Among their many responsibilities is the production of elaborate media guides for each of their school's varsity athletic teams, creating programs for home athletic events, maintaining and providing historical data about the entire athletic program, creating daily e-mail releases, and helping develop school Web sites. They also serve as hosts in press boxes for various home athletic events, and provide valuable assistance for conference and NCAA championships at their campus sites.

CoSIDA currently enjoys a record membership of 2,216 registrants. It is a solid and busy organization with members at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and Canada. It also serves collegiate conferences from coast to coast, and has direct ties with nationwide news gathering agencies, radio and TV networks, corporate sponsors, and exhibitors.

Back to the early 1950s, most schools had a one-person operation and many institutions did not have any specialists handling sports publicity. During that time period, SIDs were called sports publicists. Then in 1957, 102 sports publicists met and voted to break away from the Sports Section of the American College Public Relations of America (ACPRA), which they had belonged to since 1931-32. It was then that CoSIDA was officially founded.

The reorganization went into effect with the 1957-58 school year. At about the same time, the group accepted an offer from the Bismarck Hotel in downtown Chicago to make that facility the headquarters for its annual event. It called for a single room fee of nine dollars for one night and a double room fee of $13 for one night. The facility served CoSIDA splendidly for the Workshops through 1971. Then the membership decided to move its annual gathering to cities around the nation in West, Central, and East corridors.

With the establishment of CoSIDA, the leadership decided that annual dues of five dollars should be assessed to members, that a constitution and by-laws should be developed, and that a position of secretary-treasurer should be added. One of the duties of the secretary-treasurer was editing the group's newsletter, a publication now printed on a monthly basis called CoSIDA Digest.

Prior to the establishment of CoSIDA, not to be overlooked were several key happenings. In 1952, the very first Academic All-America football team was selected, a project created by Lester Jordan, SID at Southern Methodist University. It was the forerunner of the present-day program that honors hundreds of male and female student-athletes in 12 sports. It should also be noted that the Don Spencer Co. of New York published the first directory for the publicists in 1953. That directory today is a 144-page publication distributed to the membership.

In the early years, each summer a number of panels and a succession of top speakers addressed key issues in the profession at the National Workshop. During those years in Chicago, social activities were an especially rewarding aspect of the event. Among the traditions fondly remembered by old-timers are the Sugar Bowl, Chicago Tribune, and Wilson Sporting Goods parties, all leading up to the Friday night All-Star football game at Soldier field.

Also important was the annual gathering of the Football Writers Association of America, to which many SIDs belonged, which brought several hundred writers in for the football game. The first two major CoSIDA Awards were also established in Chicago. They were the Arch Ward Award to recognize an outstanding member of CoSIDA, which was first awarded to Lester Jordan, and the Jake Wade Award for a media individual making outstanding contributions to intercollegiate athletics, which went to Bert McGrane of the Des Moines Register.

In 1969, CoSIDA established its Hall of Fame. As of 2007, 151 are now in the hall, including six women.

It is interesting to see how far CoSIDA has come, especially when recalling what the typical SID operation looked like in the mid-1950s. The average office had two rooms, two telephones, three desks, four and a half file cabinets, one full-time secretary, and one part-time assistant to the director, an addressograph, a ditto machine, a mimeograph machine, an adding machine, a postage scale, and a filing space. It did not have a photography darkroom, air conditioning, tape recorders, a folding machine, or a Western Union machine. All that notwithstanding, SIDs prospered during that time and built strong relationships with media members.

Today's budgets for SIDs are astronomical compared to those of the earlier days. Some directors today have six or seven full-time assistants along with many undergraduate volunteers to handle the heavy load brought on by the increased popularity of collegiate sports.

Over the years, more and more people have joined the organization and attended the National Workshops, and this increase continues with no decline anticipated. CoSIDA seems a good bet to continue moving upward in its second 50.