So what's an SID, anyway?

I get this question often, from athletes, parents and fans ... heck, even from some of my relatives! "Say, Don, what's an SID? What the heck do you do?"

Well, it's kind of hard to explain what a sports information director -- that's what an SID stands for -- does, especially at a small college. Primarily, we're the "information providers" for the college's athletic department. Media relations, public relations, athletic website, publications, statistics, this blog, historical records, some of the academic award nominations and many gameday functions all fall within my job description -- as well as part of the job description for our assistant SID, Kelly Anderson Diercks. We're the public conduit for our athletic program. And it ain't a 9-to-5 job.

On gamedays, like tonight's women's basketball game against Hamline, it's an all-day affair to be an SID. We come into the office in the morning to begin planning. Kelly is the SID contact for men's and women's basketball, so she completed the gameday program for tonight's game. I edit the program for her, and she sends it to our on-campus copy center for printing. I'm in charge of statistics, so I take care of setting up our computer stats program and in-game live statistics on the web. And tonight, I'll be on the computer, taking care of the game stats. Kelly will write the game story for our website and for distribution to the media.

During the game, Kelly and I also make sure things are going OK on the scorer's table -- scoreboard operators, official scorer, PA announcer, our webcast announcer, etc. We also help handle the music that's played during breaks in the action. For other sports, I handle the public address announcing (soccer, hockey, baseball/softball), in addition to my other duties. It's a long day, and we're usually not out of the office until after 10 p.m., on a typical gameday. For weekends, where we have multiple events, it's an even longer day and night. Thankfully, I have a great crew of student work-study employees who help both myself and Kelly get through our busy days and our event evenings.

What to know what a day in the life of an SID is like? A couple of my SID colleagues in the MIAC have put together some good diaries -- check out the diaries from St. Thomas SID Gene McGivern (who started his SID career here at Augsburg) and Concordia-Moorhead SID Jim Cella. You can also learn more about the SID biz by going to the website of CoSIDA -- the College Sports Information Directors of America (our professional organization), or this description from About.com.