“Bored Out of My Mind” – Collegiate Swim Coaches Unify Around Fixing NCAA Championship Format

As one wave of teams head home from the women’s NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships and another makes their way to Atlanta for the men’s meet that begins Wednesday, college swim coaches are getting the opportunity to debrief on the new changes to the format.

While opinions from the public flew all meet long, including some individuals posting the email and phone number of CSCAA Executive Director Sam Barany on social media, coaches stayed fairly focused on their teams. On Sunday, though, strong opinions came out that mostly mirrored those that were seen from the fanbase throughout the week.

Multiple coaches described to SwimSwam a “unified” opinion from those on deck. “It’s rare that you get all of the power brokers on the same page. They’re all together right now,” one coach said.

The coaches saw the same thing we did: finals that lasted too long and felt awkward. Another coach described long sessions with “15 minutes of swimming a night and then 80 minutes of diving.”

That coach said people often left during diving and it sucked momentum out of the building – noting that there was no ‘all relays swim at the end of the session’ to pull them back.

Not only was the lack of energy from the crowd felt, but the lack of energy on deck was noticeable too. Multiple coaches observed that without B Finals or relays, the team atmosphere was lost and the deck was mostly empty.

This observation is crucial because part of the sale behind the new ‘automatic qualifiers’ policy was that those swimmers’ teams and families teammates would watch the meet. While not necessarily unsound logic – most of those AQs are only racing in prelims (especially when there is no B Final), and finals is ‘the product’ that needs to be sold to television.

If we accept that swimmers who are racing create a web of dozens wanting to watch them, then eliminating ‘B’ Finals seems to ignore that same reasoning.

• See Also: Virginia Tech head coach Sergio Lopez says he’s not going to finals.

There seems to be less unity around diving, though one coach proposed moving it to before the meet, like the ACC Championships did this year.

Coaches seem to be focused on two ideas with clarity: returning B Finals and bringing relays back at night. They also said the award ceremonies way after the session finished were a bit awkward and they felt those ceremonies could fit naturally in between races.

One coach noted that 2027 might be their last shot to ‘get it right.’ While some have noted throughout this week that there was a lack of engagement from many coaches throughout the process, there seems to be a high degree of engagement now.

While most coaches that SwimSwam spoke to requested anonymity, University of Texas head coach Bob Bowman ‘liked’ a number of posts protesting the changes on social media throughout the week.

One senior administrator from a major program, who was in attendance, also reached out to SwimSwam staff on social media observing the same deficiencies in the new structure. “Bored out of my mind,” the administrator said, pledging to get involved on their end.