The annual Collegiate Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) meetings took place over the weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina. Retired University of Michigan softball coach Carol Hutchins, the winningest head coach in NCAA Division I Softball history, was the keynote speaker.
The conference, an opportunity for coaches to network, included a breakout session of NCAA Division I coaches in attendance that has so far created the most buzz out of the weekend.
One of the big takeaways from these conversations is that there is widespread agreement that the NCAA Championships won’t be going back to Pacific Time anytime soon after several teams struggled with the long travel and time zone changes. Federal Way, which faced several technical challenges besides being at the Northwestern tip of the west coast, was especially derided.
Besides technical challenges, Pacific time made for very late sessions in the Central and Eastern United States, where most of the top teams are.
Part of the challenge comes from Federal Way being the only championship-caliber indoor venue in the Mountain or Pacific time zones right now. While far more of the top collegiate programs are in the Central or Eastern time zones, it seems equitable for them to not have to travel every year, but the facility availability in the western U.S. don’t support that right now.
This conversation has reportedly been had at the highest levels of the NCAA, including the board.
Most of the conversation has been around how to improve the viewability and fan interest in swimming, which extends the conversations that are being had every day on social media.
The breakout lasted about 90 minutes.
Key takeaways:
- Top mid-major programs continue to advocate for championship access via automatic qualifiers. One of the more interesting points they made is that mid-major swimmers can be active fans and drive ratings – one coach said his team watched NCAA Championships when they had a swimmer there, but not when they didn’t.
- One mid-major assistant coach was vocal about working to get more eyes on dual meets (which made huge strides forward last season thanks to Kyle Sockwell’s efforts, among others’), especially for those teams that don’t have real NCAA Championship hosts for most of their teams.
- To their credit, most of the more-vocal mid-major coaches are the coaches who are investing a ton of personal energy into generating more exposure for their teams and their programs, so they are ‘walking the walk.’ Some of that energy from the mid-major level could be a good addition to the ivory towers of the biggest programs, if it can be worked out the right way.
- One Power 5 associate head coach talked about athlete stories being important because that can gain a lot of exposure and those individual stories can generate a lot of interest. That associate head coach, ironically, comes from a program that has historically not been very media friendly – though that may not be a culture that the associate head coach has set.
- There seemed to be widespread agreement that the sport “fumbled” on telling the story of Gretchen Walsh and using it as a springboard for growth (ala Caitlin Clark).
- The CSCAA is going to talk to ESPN about whether they find more value in the individual successes or the team successes, so that the sport has some guidance on where to focus energy.
- Diving continues to ask for more exposure, plus platform and team diving events. The message back is that ESPN is currently less interested in diving than it is swimming.
- One head coach of a top 10 program brought up the idea of going to 12 athlete teams for championship meets. With roster limits and increasingly-imbalanced resources among programs, this could create more parity among the less-endowed teams that aren’t able to compete with the 22-deep squads at places like Texas.
>The message back is that ESPN is currently less interested in diving than it is swimming.
Is that even possible?
I know lots of divers that don’t tune in for diving at ncaas, I know lots of swimmers that do tune in for swimming. So yea, very possible. The average person only cares about these sports at the Olympics and there are way more swimmers/swim fans than divers
I definitely agree with your latter points.
I found the whole article grimly humorous. Lots of ideas on how to improve the viewability of swimming, with the biggest idea seemingly being “don’t hold events on the West Coast.”
Personally, I believe the viewers who ignore swimming at 9:00 p.m. Eastern are the same ones who will ignore swimming at 6:00 p.m. Eastern.
If Eastern/Central teams feel like they shouldn’t have to travel to the West Coast, so be it but don’t pretend it has to do with viewership. In the end, it’s swimmers swimming back and forth between two ends of the pool. Either you want to watch that or you don’t.
I might be misinterpreting the rationale for this discussion, and I know Federal Way didn’t execute the meet in the best way, but teams like Stanford, Cal, USC, Arizona, ASU, etc. have had to travel to the east coast for NCAAs for years, but they return the favor to the east coast teams one time and now it’s an issue? Sometimes you just have to adapt to the circumstances.
If you want to move the sport forward in terms of visibility and tv viewership and such, starting finals at 9pm east coast time isn’t going to work.
That and Federal Way’s air exchanger issues never seem to end.
Having it at Texas or Texas A&M seems like the best option to accommodate the most in terms of Travel.
I fully expect to get downvoted out the wazoo…but, hear me out. NCAA should move away from the 1000/1650.
A couple reasons:
As much as people might disagree, sprinting is more exciting. Relays are… Read more »
I’ll counter your #2: At the D1 level, the 1000 isn’t really an event in the eyes of that world since it’s not competed at the conference and national championship level. Thus, you have swimmers who might be true distance swimmers only really having the 1650 to fall back on. Given at the championship level in order to be relevant they need a 500Fr and then either a 200Fr or 400IM, they aren’t truly going for that distance training like they should anyways.
I think it’s a big reason why American distance swimming isn’t nearly on par with the rest of the world relative to other events.
Except we have the world record holder in the 1500 for both the men and the women
Try again.
And zero depth on either side.
ESPN needs to consider how to make events more TV friendly and talk to teams about how to make that work for everyone. When Longhorn Network, part of the ESPN family, aired meets, it was a nightmare for teams. It was usually the director/producer who was hard to deal with. They didn’t like anyone suggesting how to make things better for the viewer or the swimmer. Still remember Sam Kendricks frustration one time as he legitimately tried to offer a simple suggestion and wasn’t taken seriously at all. For everyone who claimed Ed needed to get with the times and stream Texas meets, Ed used to mic up for meets during Longhorn Network broadcasts. He didn’t mind that stuff. He… Read more »
Can someone ELI5 the automatic qualifier thing? I read that and immediately thought that already existed with A cuts, but that’s clearly not what this means. How would that work?
Maybe something like winning your conference Champs is an automatic qualifier, regardless of time? I don’t know either.
I think the Mid Major Auto Qualifier could definitely bring a lot more eyes to the meet, not just teammates, but parents, administrators, professors, and presidents would tune in to watch this if their school had someone competing. Not sure that is enough to completely move the needle where we want, but it could help. If you apply the following criteria, must make the NCAA B cut and win your conference meet in that event, it does not end up being a huge number of athletes. In a quick look at the women’s 50 free, there are 16 women’s mid major conferences. Three conferences had their event winner already make the meet and 4 conferences their champion did not make… Read more »
I think the challenge is how do you get a few mid-majors in without flooding with mid-majors.
Adding 10 mid-majors who are going to finish 47-56th in the 500 free really won’t do much to change the marketability. I’d rather see it happen in a way that encourages more development at the mid-major level.
I proposed this previously – but maybe this concept could be worked similarly to the one I discussed of a separate mid-major qualifying event. Like put them all together and have them battle for spots at NCAAs. That would be a marketable event, and would stimulate improvement in the mid-major programs, IMO.
The mid-major thing works in basketball because in basketball “any given Sunday.” In swimming,… Read more »
What if there was a separate ranking based on agitate times for the top say top 3 swimmers per event. Then the top 20 in those rankings were able to have an auto qualifier? The top rank team had first choice of swimmer and the event and go down the list until that 20th team had to take what event was left.
Or Even do it bracket style. 16 mid majors per event and the winner ends up getting the auto qualifier and there is only 1 per event at NCAA’s.
What’s an agitate time? Times that are madder than others?
Sorry spell check got me. Meant aggregate.
What if there is ALSO a C cut for mid major conference champions, that is a little faster than the standard B cut and that automatically gets them in if they win the event and execute the time? Take the guy from Iona who won the 200 back at the MAAC Champs as an example. Would be fun seeing someone like him get in.
Going back through and applying the criteria that you have to do the B Cut in the championship final and win your conference, you would only have four more athletes qualify for the meet. Russo (Tulane), Kelly (Ball State), Larsen (Northern Iowa) and Cornwell (JMU). For the 200 free, it looks like there would be no additional athletes in to the meet. I think looking at this idea to see where we would land would be worth it. I think it just adds a lot of excitement at the conference level and takes the waiting game out for some people. A lot of the excitement for teams making it to NCAA’s is the anticipation, not always the result. If your… Read more »
I like your proposal and think it and Branden’s should be explored more. My question is, would there be enough boost in viewership appeal by sending swimmers who, for the most part, will only swim in prelims? I don’t recall if prelims for D1 were aired through ESPN or if it was just finals. Or will we create something like a C final to increase the chances of them swimming at night on TV (we could limit the C-final to mid-major or non Power-4 schools, similar to how USA limits some finals by age)? Then the question becomes whether or not ESPN would air the B and C finals.
I think ESPN gets like 600k+ viewers no matter what is on . To move the needle I think you need more than parents / swimmers . You need people from the general population interested, which means a media arm generating stories , interest, build-up.
If mid-majors want to swim in a combined, championship meet, then focus on making the CSCAA (or NIC.. whatever it’s called) the best possible D1-AA type meet you can. While winning a MM conference title and getting, say, a B cut is nice, sending them to NC2A is just forcing an extended taper or re-taper for a kid that’s not going to be anywhere near a final anyway.
It’s just reality, swimming is objective. And fast.
Not media friendly according to whom?
This is the kind of defense that an un-media friendly program would make. Gotta release a little control sometimes, coach.
Any more insight on how it would work to have automatic NCAA qualifiers for mid-major programs? Not sure if that would happen but I agree it would be good to have a legit “B” championship for D1. There is such a huge chasm between what D1 and DIII NCAAs it would be nice to give more mid-major swimmers a chance at a meaningful national championship meet. I know there is the NIC but as another person commented that doesn’t seem to have gotten traction.