Three Active Swimming Head Coaches Hold an NCAA Title – How Does This Compare to Other Sports?

With Greg Meehan taking the position of the USA Swimming National Team director, there are currently only three NCAA swimming head coaches who have won an NCAA title as a head coach.

This list consists of just one women’s coach, Todd Desorbo (Virginia), and two men’s coaches, Bob Bowman (Texas and ASU) and Dave Durden (Cal). Durden is the women’s head coach as well, but he has only won men’s titles.

There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that we are in a sort of generational shift in college coaches. Many long-time coaches have retired in the last few years, or stepped back into a different role. David Marsh won numerous men’s and women’s team titles in the last 30 years, but he is currently serving as the associate head coach for the men’s and women’s teams at Cal.

We have also seen the retirement of coaching legends like Eddie Reese and Jack Bauerle. Teri McKeever was another multiple-time NCAA champion coach who is no longer with the Cal women. As these coaching shifts happen, opportunities are opening up for younger coaches at the Division I level. Last year alone, there were 32 teams with new head coaches.

The other reason that there are such a small number of head coaches with titles is the concentration of talent. When the same team wins the NCAA title five years in a row, there is no room for new coaches to stand atop the podium.

This isn’t a new phenomenon in swimming. Over the last 14 championships, only four women’s teams have brought home the title. Virginia (5), Stanford (3), Cal (3), and Georgia (3). The men’s championships look similar with four teams winning the title over the last 15 meets, but that number is deceptive because 13 of the 15 went to either Texas (7) or Cal (6).

There have been 60 men’s Division I championships that have declared a team champion, and only 14 men’s teams have won a title. Three different teams have won double digit titles. Texas has won 16, Michigan has won 12, and Ohio State has won 11.

The women’s meet, which has only had 43 championships, has been shared between nine teams. Stanford has won 11.

All of these numbers lend to very few coaches walking away with titles. Is this coaching trend isolated to swimming or is it happening in other NCAA sports as well? How many championship winning coaches are still around today?

Football is the biggest college sport in the United States, but it is difficult to look at their national champion history because, before 1998, there wasn’t a National Championship game, and I am not a college football historian. The NCAA also doesn’t name a champion and multiple teams will claim the championship for the same year.

In the last 27 years, 14 teams* have won the title, with Alabama claiming the most trophies at six. Ohio State and LSU have won three. Clemson, Florida State, Florida, and Georgia are all tied at two.

*USC won the BCS game in 2004 and later had their win vacated. They were still the consensus champion for that season.

Only three coaches are still active in the NCAA: Dabo Swinney (who coached Clemson to two national titles in 2016 and 2018), Kirby Smart (who coached Georgia to back-to-back titles in 2021 and 2022), and Ryan Day (who won last year’s title for Ohio State). Every other coach who has won an NCAA title, even consensus titles pre-1998, has either retired, moved to professional football, died, or, in Jim Tressle’s case, become a politician.

College Basketball is an easier comparison because the NCAA names a champion every year. Their titles are slightly more spread out, particularly on the men’s side with 13 different teams walking home with the title in the 2000s.

They have a few more coaches still in the NCAA at seven, but they are helped by the fact that the four most recent NCAA title coaches (Todd Golden, Dan Hurley, Bill Self, and Scott Drew) remain with their teams. The other coaches that are still with Division I programs are John Calipari (Arkansas), Tom Izzo (Michigan State), and Rick Pitino (St. John’s University). Pitino’s most recent title (2013 Louisville) was vacated by the NCAA, but he won a different title in 1996 with Kentucky, thus he makes the list.

Women’s Basketball has had nine teams (and eight coaches) win NCAA titles in the last 25 years. They also have only four title winning coaches still in the NCAA: Geno Auriemma (UCONN), Dawn Staley (South Carolina), Kim Mulkey (Baylor & LSU), Brenda Frese (Maryland).

Track and Field, arguably swimming’s closest comparison, has the highest number of NCAA title winning coaches still active at 11 between the men’s and women’s teams. Many track and field teams do not have separate men’s and women’s coaches, so they are counted together.

As mentioned above, there are a number of reasons why there are so few coaches who have won an NCAA title. A big reason is that, for most of these sports, talent is concentrated in specific hubs, and the best athletes typically want the best coaching.

Will swimming see a fourth coach get added to the ranks this year? Or will Virginia go for six while Texas or Cal battle it out for the men’s title?