New NCAA Championship Mid-Major Automatic Qualifying Update: MEN’S EDITION

Okay, after feedback for the women’s article, I’m going to try to explain the new qualifying system in easy terms, without too many caveats.

• Step 1. Divers go in (35 men, 41 women)
• Step 2. All individual swimmers who won a conference championship AND hit the Qualifying Standard in that event final go in.
• Step 3. Swimmers are added one at a time in each event, keeping the number of qualifiers in each event the same* until the entry cap is reached (235 swimmers for men, 281 swimmers for women).
• Step 4. (This part hasn’t really changed) When the entry cap is reached, you wind up with a ‘final row’ in each event. For women that’s usually around #40, for men that’s usually around #30 in each event. Swimmers already qualified are removed. The rest are ranked based on their time as a percentage of the Qualifying Standard, and the fastest times relative to the QS get added 1 at a time until the cap is met.

There are two caveats I’ll mention:

1. Just like before, a swimmer who hits a QS and clears the QS in multiple events will go at the top of multiple lists. This actually sticks with the philosophy of the previous methodology. If Luca Urlando was the fastest swimmer in the country in the 100 fly and 100 back last season, he would’ve been on both the 100 fly and 100 back lists. This is actually ‘good’ in terms of selections going deeper into rankings – the more ‘doubles’ there are, the deeper into the rankings it goes.
2. While most of the focus has been on mid-major conference champions and who they might bump….SEC Champions under the QS (they all will be) also get ‘automatic bids.’ We don’t know how the pre-selection lists and all that are going to be formatted, but don’t be jarred when you see SEC and Big Ten and ACC and Big 12 swimmers with ‘automatic bids’.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about how things are shaping up.

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In 2025, the CSCAA pioneered, and the NCAA eventually approved, a new NCAA Championship qualifying system whereby swimmers who hit a certain time standard en route to an NCAA Division I conference title will automatically qualify for the NCAA Championships.

The new proposal drew cheers from mid-major coaches, who now feel they have a clearer avenue to NCAA qualifying, and jeers from many in the traditional power conferences, knowing that some of their lower-end qualifiers are likely to be bumped by slower swimmers from mid-major conferences.

Those standards were set at the 72nd-best time from last year’s NCAA Championship meet.

This article will focus on the men’s meet. See the women’s meet here.

Individual Events – Men’s – 2026 NCAA Qualifying Standards

Because the men’s cut line is lower (usually around 30-or-so per event), more men will ‘skip the line’ than women. The standard is set on the same basis (72 spots), but there will be more men in that 30th-40th ranking who get to go as conference champions. Should the men’s QS have a faster relative standard? Maybe, but that’s a different debate for a different day.

In earnest, attempting to somehow break down what all this new qualifying might mean for the upcoming NCAA Championship meets, we’ve gone through and run some data on the current mid-major swimmers who are within reach of an NCAA qualification.

While there are no neat, tidy conclusions to reach because of the complexity of the situations, here’s the approach we took:

• Swimmers who are already ranked in the top 15 of their events are marked in the table with an “X”. Remember that swimmers who finish the season in this range are likely to qualify for the NCAA Championships regardless of whether they win their conference title or not. Of course, these rankings are bound to change through the conference season, but it’s a rough cut.
• Swimmers who are not in the top 15 but are under the conference-champion-standard, are marked with a “Y”. This is your reminder that they have to do the swim in the final at their conference championship meet, AND WIN, for it to count.
• Swimmers who are within 1% of the time standard are marked with a “Z”. These swimmers would need to drop time and win their conference title

Rough Cut Numbers

• There are 9 Xs, who would plausibly qualify under the old system.
• There are 58 Ys, who
• if they repeat their season best en route to a conference title would qualify
• There are 102 Zs, who would need a time drop and a conference win to qualify

There are a roughly similar amount of men’s swims in these three categories as women (I didn’t do the math on unique swims). This makes sense since the QS is the same rank for both. 167 men versus 183 women.

But don’t lose your mind that there are going to be 100 mid-major swimmers at the NCAA Championships. There are lots of caveats to those numbers:

• There are some duplicate swimmers (and NCAA is capped based on swimmers not swims), like Yale’s Nicholas Finch, who ranks 6th in the NCAA in the 100 fly right now.
• Not all of the Ys will hit the standard at their conference meets
• There are a ton of counts in here who come from the same conference.

Specifically, the Ivy League (64) and Patriot League (28) combine to account for about half of those swims. With only 18 individual swimming events on the NCAA calendar, at least 60 of the Xs and Ys and Zs above won’t qualify – at least as automatic qualifiers.

Swims Above, Represented By Conference:

The men’s conferences are way messier than the women’s. Let me know which ones I screwed up on.

If you’ve been watching sports long enough, your instinct might be that there’s some kind of ‘lose to win’ scenario. In many cases there isn’t – for example, Mitchell Schott from Princeton is already faster than the NCAA qualifying time in the 200 free, but…that doesn’t mean much for NCAA qualifying unless he repeats a sub-QS swim to win the conference final. The only scenario where this comes into play would be if the best swimmer in the conference is clearly qualified based on her national ranking and sandbags the final so that the next-best swimmer in the conference can qualify by going under the qualifying standard in the final and winning. Or one swimmer wins one event, then they let the other win the 100 free.

Keep an eye out for these shenanigans, especially if they’re teammates. While we are not explicitly casting specific aspersions on any of these swimmers or teams, there are a few chances where this could be relevant: the Patriot League 200 breaststroke, for example. Navy has the top two seeded swimmers Michael Phillips (#14 nationally) and Juan Mora (#17 nationally) in that event. Phillips’ time of 1:52.43 is unlikely to get bumped out (though it’s possible), and while Mora may also qualify on his own – he could lock it up with a conference title and anything under a 1:54.95. In that race, there are plenty of Army swimmers (1:52.85, 1:53.08) within range, plus maybe the most heated conference title rivalry in the country, to keep things honest. There are a few other ‘reach’ examples, like the Ivy League 200 fly where a teammate could sandbag a race to improve a teammate’s chances of qualifying, but none really make sense.

Remember that only 20 extra hypothetical mid-major men would have qualified under the new system last year. 18 mid-major men actually qualified for NCAAs last year just by ‘being fast enough.’

Battles to Watch

I went through and picked out a few big-time conference battles for automatic qualifying spots that I think will be interesting.

• Ivy League Men’s 500 Free: While Harvard’s William Mulgrew is ranked #17 in this event this season, that seed is unlikely to hold up through conference season, as distance races tend to have more upturn of their rankings late in the year. That means the Ivy League men will need some season best times to get an NCAA qualifier in the 500 free. Mulgrew has been 4:14.25, Yale’s Noah Millard has been 4:14.51, Princeton’s Mitchell Schott has been 4:15.55, Princeton’s Arthur Balva has been 4:16.99, Brown’s Rory O’Connor has been 4:17.27, and Princeton’s Santiago Gutierrez has been 4:17.29, all under the Qualifying Standard. In fact, the top 7, and 8 of the top 10, mid-major 500 freestylers this season are all from the Ivy League. In the ever-strategic 500 free, it will be interesting to see who goes after a time (Millard was 4:10 last year, which qualifies regardless of place) and who goes after the win. While many of these guys have already been best times this season, the top five finishers at last year’s Ivy League Championship went lifetime bests in the final. This should be a good one.
• Ivy League Men’s 200 Back: While none of them are likely to qualify on ranking, barring a big time drop (it happens!), the Ivy League 200 back final will be a barn-burner, based on seeds. This year’s conference leaders are Princeton’s Parker Lenoce (1:41.35), Harvard’s Adriano Arioti (1:41.46), Cornell’s Pietro Ubertalli (1:41.68), and Columbia’s Isaac Beers (1:41.98). Ubertalli won last year in 1:38.99, and is the only Ivy Leaguer who swam the 200 back at NCAAs last year. He added a little bit of time to finish 11th. This year, he could have a hoard of swimmers chasing him.
• Patriot League Men’s 200 Breaststroke: In spite of the scenario laid out above, the Army vs. Navy rivalry and the race for the auto qualifier spot in this 200 breaststroke will be intense at this year’s Patriot League meet. Michael Phillips (1:52.43) and Juan Mora (1:52.55), represent Navy, while Kohen Rankin (1:52.85) and Kalvin Hahn (1:53.08) represent Army, and together they hold the top four seeds. All four swimmers have either already swum a time that would’ve been invited in the past or are very close to it. Last year’s invite was 1:52.89; subtracting 3 spots for bumps by auto qualifiers puts you at 1:52.60. This could be a scenario where we see someone really go for a time in prelims to lock up a national ranking, and then evaluate their plan for finals. (But really….we know these guys want to win).
• MPSF 200 Fly: Ian Belflower and Colby Raffel, both from UNLV, are the top seeds in their conference in the men’s 200 fly. Both are just shy of the QS – Belflower has been 1:43.94 and Raffel has been 1:44.23, with a QS of 1:43.79. Beflower swam a best time mid-season, had the better finish at last year’s WAC Championship meet, and swam a best time in finals at the WAC meet (Raffel swam one in prelims). All of the momentum is in his favor, but finding a couple tenths and getting under the QS will make the swim all the sweeter for whoever wins.
• MPSF 400 IM: Jackson Kogler from Wyoming (3:45.39) has already been under the QS this year, while Camden Swigart of Air Force (3:47.62) is just off it. It will take a 3:46.19 in the championship final to qualify for NCAAs for either swimmer. Swigart was the WAC Champion last year in 3:46.01, which would be good enough this year, but the freshman Kogler has really taken to his new training, dropping over six seconds in the event this season alone.

The Data

Note: a ton of this was manual work. Please note any errors in the comments!

Link to open in Google Sheets, where it’s easier to read.