There has been some debate on how to improve the college dual meet system. We have already seen numerous dual meets have over 1,000 spectators this season including home meets at Virginia, Navy, South Carolina, and Howard.
The question remains as to how this trend can continue to grow and what can be improved upon to draw more fans. Other sports such as women’s basketball and volleyball have seen record-breaking numbers already this NCAA season, how can swimming bring more excitement to grow a larger crowd and fan base?
During the NCAA recruiting shutdown, Texas A&M men’s associate head coach Jason Calanog posted on X a few potential options to change the dual meet system. See the full tweet below.
Summary Pt. 1 (Regular Season Champions)
- Everyone should swim every team in their conference (have tri/quad meets)
- Have a regular-season champion
- Another idea is having a bracket style tournament
- Not every swimmer has to swim every meet
Summary Pt. 2 (Add Fun For Fans)
- Suit up more
- Shorten dual meets to less than 2 hours
- Live stream meets
- Always show the score in real-time
- Don’t exhibition races at the end
- No more than 6 people/race
Summary Pt. 3 (Shorten Dual Meets)
- Move the distance free event (1000 free) to a different spot in the meet
- OR take out the distance event at dual meets and make a cross-country style distance swimming meet
- Have fewer events/meet
My Thoughts on Ways to Improve the College Dual Meet System…
We cant recruit so I was bored… pic.twitter.com/4UbI5AN6O8
— Jason Calanog (@jasoncalanog) January 4, 2024
Former Michigan State head coach Matt Gianiodis gave a few of his ideas in the replies. Those included:
- Have 12 events as a “standard” at each meet
- Have “halftime” where local swimmers can exhibition races
- Add trophy’s to dual meets (like football does ex: Paul Bunyon Trophy for Michigan vs Michigan State)
- Live interviews on Instagram Live during the meet
- Potential change to scoring system, Win= 1 point Lose= 0 points
- Wild card (designate a lane for 2x points)
Allow anyone to request and receive BROADCAST Rights to swim dual meets. Think how the Manning brothers were broadcasting some NFL games.
A club or scholastic coach or three could go to the meet with the team and talk through the events among themselves so as to educate their swimmers and audience. In the venue, folks could listen with ear buds if desired. A chat stream / comment forum would be sweet too.
We all better hope swimming will be around in the next few years with all the NCAA cases currently ongoing to be able to implement any of these thoughts
The comment about showing the meet score seems obvious, but you would be amazed how many Div I schools don’t ever show or even announce team scores through the meet. Most dual meets are really no more than glorified time trials!
Hard to argue swimming is a team sport when the score is maybe announced once or twice at best during the meet. Imagine watching a basketball game like that.
He Forgot one – Remove all distance events
The local swimmers idea is on to something. Let the 2 best local high school or even age group relay teams get a lane 1 / 8 for each relay. Instantly that is an extra 100+ spectators. And thats how you grow the sport and grow the connection from the university to the local community. Before you grow the sport to non-swimmers you need to grow to the local swim community. How many USA swimming age groupers have ever been to a college dual meet as fans? Probably <1%
Honor a local team or two at each meet and have a few university mm give a 15 minute skill demo clinic afterward.
I hate hate hate the “no more than 6 people per race” idea. Don’t we want to grow the sport? And by that, I mean, for the athletes first, spectators after that? Just for example, Jason’s A&M womens’ roster has 39 swimmers. They swim exactly one regular season invitational. Conference cap is, what 18-20 depending on conference. How many of that 39 woman roster, then, only gets to swim one meet all season? Is an athletic department going to want to fund a roster where more than half the team only competes once a year? Do the displaced swimmers end up at lower-level teams, displacing more swimmers down the line? The highest possible level of achievement for like 98% of… Read more »
(Jason doesn’t coach the women’s varsity).
I see where you’re coming from, but we’ve spent 100 years building this sport around “for the athletes,” and the outcome is a shrinking membership base. So, isn’t it time to try something new?
How is making the highest levels of the sport less accessible to athletes going to grow the sport?
Add all 50s races no non swimmer is trying to watch a race more than a minute.
Packaged properly distance swims are the best. One of the most watched races historically is the Marathon run. Need an enthusiastic announcer and maybe an informative 2nd announcer. Some music. Just that should go a long way.
50s are 20 seconds of racing and 5 minutes of waiting.
I agree with the 2 hours. Back in ancient times (the 80’s) dual meets were like an hour. I know because swimming the 1000, 500 and a relay was always a workout.
Host 4 team weekend tournaments.
Friday night Team A swims a dual meet against Team B followed by Team C having a dual meet against Team D.
Saturday Afternoon the prior night’s losers swim a dual meet then the winners swim a “championship” meet.
Teams not racing have their athletes in the crowd cheering, trash talking, and socializing. The idea is that having a bunch of young people with high swimming IQs in the crowd helps to create a fun, high energy environment. Also, four teams would mean double the parents in the stands.