the sports agate: ARKANSAS -- Announced resignation of women's basketball coach Susie Gardner.
The moral of the story? The moment a decision is made, and more than two people know the outcome, you are already out of time to react.
If you're in the business and want the full presentation, give me an email at the office.