College Swimming is in trouble...
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- Опубліковано 9 вер 2024
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College Swimming has been in trouble for a while now, but things just got even worse. Get active in the comments section so that if the powers that be see this video...maybe they'll start taking more chances on making this sport consistently exciting.
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Planned on releasing this video two days from now, but this situation is progressing so quickly that I couldn’t wait. That’s how real this is.
We need to adapt. Now.
Hey im at trials all week and saw you on the big screen tonight and couldnt make it down to get a photo
We should have dual meet halftime shows with the school marching bands doing synchronized swimming
I'd take a shitty halftime show over no halftime show any day of the week and week of the year.
@@Sockwell😂😂😂
Hear me out. What if during those 30 minute breaks at dual meets, athletes are warming up in warm up/cool down pool and in the main competition pool, there’s people racing random events like: 50 fly with jeans, 50 underwater streamline, etc.
Mascot race?
@@Taylor-1911 mascot drown
THAT’D BE FIRE
or in water cheerleaders?
I’ve been preaching this same sermon since 1995!!! Back then a group of us were brainstorming 60 minute dual meet event lists with planned commercial breaks. Now that streaming is so easy to produce, the problem should be even easier to fix. Instead, top programs are paying coaches insane salaries to burn even more insane budgets while making zero changes to their product.
I like the idea of having a college swimming playoff in addition to the current NCAA championship. Take the top teams based off of dual meet W-L record and have a dual meet tournament.
That’s a lot of swimming…
1% of college athletes who were likely on their way to a pro deal worth MILLIONS decided they deserved a check for playing in school (on TOP of their scholarships), and that unwarranted need has damaged the other 99% of athletes who only wanted another 4-5 years to compete in their sport while getting their education.
That's what pisses me off the most: another 1% over 99% situation
Fair point…
Also to the same point NCAA men’s basketball tournament covers the cost of non revenue sports post season championships for all three NCAA Divisions (including a percentage of travel cost for participating student-athletes)
So basically .001 percent of athletes(participating men’s D-1 bball players from NCAA tourney) are helping to covering the cost for 99% of student-athletes post season championship tournaments/competitions.
Sweet deal if you ask me. Just wasn’t sustainable if we’re honest with ourselves.
@@nathanharding2518 I have to be grateful for all basketball and football players who's talents translated enough to keep the rest of us alive (former D2 swimmer) but when you're asking for MORE on top of the scholarships you're receiving then that's where I take issue. Go pro if you want pro money, the NCAA is for STUDENT-athletes.
I dont necessarily disagree with you (as a current D-2 Head coach). I also don’t think it’s fair to ask these student-athletes to play basketball for just a scholarship when they are literally the main reason why NCAA is able to cover cost to run NCAA championships for swim and every other sport besides football and basketball. Nobody wants those championships to cease to exist. You’re ok with those players helping to cover the cost of NCAA postseason for our sport but you don’t want them to get paid more than a scholarship??? The truth is those players are more valuable to sports like swimming than we like to admit. Under the current system we need them. That’s the bigger problem.
@@nathanharding2518 my argument stems from the idea that collegiate sports exists for students who want to get their education AND have an extra 4-5 years at the sport they love. If you're the 1% of 1% that goes pro, then odds are the school will pay you to compete for them and that right there is all they ought to be required to shell out.
@@Kriptiko College football and basketball players don't have a choice they are forced to go to "school". Thats the real problem. The few monster high level football and basketball should've split from the NCAA years ago.
I think the ISL actually got a lot right in terms of making swimming a palatable experience for the average fan or even casual.
The warm up pool was always behind massive black curtains so the only thing the fans had to focus on was the comp pool and the DJ, who was entertaining to various success. The problem of course is most schools can’t/won’t put in that big of a production together/the old heads in the sport won’t love some of that change, and they still hold the decision making power.
However that style of dual meets that worked in point totals that actually mattered in a ranking that determined whether they made it to the finals was huge. Every other major sport the records of the teams matter, like you said in swimming they don’t. And they need to
Amen, keep preaching... Personally, I wish they'd sell the duals more and play up the interaction with kids. Then, have two "championships" -- 1) Conference v. conference with qualifications occurring at the conference championship. 2) Current model of team/individual NCAA championships.
i want an NCAA dual meet tournament so bad let’s make duals mean something
Like march madness but swimming?
@@Speed71P exactly with seeding and everything i would love to watch that
no views in 2 seconds bro fell off
Trp too
Gravity
Swimming parent of high schoolers here. Thanks for doing what you're doing! Many of us haven't even thought about this stuff. I hope that people at NCAA and Universities listen to what you're saying here.
As a collegiate swimmer, I would go a lot faster at dual meets if I could get paid for a dub. And the celebrations would be insane, increasing entertainment too
3 steps to “save” swimming:
1) SCM for most (if not all) meets
Why? Because turns are exciting, impressive and create drama. And scm is global.
2) Less distance, more relays.
Why? Everyone loves relays. Nobody (except sociopaths) like distance.
3) Marketing THE NICHE that is swimming. Why? Because that’s what swimming is. It is a niche sport, with fun little sayings, a grueling training process, and cool gear. (And other stuffs)
*Honorable mention: A professional league with teams hosting home meets. Allow rivalries and stories to develop.
Anyway, these are my thoughts. Cheers y’all thanks for the vid Kyle!
I agree with you that SCM should be the standard, and we should basically eliminate all SCY and LCM events (even in the Olympics), but it is not a possibility. It would take billions of dollars to extend every college/HS SCY pool to SCM. America has invested way too much money in SCY pools over the last 75 years or so and most of those pools were built with fixed walls. I like the idea, but until Elon Musk or someone with his wealth, decides to invest his billions into swimming, it’s just not a reality.
Cal’s best duel meet had our Marching Band there in the freezing cold vs UVA and it was ELECTRIC
More of that 🔥🔥
Agreed, but we’re still treating a symptom with bells & whistles and not the real problem…those meets still don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
I can’t believe that you are the only person saying things like this, because saying these things is the only way that we will save our sport
Hey pookie
Kyle we miss you
Kyle,
Love the content by the way. This all boils down to content and monetizing content. College football conferences and programs have monetized the demand for football content. We’ve relied on monetization of college football media to keep college swimming afloat. If each program learned how to monetize content on a much smaller scale, we can begin to step in the right direction.
You’re right about business point at 6:22 of this video. Gone are the days where college swimming can survive by not understanding business and monetizing content. Football handout is coming to a close.
To be honest I completely agree with you. I am not even close to being in collage, but this still scares me. The only time people watch swimming is in the Olympics and I don't blame them because watching NCAA is boring for me and even less boring for a non-swimmer.
Where is bro did he die or something 😅
There’s something called the F.A cup with football/soccer in the UK: bring that to college swimming. Let everybody have a chance even the underdogs, engagement and team cohesion will fly through the roof.
They should make college swimming more like the ISL. Although it died, it showed great potential in its early days and could have continued it if wasn't for COVID. Main obstacle of college swimming is that it's boring and has no purpose to watch. Other sports have rivalry, loud fans, halftimes, and stories. People have basically given up on college swimming because it's literally not savable.
Kyle I’m think of making a channel dedicated to just rating people’s swim cloud’s. Do you think I should do it?
Getting to this late - this is exactly what SwimClips is trying to do - make dual meets more approachable and relevant to more people
It’s the Olympics and u aren’t posting,Where are u man this only happens once every 4 years 😢
Right now he's at the Olympics, but I can't account for the total lack of coverage on Trials, or anything the past two months.
Kyle did you forget your youtube password?
This change is gonna be really interesting, but as a D3 swimmer I'm worried about what it could mean for the future and what could be expected of schools and athletes
obviously this current plan probably won't have direct impacts on D3 swimming, but if there is an issue of making money, then there could be structural change to collegiate swimming as a whole, and if those changes are made with profit in mind then I would hope they don't kill off smaller programs (whether they be small d1 or d2/d3)
The halftime/warmup for swimmers should be for the synchronized swimmers to perform during the period
I like how you mentioned the cost of pools and looked at this from the standpoint of a business, as I think it's tied to another threat to college swimming, and that is the threat to D3 and D2 regarding aging facilities and dropping college enrollment. We have seen several programs cut due to aging facilities (especially in the northeast and NY specifically). Many colleges built pools in the 60s and 70s, which are now 50-60+ years old and at the end of their lifespan. This, combined with dropping enrollment, means colleges are struggling to keep the doors open (and a growing list are losing that battle and closing), much less having the 15 or so million to build a new 6-8 lane pool.
I get that there's no clear-cut answer to this question. No one is handing out money to build pools, and increasing enrollment is bigger than just a sport-specific question/answer, but it is an issue that I fear will cause more programs to be cut and schools to close in general in the next five or so years. Combined with House, this could create a devasting 1-2 punch on the sport.
Let's make duel meets matter 🫡
I see we can add artistic swimming in those breaks, same as cheerlanders u. Football
Hey im at trials all week and saw you on the big screen tonight but couldnt make it down to get a photo 😭
You could do it like college football is about to with the twelve team dual tournament that’d be hype. Also the confrence champs and stuff. I think it could bring new fans to swimming.
College swimming improvement is a no brainer. Get rid of short course at the D1 level. College swimming should be a carbon copy of the Olympic format in every way possible(100% long course is step1). Someone will eventually realize this, and make the transition happen.
Only problem with this would be the access to long course pools. Most schools don't have them and who knows how long it would take to build them or to even funding the building of them
@@hannahm4455 Major "D1 level" Universities have long course pools
@@hannahm4455 The major "D1" Universities already have long course pools
Bro where'd you go
Potential solutions:
1. Smaller rosters: this would allow for D1 to consist of National/Olympic trial qualifiers instead of sectional type swimmers and would allow more parity. Have practice rosters who can train with the team and then have smaller invitational type meets for them.
2. Coaching philosophy change: coaches don’t care about dual meets that has to change
3. NCAAs is a 32 team bracket style tournament that includes the winner of each conference then “at large” teams. (Smaller rosters hopefully allows for more upsets)
4. Conference standings determine both seeding and byes for conference meets.
I have no idea how you make swimming more profitable or make the regular season matter to those who aren’t die hard fans. I swam for many years and loved it, but I get it. I remember seeing a crowd of students stand and cheer for that opening 4x50 medley relay. Then everyone leaves during the very next distance race.
Track has this same issue, but more people have done/understand track so I believe it draws better viewership. But even it isn’t profitable. Diamond league meets make money, do Grand Prix (or whatever the modern day equivalent is) make money?
Very Interesting! Thanks for the video!
Most colleges athletic programs don’t make money. This new NIL and NCAA court decision will make this even worse. The rich will get richer and the other programs will have to dissolve. Swimming will never make money. Swimming will have to exist like figure skating (i.e. exist w/o college support). If you want to compete at the Olympic level then you will have to qualify for an expanded US national team and compete internationally.
Lets not forget Lia Thomas situation few years ago & now doping Chinese swimmers to add to that list. For my non-swim friends, most of which are athletes, this is what they know for "current events." Keep up great entertaining content Kyle, this is something would love get involved in to promote our sport. Track/field is probably best non-generating revenue sport and swim community should follow suit.
As a college runner at an insignificant D1 school about to look in my Charlie Brown Halloween bag and say "I got a quarter" 😂
Where is the olympic trials coverage!??
You're spot on.... I wasn't a college swimmer - I only swam in high school but I still follow the sport VERY closely and obsessively...to an uncomfortable degree that can described as "Rain Main turned Fangirl." My completive and coaching background, however, was in Speech and Debate though....the armpit of collegiate non-revenue generating programs.
Similarly, we've also been experiencing colleges having their teams canceled so the college/department can take back the budget that the team was GIVEN each fiscal year. Anyone in charge of running a team or program should know that operating on what you're given is a minimal job expectation - is only part of the gig. Managing the current resources is what is expected.....but what are you doing to help this team/program grow? To do that, you gotta find more resources on your own.
What we're seeing is that programs that showed no interest in driving the growth their own budgets/funding and/or showed no interest in promoting their own successes for college admin to brag about get cut the fastest.
In college swimming, does a team's budget/funding also have to cover the cost of operating the aquatics center? I agree that running those facilities are expensive, but I figured those operating costs would be covered by the college/university's recreational department rather than the team funds.
(2 of 2) What do we need to do?
1. Eliminate all events over a 200. I realize that this will make a lot of swimmers/swammers upset, but this is reality. The mile is boring and you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise. I have no idea how NASCAR convinced a bunch of people to watch cars go in a circle for hours, but in general no one wants to watch someone go round and round or back and fourth for 5 to 15 minutes. You have to get rid of them.
2. Speed up the meets. They take way too long. Luckily #1 above should do a lot to speed them up.
3. Remove all 4x100 and 4x200 relays and replace them with 4x25 relays. 4x100 and 4x200 are too long for the average fan.
4. Add 25s of every stroke and the 100 IM. The most popular race in track is the 100m dash. That takes roughly 10 seconds. We need 10 second races. They are way more exciting.
5. Limit all NCAA meets to 2 hours (1 hour for dual meets) and force coaches to pick the races the night before. In other words, each coach gets to pick one race until the estimated 2 hour limit is up, kind of like a coin flip/jury selection. This would make the meets way more interesting, because now you have to implement strategy. Not everyone will get to swim and a lower level team can finally beat a higher level team.
6. This shouldn’t have to be said but apparently it does, if you care about swimming, go to a small college meet, not just NCAAs.
I agree the mile is stupid but we can’t get rid of the 500 free, 400 IM, the 4 x 100 relay, and the 4 x 200 relays. The high level swimmers are so well conditioned that these are essentially sprint events. Anything shorter than a 50 at the college/Olympic level is stupid. We would see a lot of ties. Swimming will never make money.
@@ColumbusRon They already have 25s now at the World Championships. It worked great! I don’t see any problem with them.
The issue is and has always been marketing. You can make swimming nearly identical to football but nobody’s gonna watch it bc the atmosphere is mid, the aesthetic is boring, and everyone’s kind of doing there own thing. I mean its frustratingly hard to find a broadcast of a dual meet. If football games were only as popular because of what it meant for the end of the season, then everyone except the top 10 wouldn’t care abt each game. But people do care regardless of what it means for their championship season. Even the people that don’t care are still at the games cause of the environment.
My senior year our athletic conference made it so the team with the most conference dual meet wins at the end of the season won conference. Most fun dual meets I’ve ever been apart of, super competitive.
You are 1000% right. Swimming is failing to know how to make revenue. And this might be the beginning of the nail in the coffin
The ISL was a good start to making the sport more revenue based. Those meets were pretty cool. But the cost of production is great. This is a hard issue to solve.
Yep. The day my kids high school swim team won that state championship, the school put up a sign outside that the football team won one game! One! It’s very frustrating. (Can’t stand football to add to that lol).
Preach Brother 🔥🔥🔥
Change swimming…let’s bust through these old played-out traditions
Excellent discussion, thanks.
10:25 of straight honesty
Guess it’s time for me to go back to water polo (it’s probably Thanos snapped out of existence by now)
Completely agree with you. Swimming could bring in money, but it will take some creative ideas. I suggest at swim meets we get some beef going. Like Drake vs Kendrick beef. I want to see some call out on deck and swim offs. pressure makes greatness lol.
Feels like they need to affiliate with the Olympics somehow. The allure of swimming to the common person is that they might be watching a gold medalist. Maybe have an Olympic style meet during the season where the countries compete, to showcase guys like Marchand? Maybe even include some recent grads still training for the Olympics with their club teams? I guess that's what the pro series sort of is, but maybe get all the top swimmers (Dressell, Ledecky) to buy in and agree to compete?
I think your right MR Kyle we needa promote the sport more ima freshman in highschool and i dont want the sport i love to dissipate before i even get to go D1
#SAVEOLYMPICSPORTS
(1 of 2) Great take! When I swam at Kansas, literally the only people showing up were parents, grandparents, and other athletes (our friends). Texas and their Olympians would show up and no one would care. There were more fans at my High School meets than there were to see the fastest swimmers on the planet. Sure enough our men’s team was cut. Anyone who knows anything about college swimming, realizes that men’s NCAA swimming is dying. If we don’t get fans, NCAA men’s swimming will eventually be gone. We have lost roughly 30% of our NCAA D1 Men’s teams in the last 40 years. The only sport to lose more D1 NCAA teams is wrestling.
My take is that not every meet needs to have every event. Make 5 Invitationals in a season, have them communicate so you can run certain events at each, 2-3 days max.
Thank you for speaking up Kyle!!
Kyle can you watch the Olympic swim trials in Australia, Ariarne Titmus just broke the 200m freestyle as I talk.
Well stated mate - thanks for bringing some business sense to our beloved sport.
Could open water events with an open wave for members of the public be a way for college swim teams to make money?
Thank you for uploading about this
Wasn’t the lawsuit brought by an ASU swimmer? Grant House? Kinda weird that winning the lawsuit might ultimately hurt college swimming…
Just got to say I love watching your videos
Your awesome 😎
Host normal “NCAAs” in December. Forces faster duel meet swimming to get the qualifying times.
Make Conference titles into a duel meet tournament rather than a “mini NCAA” meet.
Top 8 scoring teams from December NCAA compete end of March for the team title. Each team gets 3 swimmers per event. Each event 3 heats. So 1 swimmer per team per heat. Top 3 in each heat score(4-2-1). Relays 1 heat but points triple.
Idk just brainstorming…
never seen kyle this serious damn
We need Mixed relays or something to spice up dual meets.Getting paid to go fast would be great too.
all facts, there is no argument to be made
Dual meets should be relay carnivals. Relays are the most exciting part but also concentrate 4 individual efforts into 1 entertaining event. Makes the overall meet more efficient
Relays have the most entertainment value. You could change the format to simplify swimming into relays that are more digestible and entertaining for a larger audience
Yessir let's make some noise in the sports world
Grant House gonna be remembered as the man who killed college swimming
I think the issue is that people have tried to invest in swimming as a spectator sport which we have seen with ISL. The issue is that ISL went bankrupt. Maybe they're scared to even try to invest
ISL issue was a little deeper than most people think. A sole funder with ties to Ukraine before a war broke out with an international model is the failure there.
I’m a full supporter of a pro league being possible if done right.
The University of Louisiana State University
Same situation at my small town HSchool ….. dropped the program cause it was losing money but it was fun 🤩
Wait, so what happens if we continue on this path? Collage swimming just dies?
In between ncaa and conferences we should have a 4 team playoff with the 4 best teams to decide the team title and the individual titles and relay titles are decided at NCAA
U R readmh mind but I do have a plan of making a commercial venture out of swimming 😊
The ISL failed 😨
I think it would be cool if they did a March madness style bracket throughout the course of the season would be really cool that would make dual meets interesting and then at the end of the season you can still have NCAA’s and people can go fast but along side that you have a dual meet championship
ISL format with gambling for duel meets. $$$$
25 freestyle shootouts! 1v1 eliminations
Chlorine daddy interview when
kyle, the time you did at 17 in the 200 IM in my country you'd be second (age 17). What happened my boy? you were cracked.
i agree so much with this Kyle, as much as i would want to get payed by whatever college i go to, the last thing i want is for the ncaa swimming to lose more money by paying swimmers, becuase swimming dosn't bring in a lot of money, sowhy lose more money on this
Collaborate with youth teams. Bring in the 8 year olds to do 25s during the break and get their pic taken with the college swimmers. Lots of parents and grand parents would pay to attend that. AND you’d start from the bottom building loyal, paying fans.
do what swimming canada did for olympic trials, have all the A finals run first and have them be streamed on TV. The other finals swim after.
Don’t most of the D1 athletes get college scholarships?
Swimming drives me nuts sometimes. As a swim dad and swim husband, the lack of innovation with respect to meets is maddening. We could easily have commentary, music, lasers etc to create an atmosphere and make it engaging for spectators, but people only seem to care about what colour shorts the officials are wearing. Let’s forget strict adherence to pointless rules and focus on creating an exciting environment. To be straight, there is to much of an attitude in swimming that ‘this is how we do it, because this is how it has always been done.’ Unpopular opinion, but we need less ex-swimmers involved with boards, meets and need new ideas from other sports.
Alligators
People gotta be more critical of swimming. Out with the old, in with the new.
LETS GO
I think if I could figure out a solution, I'd be rich. Or at least richer.
completely dissolve college swimming altogether. the universities all become club programs. swimmers from clubs get drafted into pro teams for a national USA pro league racing series held every summer. raced in short course metres. Similar to an ISL format - start with 8 domestic teams total / 4 teams per match / 2 swimmers per team per race etc. each team has a roster of 30 swimmers (12 men / 12 women + max 6 internationals 3 men / 3 women) - straight up you've got the top 200 swimmers in the United States & the top 50 international swimmers racing against each other all summer long in a measurement system that puts world records on the line. that's a product you can sell.
Only away meet parents pay for admissions, if you are home, you get put on the list getting you in for free. Maybe get rid of that perk first.
I think a serous problem is that there’s too many long events in a duel meet, like even as a current high schooler with the 500 being the longest event in a high school meet my friends who will come to my meet and watch them will get up and leave and walk out to go do something else while the kids are swimming the 500 because it’s not entertaining enough and no one has an attention span to watching kids just swim back-and-forth for five minutes, and all respect to the distance swimmers out there, I know you guys put in so much work, but an event like the 1000 just does not have a place in a duel meet. There needs to be 50s stoke for sure as well as 4x200 stroke relays. I think the 4x800 free relay should be cut as well it’s just not enthralling enough for a duel meet. And I know this doesn’t solve the purpose side of the problem, but it would create a spike in entertainment for the average college sports fan. I also think ISL had something going for sure when they were doing the 50s skins, perhaps there could be like a large amount of points for the team who wins the skins, or something.. idk. All I know is I’ve sat through enough of my sisters college duel meets and been bored out of my mind… and I don’t look forward to swimming intentionally slow in college so I really do hope we can get on this and make a change. (Also here’s my swim cloud if you wanna roast me) www.swimcloud.com/swimmer/1605075/
So true (just commenting for algorithm)
type shit
Honestly, swimming is a participant sport not a spectator sport. The market centers around swimmers and swim parents. The only selling point to people who are not related to swimming even remotely, is the sex appeal. It sounds awful, but it's the only way I can think of. Then of course, the family friendly nature of swimming will never allow this, LOL.
What sort of statement is that,you need serious help 🤦♂️
@@HENRYMADFUT You need to seriously get a grasp on reality.
@@jfojw21dfs9 not everyone is disgustingly like you ,you might think that’s normal but trust me it’s not.
get an average Joe. take one random frat boy who has the ego of a greek god. hopefully the frat shows up (maybe let other average joes race him like bracket style) and let him race... more people would show up and it would make everyone want to actually watch it.