2024-25 NCAA Digest: A Season Opening Mailbag – Who Will Win Men’s DI NCAAs?

This is an opinion piece and may not reflect the views of SwimSwam as a whole.

FDOC, syllabus week, it all means one thing: collegiate swimming is back. It’s been a busy Olympic summer and we still have the Paralympics, but I must say, I did miss the NCAA. And since the season has barely started, it seemed fitting to do a mailbag–a digestif if you will–for the first weekly NCAA digest of the 2024-25 season.

Thank you to everyone who sent in questions, they were great and I answered as many as I could. We’ll likely do another mailbag mid-season, so hang onto your question if I didn’t get to it and if you think of any fun or interesting questions, save them!

Without further ado, let’s get started.

Will the NCAA ever swim the 50s of stroke at big meets? The D3 NESCAC already does it. Will there ever be a 1000 in championship meets?

We received a few different versions of the stroke 50s question, and for simplicity’s sake, we’re combining it with the 1000 freestyle question. The short answer, in my opinion, is no to both, even though I like the idea of making distance swimmers more valuable in the NCAA format.

The 1000 freestyle is a championship event at the DII NCAA Championships, and while it’s still on offer at the men’s Ivy League Championships, the women’s meet phased it out this year. Division I conferences getting rid of the event at their championships doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that the NCAA will turn around and add it to the big show.

Adding events also brings up scheduling talk. The NESCAC swims all the stroke 50s on Day 2 of their four-day meet schedule, along with the 500 free/200 IM/50 free. In Division II, they run a five-day schedule that has one relay a day, the 1000 free on the first day of individual events, and have avoided the 100 fly/100 back double. If you’ve never seen it before, it looks similar to SECs.

However, scheduling is only one layer of the discussion when adding events. Adding all three stroke 50s, and even just the 1000 free, would likely change the maximum number of events each swimmer could race at NCAAs. Decisions would have to be made about whether adding events would affect championship roster size or the number of invited swimmers, which in turn could change the cut times. Maybe adding these events wouldn’t bring in many new individual qualifiers, but the plans would still need to be in place. And based on the current landscape of collegiate swimming, I don’t think there’s much desire to make NCAAs a bigger meet.

If we’re going to see a schedule change, it’s more likely going to be swapping the 100 fly and 400 IM on Day 3. In theory, this would make it easier for swimmers to pull the 100 fly/100 back double. The NCAA committee is “[seeking] additional feedback” before making a final decision on this potential change, which was proposed at the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Swimming & Diving Committee’s April meeting.

NCAA men’s champs this year?

We haven’t done our first power rankings of the season yet, but I’ll tell you there are a lot of SwimSwam writers high on Indiana this year, myself included. They’re bringing in a killer transfer class, they have valuable fifth-years returning, and one of the best diving programs in the NCAA. With transfers like Matt King, Owen McDonald, Zalan Sarkany, and Brian Benzing coming in, they’re not just getting deeper, they’re also addressing some of the holes in their roster. It feels like this is their moment.

Winning won’t be easy though. Cal will be as strong as they always are, and they just got a huge boost with Destin Lasco returning for his fifth year. Adam Chaney is back for Florida too, and the Gators threatened Cal for #2 last year before a costly relay DQ. The Gators have had at least one major issue at the last two NCAAs, but if everything goes their way, they could challenge for the title.

Then, of course, there’s the question of how fast Bob Bowman can put it all together in Austin. The Longhorns were missing some key pieces last season, but Luke Hobson was a highlight, and Will Modglin had a strong freshman season. Add in Hubert Kos, the #2 recruit in the class of 2024 Cooper Lucas, and the transfer talent Bowman has attracted like Aaron Shackell, Rex Maurer, Michael Cotter, and DII champion Ben Sampson, and even if this isn’t their year they sure are going to make themselves a problem for everyone else.

I haven’t had to lock anything in yet, but right now, Indiana, Cal, Florida, and Texas are my top four (order written in very light pencil.)

Is the fifth year just a COVID thing?

Yes, the fifth year of eligibility was given to all winter sport athletes who competed in the 2020-21 NCAA season. So, the undergraduate class of 2024 are the last swimmers eligible. Redshirting is still a possibility, but that’s a different thing.

The fifth-year was available for students from all divisions, so like last year, we’ve seen some swimmers make a divisional move. This includes Sampson to Texas from DII Colorado Mesa, and CMS DIII champion Frank Applebaum to Cal.

What schools will be affected by the House settlement? How many swim teams will be lost because of the House vs. NCAA ruling? When will be Big 10 and SEC finalize proposed roster limits? What does the House settlement mean for recruiting? Is there a way to convince the NCAA to taper roster restrictions? 

Understandably, there were lots of questions about the House settlement and how it’s going to affect NCAA swimming. That’s something that we’re all figuring out together in real-time as the settlement has not yet been finalized (Judge Claudia Wilken is expected to review the proposed settlement in early September).

Broadly speaking, the House settlement will send billions in NIL backpay to college athletes and allow athletes to share revenue with their schools. The cost of all this is expected to be more than $30 million a year for some top programs.

As for what schools will be affected, on some level, all of them will. When the President of Ohio State, which has one of the richest athletic departments in the country, says that some varsity clubs “…may start to act a little bit more like a club sport,” it’s clear that the effects of the settlement will be felt everywhere, even if non-Power 5 schools feel the effects more heavily. Right now, it’s hard to say exactly how many swim teams will be lost because of the ruling, but it won’t be zero.

An approved settlement means the current scholarship limits would be eliminated in favor of roster limits. Schools will be allowed to offer as many scholarships per team as allowed by the roster limits, which stands at 30 right now for men’s and women’s swimming, based on the detailed settlement terms filed in July.

Per the detailed settlement terms, roster limits would go into effect for the 2025-26 season. There won’t be much, if any, wiggle room for that as schools will be legally bound by the terms of the settlement. Conferences will likely make their plans official soon after the settlement is finalized as programs will need that information for things like recruitment. Roster limits will affect recruitment class size, and if swimming programs are cut, there will be more competition for each roster spot.

Again, the settlement still needs to be finalized and the final terms are going to dictate what happens next. In addition, schools are also waiting to hear about how Title IX may play into parts of the settlement like revenue sharing or available scholarships.