Best Case, and Worst Case, Scenarios for Pending Reckoning of College Athletics

The NCAA has called for a constitutional convention of its membership in January, with its president Mark Emmert saying that it’s the “right time” to consider a “decentralized and deregulated version of college sports.”

Amid reforms to the Name, Image, and Likeness rules, which we’ve already seen used by a few college swimmers to partner with swimwear brand Speedo, as well as constant shifts in conference alignment, the NCAA is at a precipice where some dramatic change is going to happen that will reshape collegiate athletics forever.

Whatever comes out of this, it’s unlikely to be small. It’s unlikely that in 10 years, collegiate athletics will look anything like what we’re used to today.

At a minimum, 4 big conferences wielding outsized power will replace the current 5 and will dominate decision-making. For the rest, it might be time to let those schools go and re-evaluate the purposes of their own athletics programs.

But this shift has been coming. The prior model wasn’t sustainable – the ability of schools to fund an increasing arms race in football and beyond, while simultaneously meeting athletes’ call to be compensated for their work, was eventually going to collapse the system.

Remember that the NCAA, while discussed as a big ogre-ous body, is actually just a non-profit organization made up of its member institutions. So it will be those member institutions that drive this dramatic shift in collegiate sports and what the future will look like. Those different schools all have different agendas, different visions, and different goals for their athletics programs. The NCAA’s management itself actually seems to be advocating for taking power and authority away from the NCAA.

There has been a lot written about what the outcomes of this constitutional convention could be, but not much written about swimming. Funny that, because sports like swimming are, essentially, just along for the ride. But we’re here for you to lay out what this could look like for swimming.

The timing of the convention in one regard is good for the so-called “Olympic sports.” It will come right after the Summer Olympic Games and during the period of the Winter Olympic Games, which might drive some passion to maintain the NCAA as the lifeblood of the United States Olympic program, which is not directly funded by public dollars, unlike most countries of the world.

The Good

In my mind, the best possible outcome, for swimming, in this world, is that the top tier of college football splits off to become its own entity with its own conferences and the freedom to deregulate and grow even further.

I’ve been cynical for a long time about college athletics and “Jumping the Shark.” Specifically about how far collegiate athletics can push its professionalization before it loses the cachet of students and alumni feeling a kindred spirit to fellow students of their university, who happen to be really good athletes. If the NCAA opens the curtain and becomes more blunt about college football and basketball just being a minor league riding the back of universities, that could take a hit at funding, donations, ticket sales, television ratings – all of the things that have driven the unbridled growth in college athletics over the last 30 years. When we have hard conversations, we already know that to be true, but the less we ‘pretend’ that the football and basketball players are ‘just like the rest of us,’ the less we’ll all stop believing it to be true.

That being said, if it works, and this split of football allows them to operate more efficiently and generate more revenue, that is a positive for Olympic sports in a lot of ways.

For one, those profits could help fund budgets and facilities upgrades of swimming programs. Even if football moves out of the auspices of the NCAA, it is still bound by Title IX rules that will require schools to fund, at least, women’s athletics.

But the bigger piece of this puzzle is that it will disillusion the “Group of 5” schools that they have to try to compete with the Alabamas and Texases of football and spend themselves into $40 million-per-year deficits. We’ve seen some of these schools cut swimming programs to bail themselves out of bad football decisions (UConn).

This would allow Group of 5 programs to perhaps regulate their own internal spending to try to create a more sustainable model, with all of the schools being able to continue to compete as a unified division in other sports, like basketball and swimming.

The NCAA could really thrive without football. Football, contrary to popular belief, makes up a very small percentage of the NCAA revenue – the FBS National Championship Playoff for example, is not an NCAA championship. The NCAA makes most of its money on basketball, and while basketball could in theory split off too, at present there is less incentive to do so. College basketball as a system is functioning much better and much more healthfully and sustainably than college football.

The Bad

There is a nightmare scenario for Olympic sports at the collegiate level. It sounds like a slippery slope, but it’s one that’s being discussed by the top collegiate swim coaches in the country.

This scenario involves college football becoming a standalone entity, segregated from the rest of collegiate athletics, and that Olympic sports programs are left to states and private institutions to fund – basically as a pure Olympic play. This could lead to a dramatic contraction of varsity Olympic sports at the college level, with a dozen or two “Olympic centers” opening up at different colleges to try to main American prominence at the Olympics

The rest of the athletes would have then move into a club system, if they chose to do so, but that would be a system that would look very different than what we have today.

In reality, while there are very-occasional ‘out of nowhere’ swimmers (like Andrew Wilson) who wind up making Olympic Teams, in general, the vast majority of athletes who wind up representing the United States at that level come from the top 100-or-so high school swimmers in each class.

So if the argument for saving Olympic sports at the college level is to save the Olympic team, the calculation for administrators will be if it’s worth sacrificing those 1 or 2 gems-in-the-rough in favor of concentrating those resources at a smaller circuit of training centers where there would be more of a concentrated push to give them the best training possible, if the outcome could be the same. The idea of a smaller set of training centers is certainly a more efficient way of training the United States’ Olympic Team than expecting 100+ Division I institutions to maintain swimming programs with the hopes of picking out that generational talent.

But we know what this would do to the swimming industry as a whole. Club registrations would dry up, coaching opportunities would pass by, and fewer schools (at the university and club levels) would use public funding to build and maintain pools.

Swimming as a sport in the United States needs the NCAA to continue to thrive at the level where it is currently thriving. There is no way around that, even for the most optimistic reamers among us.

So cheers to football, may they continue to find ways to profit and continue to be benevolent with those profits.

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Working swim mom
2 years ago

Another question that links into this whole challenge: What happens when we go down from 5 large conferences to 4? Is there a real risk that the Big12 goes away?

SwimFan49
Reply to  Working swim mom
2 years ago

If college sports stays generally the way it is now, isn’t it a foregone conclusion that the Big 12 is going away? Seems to me it’s far more than merely a risk, but a high likelihood that the Power 5 will soon be the Power 4.

Sam B
2 years ago

slightly related, what did Ryan Murphy mean by this:
” I don’t have the bandwidth to train for the Olympics at a very high level “
?

Coach
Reply to  Sam B
2 years ago

You probably need to read the whole quote there.
Pretty sure it said

I don’t have the bandwidth to train for the Olympics at a very high level…..and lobby against doping or something related

BWWWWWWWW
2 years ago

I just view this as a huge opportunity for struggling liberal arts colleges. Given the relatively modest salaries of incredibly talented swim coaches and the fact that any decent college facility already includes a pool, it doesn’t cost much to run a top-notch swim program. Students benefit greatly from the athletic programs and the universities benefit by building long term bonds with swim team alumni and from being able to recruit/attract based on the strength of their programs. Also, if each swimmer is paying $30k/year in tuition the math gets pretty easy.

I’m sure a lot of swimmers and parents are looking for the cachet of achieving D1 status. A much smaller number may be looking for the scholarships. But… Read more »

Binky
Reply to  BWWWWWWWW
2 years ago

Not unable. Unwilling. Big difference.

Sam B
2 years ago

1, European swimming has been pretty successful, and it’s club-based.
2 Swimming (for the swimmer) is an expensive sport, kids benefit if their parents are well off.
The system can produce those Olympic golds any which way, from clubs or Universities, the parents will be on the hook for 90% of the bill anyway.

Stan Crump
2 years ago

I have a hard time believing that scenario 2 could happen. The NCAA (our college presidents) will not just let the revenue from college football disappear. Seems to me that they will probably also find a way to reap moneys from their athletes’ personal contracts. The elephant in the room in the US Congress. The politicization of college sports is just around the corner, along with unionization. What will congress do? Will it matter which party controls it?

Grab your popcorn.

James
2 years ago

I’m not entirely certain I oppose the elimination of most college sports (and a move to a club based system). At the end of the day, most college swim teams are made up of kids who swim pretty fast and enjoy the sport enough to keep at it. Swimming “for your school” just gives it more of a sense of team and purpose. Plenty of other non-academic pursuits at University exist in a club environment (bands, choirs, other sports, even Rodeo/equestrian events).

samulih
2 years ago

To me it is always the question, should the current system continue? Football pays those olympic medals. Many football players are just cogs in the system to make money and are spewed out the minute they do not produce, swimmers reap benefits from that. Dark thoughts I know….

But then again I understand otherside, complicated issue but to me football is bye bye from NCAA in 10 years and it is HPCs just like in other countries

Swimmer
2 years ago

This is very interesting, and I think you should include the implications of Title IX on the decisions made at this conference. By law, all collegiate programs (even if football splits!!) are required to provide (or at least prove that they are trying) to create equal opportunity for female athletes. Essentially, if women have interest in playing a sport, Title IX compels universities to fund and support that sport. Women’s athletics (read women’s Olympic sports), while still critically underfunded will have protection. I’m interested to see how women’s teams can advocate to protect their counterparts in Olympic sports. We might see situations similar to William and Mary, where the women’s team did an admirable job of defending and protecting their… Read more »

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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