2012 Div 1 NCAAs

Jim, The rules would confound a talmudic scholar. Someone like Skip Thompson may have some understanding. It revolves around the "A" standard (which only a few swimmers per event achieve) and the much more lenient "B" standard. Maybe 80 or 90 swimmers achieve the "B" standard but there is an invited cutoff number (this year between 17 and 18 for men and 30 for women) of the top "B" qualifiers. It really becomes confusing when relays are taken into consideration. If you qualify on a relay (i.e. invited) you can swim any event in which you achieved the "B" standard even if you're ranked 90th. This really hoses an outstanding swimmer from a weaker team who had the 18th top time but no relay to swim on. No relay, no invite. To add more confusion, teams are limited to the total number of athletes they can bring. Actually, there are expetions to this rule also. If you really want to immerse yourself in the arcane check this out: forum.collegeswimming.com/viewtopic.php Back in the day, this is the exact reason why I enjoyed swimming college nationals in the NAIA division. You didn't have to be a mathematics/statistician/whatever to figure out who was in the meet. Those that qualified, went. At least I believe so. Probably because the sheer numbers of qualifiers/swimmers was much less that the NCAA too.

Jim, The rules would confound a talmudic scholar. Someone like Skip Thompson may have some understanding. It revolves around the "A" standard (which only a few swimmers per event achieve) and the much more lenient "B" standard. Maybe 80 or 90 swimmers achieve the "B" standard but there is an invited cutoff number (this year between 17 and 18 for men and 30 for women) of the top "B" qualifiers. It really becomes confusing when relays are taken into consideration. If you qualify on a relay (i.e. invited) you can swim any event in which you achieved the "B" standard even if you're ranked 90th. This really hoses an outstanding swimmer from a weaker team who had the 18th top time but no relay to swim on. No relay, no invite. To add more confusion, teams are limited to the total number of athletes they can bring. Actually, there are expetions to this rule also. If you really want to immerse yourself in the arcane check this out: forum.collegeswimming.com/viewtopic.php Back in the day, this is the exact reason why I enjoyed swimming college nationals in the NAIA division. You didn't have to be a mathematics/statistician/whatever to figure out who was in the meet. Those that qualified, went. At least I believe so. Probably because the sheer numbers of qualifiers/swimmers was much less that the NCAA too.