Sweat the Small Stuff

Students and colleagues occasionally get tired of my insistence on detail. What is the concern about that sport -- it's small; meaning not a lot of attendance or not a lot of moneyed backers. Relax, let that slide. What's the big deal about separating pages on a website? It's easier to hang it all on one page. Why are making that background the same, or using that font? It looks OK.

Ask any football coach -- what is the key to the game? Blocking and tackling. Where does it start? Up front on both lines. Basketball? Free throws. Fundamentals.

We accept that from our sports, but somehow I see and hear more and more from PR types that stats aren't a big part of the SID job any more. Not important. It's big picture, message, meaning. The view from 30,000 feet.

Really? Unless your Jackson Pollack, I'm pretty sure that every "big picture" started with a single brush stroke. And those that overlooked their color palate, didn't use a quality brush, neglected their technique -- well, they're paintings are available in the traveling road show at the local Holiday Inn this Friday and Saturday only.

No one starts out as the SID of a BCS football team. They begin with a "minor" sport, and I taught for two decades you must act as if your sport was the top grossing, most visible sport at your school. That is where you learn the basics, and yes, make your mistakes out of the harsh glare of the 24/7 limelight. One doesn't turn on the ability to grind and be serious -- it must be taught, and worked within a system.

Near the end of baseball season, we discovered an innocent mistake. I was mortified about it. One of our best hitters crushed the ball out of Baum Stadium, clearing our pretty substantial scoreboard as it exited. According to reports on Facebook, it just landed about an hour ago near West Fork.

I say we in a feeble attempt to say the media caught the error in our baseball guide. The height of the scoreboard in the book said 39 feet. The size of the batter's eye is 40x80. One quick glance at the reality of right center field at Baum revealed that one of the two numbers was wrong. The scoreboard is clearly taller -- maybe as much as 10 feet taller -- than the center field green monster.

Debate ensued. My guess is that years ago, when the scoreboard was installed, it was 39 feet tall. But in recent renovations, the board got another line of adverting. Then it got a new fascia with panels for Arkansas all-time accolades. Then a really cool brick-and-mortar finishing with stylish bats in a grill work for a new "George Cole Field at Baum Stadium."

If you look at the original video board within all that upgrade, it appears to be about a foot shorter than the eye -- the 39 feet and 40 feet. But now, it might be as much as 50 feet tall.

So am I calling out the current baseball SID? Absolutely not, he inherited that copy from a series of people whole had the slot for a year at a time. These mistakes happen, it's a small stat within a whole of 208 pages.

If anything, it is my fault as the overall publications coordinator -- even if the E is a shared one -- I'm the one that breezed over those pages cause "they don't change much each year." I'm embarrassed to say, they obviously did.

I partake in this self flagellation this morning as I seal up a bill; one for a company that I know has a peculiar way of putting the return address on the reverse. Put in the envelope wrong, and guess what -- you end up sending your check to yourself. And, I did.

That mistake cost me 43 cents as I have to tear open the envelope and get a new one. Plus the time to hand address the bill.

What in God's green acre does that have to do with public relations? Everything.

Details like using less PDFs on a website have a reason: because they make it hard for media to cut and paste from the individual pages with actual text, that they can't be read on the iPlatform and that those with disabilities can't have the image of a PDF turned into spoken word.

Every day, I make mistakes -- lots of them. Hard not to in the real-time world of on-line media. The bottom line on this one little oversight is this: the next time we hand a figure to that media person (or colleagues in his circle) will he accept the number as accurate, or will he think back to the height of the scoreboard?