Courtesy: Elizabeth Spencer Rosenthal
While the watchful eyes of the swimming universe were keenly tuned in to the U.S. Open Championships, marveling at the record-setting performances of some of the world’s most elite swimmers, the vast college football fandom was watching, waiting and vigorously debating this year’s NCAA College Football Playoff selections.
While you were understandably still reveling in the remarkable dominance of Summer McIntosh and Leon Marchand at the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center, the Indiana Hoosiers defeated Ohio State Buckeyes on the gridiron for the Big 10 Championship, becoming the sole remaining undefeated team in college football, clinching the number one ranking in the country and securing the top seed in the College Football Playoff. Ironically, this epic football showdown took place at none other than Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, home of the 2024 U.S.Olympic Swimming Trials.
Back in Austin, while Luka Mijatovic was asserting himself as a bonafide upcoming swimming supertalent, and iconic champions like Simone Manuel and Caeleb Dressel were proving they’ve still got it, the debate about college football raged on.
While Gretchen Walsh, Kate Douglass and Regan Smith were lighting up the leaderboards, football fans from coast to coast debated and contemplated: Would it be Miami? Would it be Notre Dame? The football faithful remained glued to their screens, perched on the edge of their seats, eagerly awaiting Sunday’s selection show, where all would be revealed. While the Hurricanes and the Fighting Irish each finished their regular season with an identical 10-2 record, neither played in a conference championship game. Who would be in and who would be out? Their fate would ultimately be determined by the almighty College Football Playoff Selection Committee.
As an eager follower of both sports, I couldn’t help but wonder: What would it look like if NCAA swimming qualification were determined in the same manner as college football?
Imagine the chaos that would ensue when human judgment entered the equation, replacing straight-up times in the selection process.
Envision a committee of 13 coaches, athletic directors and journalists, locked away in a conference room, considering factors such as dual meet records, strength of schedule, results against common opponents, margin of victory and head-to-head matchups.
Picture weekly top 25 rankings, where one team could jump ahead of another following a heated rivalry meet. Or another team could spiral down the rankings in the unfortunate aftermath of an untimely relay disqualification. Imagine the five highest-ranking conference champions advancing to The Tournament, regardless of their overall national ranking.
Fantasize about your favorite swim coach trying to influence the process, flying airplanes with banners over the venue where The Committee was meeting, or appearing on TV broadcasts to state their best case.
And then, finally, you would find yourself tuning in to NBC or ESPN to watch the NCAA Swimming Selection Show — immediately followed by heated debates and hearty outrage by loyal alumni, endless talk of snubs, and all kinds of conspiracy theories.
While this could be fun and chaotic to contemplate, and perhaps the attention-grabbing shake-up that swimming has been longing for, I think ultimately we would quickly yearn for the return of the beautiful objectivity of swimming. Of time-based qualifications. After all, one of the glorious things about swimming, is that your times are your times, and the clock doesn’t lie. No need to impress The Committee. Or run up the score. Or pad your stats. Or plead your case.
In the end, while the NCAA Swimming Tournament may not be perfect, I think, for now, I would argue, let’s keep it.
ABOUT ELIZABETH SPENCER ROSENTHAL
Elizabeth Spencer Rosenthal is a wife and mother of 3 from Miami. She is a passionate swim mom, volunteer and meet official, with a professional background in marketing and public relations. She holds a degree in Public Communication from American University, and loves finding a story to tell.
If….then swimmers would get paid. Oh well
Here is an idea: relays count for triple points (instead of doubles), but the primary way to qualify to swim at those are through some sort of combo of Conference Championships and/or dual meet records. Don’t have the deets on that, so open to ideas….
I like this article, it was a fun read!
Yes, the objective certainty provided by today’s state of the art timing systems is much better. Only the old swimmers like myself remember the days of hand held stop watches and finish judges. 3 stop watches per lane, 2 finish judges. The middle stop watch time was your official time, but your place was based upon the average place as determined by time and order as judged by the two finish judges. If your time had you first, but the finish judges each placed you 2nd, you could place behind another swimmer who had a slower time but was judged to have finished first by the two judges. As you can imagine, in highly competitive sprint races (at least most… Read more »
I was involved with the BCS back when they were just picking two teams to play in the championship game. Obviously no one was happy with that. But one thing became clear, no matter what system you use, any subjectivity would lead to a less than optimal outcome with teams unhappy with the result.
With swimming, the biggest issues seem to have been around whether diving should count in determining the champions. But that argument is largely within the enthusiast community. While I am not thrilled with some of the changes, I give the NCAA credit for trying to widen the appeal of swimming. Some things will work, some won’t. Experimenting with new rules and formats is the only… Read more »
There are opposing forces. People don’t like subjectivity because “their team always gets screwed for XYZ reasons,” but people also don’t like objectivity, because in objective systems, everyone’s always working as hard as they can to game the algorithm, which creates more unintended consequences.
Ultimately, I think the best solution is having a field large enough that everyone who genuinely earned a right to compete for the title gets in (which didn’t exist under the BCS system), and then you just live with the bickering over the 11th vs 12th place teams. Basketball has mastered this marvelously.
And, as always: people fighting over sports is good for sports. Don’t let anybody convince you otherwise. Swimming is one of the few… Read more »
The best system by light years was the traditional bowl system with conference tie ins. The entire season was a playoff. New Year’s Day was the greatest sports day of the year with non-stop tiered tension and dominos falling everywhere. In particular the NBC handoff from Rose Bowl to Orange Bowl was always incredibly memorable, as Don Criqui described what had already happened and therefore what was at stake.
I’m thrilled I lived through decades of that, and feel sorry for younger generations who never experienced it. There were occasional split titles. Big deal.
Nowadays it is pathetic conformity. The 4 teams eliminated in the first round are subjected to public ridicule and assertions they didn’t belong in the… Read more »
I agree. Watching bowl games on New Year’s Day was so much fun – switching back and forth between games and trying to anticipate who was going to be anointed national champion. If memory serves me correct there were two polls, the AP poll and the UPI poll, and they didn’t always agree. And yes, bowl games have now become meaningless.
Fun read; fun comparison! Keep writing your articles as they are informative and interesting to read!
So much better
Swimming at the NCAA level has traditionally selected its champions through points earned at what is essentially an individual championship meet. That doesn’t need to be the only way. College Tennis is an example of how it could be done differently. Teams could be judged instead by dual meets (I think we would need a consistent way of doing so rather than trying to be creative if this were the direction taken). Have a required dual meet schedule and then the committee vote. Then select some number of teams to go at it dual meet style until we have a champion. Separately, the existing tournament would become an individual tournament. If we wanted to still pick a champion from that… Read more »
I think that making dual meets count in some way towards chamionship meet selection would add excitement to the sport.