Conference Champs with B Cuts: Let's Explore the Idea.

My interview with Jack Steck lamented that our system is flawed. We have a college swimming system that alienates the average sports fan and leaves college swimming to be enjoyed almost exclusively by the die-hard swim geeks and the parents of the actual swimmers. We can do a better job to address this, and in so doing we can also address the lack of parity in the system and make it more fair overall, which might be a small step toward saving some programs from getting the axe when AD's are weighing out the value of each sport to decide who to keep and who to cut. I have a lot to say on this, so I will surely be making more than one post in the next week or so about it.

First point: The "conference champs with B cuts" idea is not that far-fetched. It is a pretty traditional system. My high school state meet in Alaska took the 5 region winners and then the next 7 fastest times. We were limited to 12 qualifiers due to travel costs, the same logic by which the NCAA has a system based on a head count and A/B cuts. It is based on an athlete cap and just because some conferences are stronger than others does not mean it is inherently unfair.

I feel that the argument that "we don't want slower kids to knock faster kids out of the meet" can be thrown out the window. No one seems to want to acknowledge that we are already doing that by allowing relay roster manipulation. Here is what I did to prove the point that this is happening, it is happening way more than people think it is, and it is a horrible injustice: I did a name search of the PDF files of the pre and post-cut psyche sheets for the men's D1 championships. I only spent a few minutes and only searched for 6 names from the bottom of the list on two events. From those I found two perfect examples, both from the same team, that say: the mid-major kid is not getting a fair shake. He is forced to make it on his own while others are often not. We are not just taking the fastest kids with the current system. It is sneakier than that. For example:

1. Joel Elber from Ohio State was the #73 ranked 100 back-stroker in the pre-cut sheet. He got into the meet. I did a name search to confirm that he did not qualify on his own right because he was not ranked in the top 24 in any other events. He was not fast enough to get in on his own but was a pretty good freestyler so surely he got in through a relay. Not that big a deal... except that he was exactly a full second slower that Roko Simunic, the conference champ of the MAC, who was the #35 ranking pre-cut and did not get in. Elber was the #3 backstroker on the OSU squad. Are you telling me that he deserves to be there more than Roko? The conference championship should count for something, because obviously when you compare these two swimmers, the time counts for nothing.
2. Andrew Bretscher was the 4th ranked 100 flyer on the OSU squad. He was not listed as having any other B cuts on the pre-cut psyche sheet. He was #82 in the 100 fly. He got in. Are you telling me that OSU is so awesome that they are putting their #4 flyer on their A relay at the big show? Right... no manipulation there. That is awesomely unfair.

If we were just allowing the straight up top 24 per event and top 12 relays, it would be fair. Too exclusive, but truly fair.

In the 100 back, 24 were invited. 20 more swam it. There were 23 invited in the 100 fly. 52 actually swam it. That means almost thirty swimmers got in some other way. How many of them got in from relays? How many of them got in on a relay, when they were not the top dog of their team and are probably not really on the relay team at all? How many were added to the relay roster, probably for the prelim only, to get them into the meet? How is this any more fair than allowing a conference champ in with a time that is faster than those guys but might be slower than a few others? How many guys like this are taking valuable spots away from others who are faster and probably are more deserving? This is a loophole that the big schools get regularly and the mid-majors do not. They have a foot in the door that the small schools don't. That goes against every conceivable rule of fair play in the world of sports.

I say, if we are going to throw a bone to someone, we shouldn't be throwing it to the schools that already have more to eat. I don't have a problem with relay only kids being allowed to swim their b events... if they are there, let them swim. But this goes beyond that, because in a system with a cap on the number of athletes it hurts others... and it is an advantage that only the major schools have.

The benefit of allowing conference champs in will make a bigger impact on the sport. My good friend Randy Horner at the University of New Orleans put it this way: "if a kid were being recruited and trying to choose between a mid-major and a BCS school, he might actually choose the mid-major." That is good for the sport, because right now the blue chip athletes don't sign with mid-majors, partly because they know that if they are on the bubble, a big school can get them in and a small school can't.

I am not saying we should take away the relay opportunities for the big guys... I am saying, give us an equivalent loophole so that our swimmers don't leave their swimming career feeling bitter and regretting that they didn't get in simply because they know that they would have been invited at the major school with all times being equal, yet they chose to believe in their mid-major program and signed to go there.

We also have to look at another aspect of the conference champs with b cuts idea: it would add some value to those other conferences by offering automatic berths, which would essentially raise the stakes and create interest from outside of the conference. Right now, when people go to conference central to look at results, they are mostly looking just at the BCS meets or the conferences they have a stake in personally, meaning a friend or family member swims there, or you are an alum. Well, if this rule passed, I am pretty sure everyone will be tuning in to the MAC and the Sunbelt to see who gets those automatic berths. More people will be paying attention. Nothing but good for the sport. Wouldn't it be great if we made those meets matter too?

My initial reaction to the conference champ idea was negative. At first look it seemed unfair... but when I got to really thinking about it, it works on several levels. It was bigger than just the one meet. It might just have a leveling effect, even if it is just a small one, but it would without a doubt be a step in the right direction for our sport as a whole. I don't know how many more swimmers we would have to add to the meet to make this happen in a fair way, but I can't help but think it would be more than worth it in the long run and for our sport in general to expand the meet to make this happen.

Think it through. I might not be a perfect solution, but it should be given a fair, thorough and educated discussion. Please sound off below. More to come. ;)

"I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOUR SPORT!"

My alma mater, Missouri State University, has one of the most infamous records in college basketball. At one time, we held the record for the best RPI score to not get invited into the March Madness Tournament. We had the #33 RPI score and still did not get invited into the 65 team show. Since that year, we beat our own record twice with a 29 and then a 19!! I believe we currently own three of the 4 best all-time snubs in NCAA history. You see, at one point in the 90’s, the Missouri Valley Conference felt they weren‘t getting a fair shake, so the coaches all got together and made an effort to play as many BCS schools as they could so that their games would matter more; and it worked! One of those years, MSU beat Wisconsin when they were a #13 ranking, and they still didn’t get in! Mid-majors get screwed. Period. Any “big-name” school with that RPI and with the exact same record against the exact same schools would never have been considered unworthy. The truly sad part is, the last time MSU got into the tournament before they set their disgusting record, they made it all the way to the sweet sixteen. This year, wasn’t it a Mo Valley team that ruined your bracket by knocking out Kansas?

In 2010 there were only 12 swimmers invited to the NCAA Division 1 Swimming and Diving championships who were not from BCS schools, men's and women's meets combined. That statistic bothers me. Any time I bring it up in conversation or say anything about the mid-majors having a tougher road, I get a lot of unsympathetic flack. “Quit whining…” “Tell them to swim faster…” “We don’t want to dumb down the D1 championships just to make the little schools feel better about themselves…” “Shut up, Viking! You’re just a high school coach. What the hell do you know?”

The thing is, the major schools already have an advantage in recruiting just based on the name of their school and the exposure they get on tv from the major sports. They have the state-of-the-art facilities. They have budgets that allow them to go to greater lengths in recruiting and carry rosters far beyond what the mid-majors can carry. I don’t have a problem with any of that. We all wish our schools would invest more in swimming and consider us a priority.

My issue is that the exclusivity of the D1 meet is bad for the sport. It is bigger than fairness. Unless you have been part of one of those teams, you probably can’t see that just getting a swimmer into the big show can be a gigantic boost to a small program, and might be the boost that is needed to keep that program from getting the axe the next time the economy takes a down-turn. When we do things like allowing the big teams to manipulate relay line-ups to get a guy with B cuts into the meet who would not have made the cut-off otherwise, people forget that it might be taking a spot away from someone who could be doing something historic for some other program. Giving more advantages to the teams who already have the advantages is just bad business.

There has been a lot of talk on the web lately about stepping back and taking a look at our sport and ways we can make it more popular. We talk a lot about making changes that might help to keep college swimming from being obliterated in the modern arms race of college sports marketing. We need to quit talking and do something about it. The idea of conference champs with B cuts getting in needs to be considered. More big ideas need to be brought to the forefront. The CSCAA convention is coming up. Is this the year we make a real change?

The video is my old college coach: Jack Steck-- Papa Bear at Missouri State. Before I turned the camera on, I warned him: “People who see these love to post anonymously. I don’t want to put you in a position to look like a sore loser. It gets harsh.” He said something to the effect of: “I have been at this long enough, it doesn’t matter. The small schools far out-number the big schools, and people are still afraid to speak up. Something has to change. Someone has to say something. Maybe someone with a bigger voice can be convinced to do something and someday we will actually get somewhere.” In the first clip, one part in particular haunts me because I have heard the same thing from my own Athletic Director: “I don’t understand your sport!”

Check out the excerpts. Listen to the uncut interview (1, 2, 3). You might be surprised how what he has to say might resonate with not just the swimming community, but also the average sports fan like “Joe Pabst Blue Ribbon.”
　




The quotes below were cut and pasted from the collegeswimming.com message boards to help you to see that I am not the only person who feels this way. The issue is broad, and often misunderstood:

From TheRoboticRichardSimmons on March 13, 2009. “what has always amazed me about swimming was its lack of parity. In other words, year in and year out its always the same teams in the top 10... It seems virtually impossible for teams to rise up from obscurity and challenge the established giants in our sport… it is a case where the rich get richer. If I am a high school recruit and I think that, at the top of my game, I would be on the bubble in my best events, would I take my chances at ncaa’s to go to a school where I would have to qualify on my own, or would I go a pick a bigger program where I will almost DEFINITELY qualify on a relay?”

From Swimcoach4life on January 26, 2010. "I do believe the SPORT would benefit from parity via roster management, entry limits and automatic berths to the championships… I do believe that we are cutting off our nose to spite our face and being extremely myopic in our thinking when we look at the NCAA D1 championship and roster sizes. Wrestling is so far ahead of us in their thinking it is ridiculous. They have approximately 80-90 teams in D1 and 70+ are represented at the NCAA tournament due to automatic individual conference champion berths as well as ranked invitees. I believe somewhere around 60 schools score points. In my university’s situation it was a consideration not to cut the wrestling program because “they have a better chance of bringing home All-Americans, winning a national title or being a nationally ranked program…” administrators look at things differently… I do subscribe to survival of the fittest but at some point we have to realize that we will run out of food… We need to limit rosters and spread the wealth/participation. The top end will still be the top end, friendships will still be forged, and the sport will be stronger and exist longer because of this. Including automatic berths to the dance will give administrators reasons to keep swimming instead of reasons not to.”

*From wondering mum on March 13, 2009. “The current system is a vicious cycle. As the championship meet becomes more exclusive, programs don’t appear as successful, swimmers can get frustrated and athletic directors can withdraw support… Does anyone know where to get total NCAA participant numbers for men’s wrestling and swimming? If championship numbers are based on percentage of total participant numbers does wrestling really have 25% more participants than men’s swimming?"

*From swimalum2 on January 26, 2010. "What kind of perspective do you have on mid-major swimming?? Most mid-majors have relays, and individuals getting b and a cuts every year. Missouri State, Oakland, Cleveland state, Miami Ohio, Wright state, UIC, these schools all have 47’s 100 fly, 43’s 100 fr, 19.5-19.9 50 free, 420’s in the 500, 54 100 breast. Hell, Oakland has had a top 8 or 16 male swimmer 6 years in a row. They had a 142 200 back guy last year!… This is all by getting the “scraps” of big programs! So, I do think these coaches are good enough."
　

Looking in from the Outside

Today I ran across a blog post at BBC Sport that was written just after the most recent Women's NCAA Division 1 Championships. It is an interesting read in that it gives a little perspective from across the pond about the American college swimming system and the benefits of sending foreign athletes over to train with our universities. I have read a lot about how Americans feel about our best coaches helping other countries to build strong Olympic teams, but I had never read anything from the outside. Especially from the perspective of not only a foreigner, but a non-swimmer, Ollie Williams, who writes on the sports "which don't normally hit the headlines - from archery to ice hockey..." as he puts it.

The article is about Gemma Spofforth and the dual nature of being a British Olympian and living life as a Florida Gator. It also has an excellent video interview that includes a tour of some of Florida's athletic facilities. Essentially, the blog takes a look into what British swimming can learn from the American system. Obviously the advantages of facilities and Title IX are a part of it, but Gemma turns the conversation in another direction: she puts responsibility on the fans to help create an inspiring environment.

An excerpt:

So, given she made the conscious decision to cross the pond, does Spofforth feel British Swimming should be learning any lessons from the States? She has an interesting answer which places the focus not on facilities, but fans.

"My coaches at home have been able to do really good things with me, although the facilities out here help the coaches a little bit more," she explained.

"I don't really know if it's a case of what the UK can do, rather than what the crowd [back home] can do to change.

"In the US, the crowd stand there and shout the whole way through. I was like, 'Wow'. Every person in the crowd is invested in one team or another. But it's not a rivalry where you're going to beat people up, it's a rivalry where you're having fun with it."

another Onion Microfiche App headline:

Day At Pool Ruined By Guy Trying To Swim Laps

come on... there is no way that there isn't at least one person on staff at the Onion who was a swimmer!

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She Chose Division II

Just like you, I am anxiously waiting for the D1 meet to start. The delay is really emotionally crippling for us swim-nerds. Luckily, Molly Brown, a former athlete from my program, came to visit the pool while in town for spring break-- so of course I stuck a camera in her face to ask her about her first year of college swimming. She was an All-American at D2 Nationals for Drury.

Enjoy.

An Open Letter to My Diving Friends

Dear Divers,

Lately, the swimming community hasn’t been very nice to you. I feel bad. I have to admit, I used to scratch my head a little bit and wonder why swimming and diving are together in scholastic swim meets. Sometimes we seemed to gel, and being forced to hang out like step brothers wasn’t so bad… and other times, it was like we were serving on the same chain gang, with our ankles connected so that if one of us sunk, the other would surely drown too. Many meets are decided based on who has divers, or even whose facility has a diving board to offer diving. No one likes that… but now I am a high school coach and I can see the larger picture. I am one of those rare coaches who makes his swimmers go early to watch the divers, even if it means getting on the bus at 5:45am instead of 8:45am to head to the pool. On the other side of it, we are a small team, and my divers have never failed to step up and fill those empty relay spots when we needed them.

In college, I was a little uncomfortable around you guys at first. Swimmers dress for maximum comfort. We wear sweat pants. Divers wear slacks. Divers have highlights in their hair and go tanning. Swimmers don’t bother to shower after practice. Divers eat things like salads when they have paid for a meal plan that allows them to fulfill every gluttonous desire. Swimmers out-eat football players, and then hit subway for two more $5 foot-longs right before bed. The truth is, hanging out with you keeps me grounded in the real world. Your inspiration has helped me a little with the ladies, too. If it weren’t for you, I would have probably gone clubbing in sweat pants and no deodorant all those years and never noticed that I didn’t fit in. We sometimes meet in the middle and I want to say thanks for the gentle nudge to keep me within society’s standards.

You guys also held your ground in way swimmers were afraid to do… we moved on from briefs, to jammers, to full body plastic nightmares, and then back to briefs. You were man enough to just stick with the brief and even had the nuggets to ostracize the new kid on the team who showed up to his first practice in jammers. I have to admire that kind of macho attitude. Plus, I have seen several of you with broken noses, black eyes and concussions from hitting the board and even taking your own knee to the face without taking a day off. My hat is off to you. Your pain is different from ours, but no less impressive.

When I hear the diver-haters pleading their case, it does make sense on some level. I can see how swimmers could be swayed. The sports are entirely different even though they are on the same playing surface; but we also share something else. We share our status as Olympic sports, and Olympic sports are under attack in the modern era. Anyone who is angry when a swimming program gets cut at the high school or college level, should be ashamed of themselves for being so willing to throw another Olympic sport to the wolves.

I've got your back, my flippy, twisty friends. I won’t abandon you. We have been together for a long time, and I am proud to fight to keep it that way.

Never leave a man behind.


--Viking!