Let's learn how to file Open Records Requests today

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

This was an usually chalky NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, as each 1 seed made the Final Four. I thought that was good news for my chances in the Extra Points Bracket Challenge, presented by Short Courts. But I checked ESPN this evening, and while I had a respectable finish, I’m mathematically eliminated.

You can see where you are in the standings by checking out our group. We’

If I were the sort of person who always had his stuff together, I would have set my editorial calendar to program against Sunshine Week, a nonpartisan collaboration among leaders in journalism, public advocacy, education and government groups to promote public records. Public records reporting has been a cornerstone of Extra Points since it was founded back in 2019, and a bedrock of not just my writing career, but my values as a reporter and a citizen.

But I am not the kind of person who has his stuff together. Sunshine Week was March 16-22, and today is March 31. Whoops.

Most of the programming around Sunshine Week centered around fighting government corruption, police accountability, environmental justice, that sort of thing. Public records are invaluable for that type of reporting, but I’ve also found they’re a critical tool in covering college sports.

It would probably be better for my career if I treated requesting public records as some sort of arcane sorcery, an act that can only be mastered by serious professional journalists. But the truth is, while practice will make you better, you don’t need a journalism degree or a byline to file an open records request. Anybody can do it.

So today, I thought I’d share a very basic lesson on what these things are, while I file a gazillion of these requests, and how you can use these tools to learn more about the stuff you’re interested in.

TO THE FOIA-MOBILE!

Okay, what’s FOIA, and what are Open Records?

Let my pal Dave Gribble explain:

The Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, is a federal law that allows anybody, from lawyers to reporters to whatever the hell Dale is, to inspect copies of government records. FOIA only applies to federal agencies, but every other state has a state-specific open records law. For the sake of simplicity, here. I use FOIA as a verb to mean “make an Open Records Request”, even if I’m technically filing a GRAMA or a KORA or whatever.

At the state level, examples of documents that could be subject to open records requests might be state government contracts, police or incident reports, emails sent by public employees, phone records, and more.

Okay, but what does any of that stuff have to do with college sports? I was told this was a college sports newsletter.

Great question! Unlike professional sports, most major college programs are tied to public universities, which generally makes their activities subject to open records requests.

Examples of the types of records I request on a regular basis include employee contracts (for coaches, athletic directors, general managers, etc.), vendor contracts (shoe deals, MMR contracts, compliance software, recruiting software, security services, etc.), ticket scan data (that official attendance number that gets reported to the NCAA? That’s uh, usually not the real number), itemized athletic department budgets, and much, much more.

Open Records can be a great way to get paperwork documenting how athletic departments make certain decisions, how they earn and spend money, who bid for specific contracts, what fans/boosters/senior administrators think about particular policies, and much, much more. They’re a very valuable tool for reporters!

In the college athletics world, are there departments that are not subject to open records?

Yes.

Public records requests, in general, are limited to public agencies. Private businesses (Nike, New Balance, the Dallas Cowboys, etc) and private universities (Notre Dame, USC, BYU, etc) are not subject to open records requests.

A few states also exempt particular institutions from some of these requests. Thanks to a strange quirk in PA law, for example, Penn State, Pitt, and Temple are considered “State Related” universities, instead of state schools, and are thus exempt from open records requests. You can’t make Pitt share a football coach contract with you. Delaware also exempts their two D1 universities from athletics open records requests.

There are also a few universities, mostly in Florida, that have established their athletic departments as something called a Direct Support Organization, which are exempt from open records requests. Some schools, like Florida, generally still respond to basic budget and contract requests, while others, like UCF, decline to share anything.

But generally, every other public institution in D-I can be FOIA’d.

In case you missed this last week, we highlighted a college sports business consultancy with a big idea on how to revolutionize college athletic department apparel contracts. If you’re in the market for potentially finding a new apparel deal, or at least extending yours, check out our breakdown on College Athletics Management here:

How do I file an Open Records Request?

So the first thing you’ll need to do is look up the filing procedure for the school you’d like to FOIA.

Some state university systems ask you to fill out an online form, like at Indiana or Missouri. But in my experience, the most common way is to simply email a request to the school’s custodian of records. A good way to check is simply to google “University Name Open Records Request” to see if there’s a generalized FOIA email, school-specific form, etc.

Once you know who you’re going to email, you’re ready for your request!

There are a lot of helpful websites that can give you state-specific open records forms. For example, here’s one for Ohio. But after filing thousands of these things, I can tell you that you typically don’t need to be quite this formal in the request. In your email to the school, you should provide the following:

1) Your name, phone number, and some sort of physical address

2) A statement saying that you would like to file an open records request

3) And this is the important part, clearly define and describe exactly what records you want, with as much specificity and detail as possible.

If you ask for say, “the most current employment contract for Ohio State head football coach Ryan Day,” you won’t have any problems getting the document…and in fact, you’ll probably get a response pretty quickly. If you ask for “all documents relating to Big Ten expansion”, you’re going to get denied, as that request would likely be seen as overly broad. If you don’t know exactly the document you’re looking for, you want to help the records department limit that search by giving them specific employees to search, dates, keywords, etc.

That means you may have to do some homework (or gasp, reporting!) before you file the requests.

You generally don’t have to tell the entity you’re FOIAing why you want the documents. I do this, because sometimes reporters can have requests expedited, and I want to have positive relationships with records clerks, but you usually don’t have to.

Wow, that wasn’t super complicated. Are there any state-specific quirks to open records laws I need to know, or perhaps common exceptions to open records legislation?

Wow, great question. There sure are.

Every state is different, and different states have different rules about what, exactly, constitutes a public record. Virtually every state will allow you to get a copy of a coach or athletic director contract. In some states, performance reviews can be public records, but not in others. Some states permit you to FOIA to see who applied for a job, others do not. If you plan on sending requests all over the country, be prepared for some trial and error.

A few states also require in-state residency to file requests. Off the top of my head, those include Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky (although Kentucky has an exception for national reporters). If you want a contract at George Mason and you don’t live in Virginia, you’re going to need to find a friend who can file it for you.

Schools are also generally allowed to charge you for requests. Most places typically won’t charge for small requests, but a few states and schools will charge for virtually everything…and if you’re asking for a bit of a fishing expedition, those searches can get very expensive, quickly. One reason why I paywall a large amount of our FOIA-focused reporting is because I pay thousands of dollars in fees each year. The subscriptions help defray the cost of the searches.

A few exceptions to keep in mind. You typically will not be able to file requests asking for records that personally identify a specific student, thanks to something called FERPA. The compliance paperwork for a specific athlete’s NIL deal, text conversations between coaches about a particular athlete’s recruitment process, emails to a player’s agent…all of those sorts of things are likely to be protected under FERPA.

There are often provisions that protect draft copies of particular documents, various trade secrets, trial preparation records, medical records, and documents related to litigation. Different states will apply those provisions differently, but some contracts, NCAA investigation-related documents, conference TV contracts, etc, will often be withheld.

Finally, it can take a while to get the documents back. For simple searches, you may get the documents you request within 24 hours. Other states may take over 90 days to get back to you. I once had a D-III SUNY school take two and a half years to give me a budget report. I know of a few D-I schools that regularly take over 120 days. That’s part of the gig.

Can you help me file some of these requests?

Maybe!

So if you’re looking for a contract or budget report from a D-I or D-II school, there’s a good chance I already have it in the Extra Points Library. It’s free to browse the library to see if I have the thing you’re looking for, although downloading the documents requires a different subscription.

I wish I had the time to individually help people with every FOIA related question they had. I really do. But because I’m also writing four newsletters a week, maintaining Library, updating ADS4000, etc, I usually don’t have the time.

However, I do offer FOIA-as-a-service for Extra Points Library customers. Usually, filing an Open Records Request actually creates a public record…and maybe you want a contract without other nosy reporters knowing it was you that made the ask. No problem. I’ll make the ask for you. EPL clients can just shoot me an email/call and I’ll be happy to help.

I’m also happy to help student journalists. I might not be able to get on the phone today, but if you’re working for your school paper, I will help you file your open records requests.

For everybody else, I’ll do my best to answer any questions you send, but it might take me a while, especially if it’s a hard question.

If, over the course of sending your own requests, you find something cool that you think I should know about, please let me know! I might have the reporting knowledge to help you put that document in context, and I’m happy to give discounted/free access to EPL in exchange for stuff I don’t have yet. My email is Matt @ ExtraPointsMB dot com.

This is not an exhaustive tutorial. But I hope this is a good FOIA 101 explainer that gives you enough knowledge to help you get out there and file some requests of your own.

Sunshine, after all, really is a great disinfectant.