SwimSwam welcomes reader submissions about all topics aquatic, and if it’s well-written and well-thought, we might just post it under our “Shouts from the Stands” series. We don’t necessarily endorse the content of the Shouts from the Stands posts, and the opinions remain those of their authors. If you have thoughts to share, please send [email protected].
This “Shouts from the Stands” submission comes from Jack Bowman, a collegiate swimmer at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland.
As swimmers, one of the things that we’ve always known about our sport is that it is far from the most popular. Each year, while high schools and colleges around the country shower praise and attention on subpar football and basketball teams, state champion swimmers and teams fly under the radar, receiving minimal funding and attention. Beyond the scholastic levels, professional swimming is only in the spotlight once every four years at the Olympics while sports like baseball, basketball, football, and hockey are consistent attractions.
The lack of attention and care for swimming has been exposed to an even greater degree during the gradual COVID reopening in the United States. Take Maryland, the state that I live in, as an example. While AAU basketball teams are resuming full 5-on-5 games and tournaments, swim clubs, including the best in the country in Nation’s Capital Swim Club, are limited to holding practices with one swimmer per lane. Needless to say, this severely limits swimmers and their training.
So why is it that swimming is so far behind in terms of holding the attention of the general public? Why isn’t swimming a priority? Is it because it’s boring? Hard to understand? Is it because there isn’t a ball involved?
The answer to all of those questions is obviously a resounding no. It’s not the sport of swimming that turns people off; after all, it is one of the most watched and talked about sports every four years at the Summer Olympics, trumping basketball and volleyball among others. Michael Phelps, just to accentuate this point, is the biggest Olympic star in the history of the games, and one of the most famous athletes on the planet.
No, it’s not the nature of swimming that turns people off of the sport. It’s the lack of accessibility. The powers that be in the world of swimming have utterly failed to make swimming a spectator sport.
The biggest thing any sport needs in order to grow is exposure. For example, people fell in love with playing and watching basketball in the 80s and 90s because of the emergence of megastars like Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan. Fans could routinely watch these players play and read about their exploits in the news.
Swimming has had a taste of this; Michael Phelps’ massive success on the biggest stage in sports led to a surge in both his individual fame and the popularity of the sport as a whole. People wanted to watch him compete, and kids wanted to swim just like he did.
However, for most of the history of competitive swimming, there hasn’t been any real push for exposure. There has been no regularly scheduled, televised competition pitting the world’s best against each other. The only widely televised event each year is Worlds, with the Olympics coming around every fourth year. The opportunities for swimmers to compete on a televised stage, marketing and gaining exposure both for themselves and their sport, are exceedingly rare.
The International Swim League (ISL) was a good start this past year, in that it created a regular schedule for swimmers to compete in a public way, but it was a largely intimate affair. It was a way for current fans of swimming to watch their favorite athletes compete, but it did little in the way of earning new supporters. In the U.S., all the meets were broadcast on ESPN 3, a channel most cable users don’t even have.
Fixing this issue is no small task, and something that will be difficult to accomplish before the next Olympics. Swimming does not currently have a megastar with the same level of international recognition as Michael Phelps, but there are quite a few who are ready to take on that role, primarily Katie Ledecky and Caeleb Dressel.
What USA Swimming and FINA need to do is to build on the momentum of the next Olympics to keep the attention of the public. There need to be more meets of consequence, where the superstar athletes of the Olympic Games lead their teams on a quest for some type of championship.
Essentially, swimming needs to structure some kind of league with more rules than currently exist in the ISL. An example of a change that could legitimize a swimming league as a real professional sport is an amateur draft, in which teams can draft swimmers out of college or from around the world. Beyond rule changes or additions, there also needs to be a radical shift in the mindset of swimmers and coaches around the world to treat this new league or format as something real and worth competing for. The ISL, despite its good intentions, felt like a big exhibition; it was more Harlem Globetrotters than NBA.
It will be hard, and will not always go smoothly, but swimming has the potential, the starpower, and the capability to turn itself into more of a spectator sport. In doing so, the athletes and coaches who work so hard in and out of the pool will finally get the recognition, attention, and care that they deserve.
So yeah, nobody cares about swimming… yet.
ABOUT JACK BOWMAN
Jack Bowman is a collegiate swimmer at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland, where he is also a student journalist. A swimming enthusiast, Jack loves covering swimming through news and opinion pieces.
I just love young people, they have the greatest ideas. Just maybe someday. Let,s face it the young man is right. If not me who? Let us begin I’ll race you? Let me see……