As the American swimming community unpacks the radical changes to the NCAA Championship format that was approved by the NCAA Swimming & Diving Sport Oversight Committee last week, there will be lots of questions about the nuance of the rules. Piece-by-piece, we’ll together learn the wrinkles of how the new system will work in fringe situations.
Two good questions that have come up so far are these:
- Does the Conference Champion have to clear the qualifying standard at the conference meet? and
- Does this apply to every NCAA Division I conference? And what defines a conference?
Under the new rules, conference champions who clear a certain time standard, based on the 72nd-ranked time in the country from past seasons, receive an automatic qualification to the NCAA Championships – even if they are slower than another swimmer in the same event.
2026 Women’s NCAA Division 1 Qualifying Times
Individual Events
Event Standard 50 Freestyle 22.28 100 Freestyle 48.60 200 Freestyle 1:45.53 500 Freestyle 4:43.70 1,650 Freestyle 16:25.29 100 Butterfly 52.52 200 Butterfly 1:57.11 100 Backstroke 52.65 200 Backstroke 1:54.80 100 Breaststroke 1:00.30 200 Breaststroke 2:11.27 200 Individual Medley 1:57.88 400 Individual Medley 4:13.20 2026 Men’s NCAA Division 1 Qualifying Times
Individual Events
Event Standard 50 Freestyle 19.43 100 Freestyle 42.55 200 Freestyle 1:33.93 500 Freestyle 4:18.07 1,650 Freestyle 15:06.60 100 Butterfly 46.11 200 Butterfly 1:43.79 100 Backstroke 46.29 200 Backstroke 1:42.14 100 Breaststroke 52.58 200 Breaststroke 1:54.95 200 Individual Medley 1:44.13 400 Individual Medley 3:46.19
Conference Championship-Winning Times
The simple answer to the first question is that the qualifying standard needs to be cleared during the conference title-winning swim.
If we accept the rule (which many in swimming still do not), then this is a great addition, because it gives a punctuated moment of exuberance that a conference can build hoopla around. Steamers, fireworks, music, a massive celebration, social media content…all of these things are possible and can be enhanced by the singular moment. Singular moments are the best of swimming, and a move toward more of them will be objectively good for the watchability of the sport (Last Chance meets, we’re looking at you).
That means the time can’t be swum at:
- Dual meets
- Last Chance meets
- Mid-season invites
- Relay leadoffs
- Prelims
- Splits on longer races
- Time trials
This brough up another question though. What about teams that compete in multiple conferences, like members of the ECAC?
What Defines a Conference?
In certain applications, the NCAA has allowed teams to recognize multiple conference championship meets. Most prominently, that has historically been the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC), a historical amalgamation of teams mostly in the Northeastern United States.
As of fall 2023, there were 78 Division I members, 7 Division II members, and 79 Division III members, with most competing in only one or a few sports (the ECAC is rising to prominence in esports competitions).
For NCAA Division I teams, the league sponsors cross country, equestrian, golf, gymnastics, swimming & diving, tennis, and track & field.
In swimming & diving, the conference’s championship meet has become effectively a last chance meet or an alternate championship for swimmers who didn’t make their conference rosters (though it has occasionally been recently been a primary championship for teams orphaned by conference realignment).
Under the new system, the ECAC won’t count for NCAA Championship qualifications.
The Oversight Committee put in place a few restrictions on what they will count as a conference for the purposes of an automatic qualifier conference).
- A conference must have a minimum of 5 teams of a gender to be Automatic Qualifier eligible.
- If a school’s primary conference affiliation sponsors swimming & diving, that is their conference for AQs.
This rules out both the ECAC, and any attempts to form new conferences for the purposes of Automatic Qualifiers.
For example, take schools like Northwestern, Missouri, Pitt, Texas A&M, and Georgia Tech. Those schools recruit good swimmers, many of whom ultimately rank in the top 72 in the country (which is how the Automatic Qualifier times were set), but who don’t often win conference titles because they race against the likes of Indiana, Texas and Cal.
Those schools couldn’t pull together and form a new super-conference just to escalate the number of NCAA Championship qualifiers they get.
This would also eliminate Automatic Qualifiers from conferences that have fewer than 5 teams of a gender, like, the old AAC men’s championship meet that was a dual between SMU and Cincinnati.
The committee has approved these conferences based on “currently available information”:
- America East Conference;
- American Athletic Conference (women’s only);
- Atlantic Coast Conference;
- Atlantic Sun Conference;
- Atlantic 10 Conference;
- Big East Conference;
- Big Ten Conference;
- Big 12 Conference;
- Big West Conference;
- Coastal Athletic Association;
- Horizon League;
- The Ivy League;
- Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference;
- Mid-American Conference (women’s only);
- Missouri Valley Conference;
- Mountain Pacific Sports Federation;
- Mountain West Conference (women’s only);
- Northeast Conference (women’s only);
- Patriot League;
- Southeastern Conference; and
- The Summit League.
What other questions do you have about the nuance of the rules? Leave them in the comments and we’ll try to get the answers.
This is a crazy concept… Earn it like everyone else has had to. To take away opportunities from faster swimmers is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I get that the ‘moment’ of winning a conference championship is cool, but that swimmer (and possibly 10 others) making it over a swimmers who swan 15 seconds faster in the mile (which is a definite possibility) but doesn’t make it into the championship isn’t ok. It’s mind blowing.
I love the win it and make the standard automatic entry. I also hate that faster swimmers are then not allowed to swim. The way everyone seems to be talking they are going to add a BB age group swimmer to the meet. These standards are fast times! They are much faster than the Old “B” Standard and will take anywhere from 1 to 20 swims per event out of the meet. I feel the best thing to do is run the selection like it has been in the past and add the win and in swimmers. Cover the travel expenses of the win and in swimmers and allow the schools to cover the cost of the swimmers who would… Read more »
It sure has added incentive to my daughter in her last year of collegiate swimming. She is now targeting going 16:25 and winning the 1650 at her conference championship meet.
So we are now taking a Division 1 College sport and incorporating Socialism ? It’s great to create opportunities for Mid-Majors, but why not add those to the kids in addition to the ones that fight all season to get one of the 32 top times in the country. It also could remove points from power 4 teams, by knocking out kids who have top 25-30 times in the country…all of those kids could score at the meet in theory.
$$. I don’t know what it costs to add an additional swimmer to NCAAs (especially if that swimmer is from a team that wasn’t already going, and then they need to add a coach too). $750 each? So $22,500 additional costs per meet?
We gotta figure out how to make this thing make money, then it won’t be a problem to add swimmers. Basketball and football keep adding teams to their post seasons, because every additional game makes them money.
Start with us die-hard fans not complaining over having to pay $5 to watch…if the event can’t make money, they can’t keep sending more athletes. If enough people are viewing it, some broadcast money/ad revenue will come in and there can start being discussions on expanding the athlete number.
We need to be adding not subtracting. Add the conference champs on top of the usual qualifiers. This replacement will save a few minutes in a session is all. Really dumb. If anything, make the B cuts faster to cut down on the number of people in the event instead of cutting those that actually make it.
The meet does not need a new order of events. Having distance guys begin their meet with a mile is the dumbest thing I have ever seen. Oh you swim breaststroke, cool, no other events for you. Keep the old format.
B finals need to stay. In all seriousness, add a C final and get more night swims and excitement if… Read more »
I 100% agree that they could have simply added the conference winners to the 30-34 that would be invited otherwise. Win/win for both groups with minimal impact to the session timeline.
Second, if these changes are to get a broader audience for tv, then simply move B finals to later in the evening and not for the broadcast. If Olympic Trials can have a B final in an event with a massively larger audience and where only the top 2 places matter, then why can’t the NCAA figure it out?? It’s not rocket science.
Why aren’t you on the committee. You need to be. I like these ideas.
Or…it’s the equivalent of combining track with – hear me out – field.
As much as it’s making cool moments for those mid-majors it seems to be robbing moments for that 71st/72nd person who will either now swim conference knowing they won’t make it or see their hopes dashed when a slower kid beats them
The 72nd fastest swimmer doesn’t qualify for NCAAs.
Further, those qualifications aren’t really ‘moments’ to the degree that these will be. Yes it’s a moment for that swimmer and their teammates, but it’s not a moment for much broader of an audience than that. The point of all of this is to reach a bigger audience. These AQs, if handled the way they should be, will create bigger moments for bigger audiences than the 31st-32nd-38th-39th place swimmer they’re bumping.
And I know someone is going to roll in and shout “THOSE SWIMMERS DESERVE THEIR MOMENTS THEY WERE FASTER!!!” but any effort to make a bigger audience is going to have tradeoffs. It is what it is. I just hope this was the right tradeoff.
Not trying to be a jerk, but I just don’t get how making it shorter will get more viewers. I don’t think that it’s going to appeal to any additional people because it’s 90 minutes now.
There’s a conversation in sports that is about “length of play vs. pace of play.” It most frequently happens in baseball. Nobody minds seeing an amazing game that last 3.5 hours with lots of hits, but if it’s a bad game with a million pitching changes and fly balls.
So cutting B Finals, I think the idea is, improves “pace of play” as much as “length of the session.”
I was in Finland over the summer and went and watched a game of Finnish baseball (Pesapallo). The experience is so wildly different than American baseball because the game just. doesn’t. stop. The innings are non-stop action, short break, then right back to it.
I don’t personally think cutting B… Read more »
Swimmers aren’t interested in forfeiting their earned spot for the greater good of swimming, so some risky dink conference winner can have their moment. Swimming has never been an everyone gets a trophy sport so why start now? I know that is harsh but just being real. Also doing away with B finals is supposed to grow the audience? Wrong move.
Time will tell but I think it’s unlikely you’ll have a conference champion knocking faster swimmers out of NCAA’s – or if you do it’ll be in vanishingly rare circumstances.
There are usually around 34 swimmers invited in each event. My guess is that there will be a handful that will be displaced. Not many, but swimmers who have worked really hard for the opportunity and have faster times.
Did you see my post? Last year there would have been 6 guys in the 50 free alone who would have knocked out someone.
this didn’t age well…
If I’m understanding this correctly and I think I know where you are coming from. The number of qualifiers for NCAA is still fixed. So the conference winners will bump some of the people in the last spots for each event. More like the 30,31 person for example. It would be interesting to see where in the nation that person is ranked. But there will be a scenario where a person did not make the championship because a slower conference winner did. That is kind of the point of this.
Is there a way to contact the NCAA to express concern about the event order and B finals?
Based on the men’s 50 free last year–it took a 19.02 to make it. I looked at all the conference champions of the 50 free at their individual conferences last year. There would be 6 guys who would be an automatic bid who otherwise would not have made the cut. Caleb Kelly (19.35), Nick Finch (19.07), Matvei Namakonov (19.43), Karol Ostrowski (19.28), Felix Jedbratt (19.20), Matej Dusa (19.11). This is based off of the cut for this year which is a 19.43. My opinion is this is unfair to the guy who trains his a$$ off but just happens to go to a school in a Power 4. This guy could potentially go sub 19 and not make the list.… Read more »
In this example Matvei Namakonov qualified on his own in 100 breast. So would that mean an extra 100 breast swimmer would have gotten in… ? Or would they factor that in and not give him the auto 50 free spot.. ? Not sure which calculation is done first but it could affect exactly who gets bumped.
He would autoqualify based on the 50 free, then he would have been skipped as they work by rows in the 100 breast.
Remember that the AQ swimmers don’t necessarily bump the next-best guy *in that event*. They just go through the regular selection process, so the next best guy could be the 31st place finisher in the 200 back, for example.
So how will it selection process start now that they don’t have A cuts. Will they put the top 28 in each event, then add in all the conference winners who aren’t already within that 28, and after that add 1 at a time under each event until they get to that magic number?