And the ESPY goes to....

My interest in this topic extends to my fear of what is happening to swimming in the US in general. We've all read the stories of how many college programs have been dropped and there's a fantastic article in swim technique about the current "crisis". With the loss of college teams, the hige drop out of boys in the sport, mothballing of pools and lack of ability to build new and maintain older facilities, we've got some problems. I've "challenged" people on this thread to think outside the box as to how we can build our sport (refering to swimming in general, but also masters), one of the benefits I believe would be more media coverage (for those of us who tape NCAAs and fast forward through the 70% commercials). The bigger benefit however is that maybe we can help stem the tide of of the slow death of competivive swimming that seems to be taking place in our sport.

What I didn't agree with the college article is that there are only slightly less males that are attending college than females. In fact asian males attend college more than white females. And hispanics and blacks are less likely to attend college whether they are male and female than whites and asians.So there is no big decreased of white males attending college. Also, many swimmers such as Gary Hall Jr, only spend a year swimming in NCAA's and are successful swimmers. The NCAA's will not allow swimmers to have endorsements,hence more top swimmers will drop out of college swimming than will stay, because they can't make money. Also, the NCAA's until about the 1980's favored male programs over female programs. Shirley Babashoff swam only 2 years at a community college and one year at UCLA. But know one complain about her dropping out of college to take endorsement money, on the other hand, if Jack Babashoff would have done that, then Alabama where he was attending school would have persuaded him to stay.

Regarding overcrowding, it can be avoided at Nationals by enforcing strict National Qualifying Times, and by having layers of smaller competitions without Qualifying Times. The last post -by Leonard- on how to produce and broadcasts a cheap USMS Nationals coverage, is the way to explore, I think.

Hey Ion, strict National Qualifying times? Did I hear you talking about elitism? How about participation and a great time? And yes, great competition as well?

Hmmmm.... OK, here's an attempt to think outside the box: Suppose we have a professional tape made of the nationals - say a 1/2 hour highlight tape made by a USMS member. (Someone out of all our members must own a video company.) We get the tape in exchange for promotion of the company somehow - at the meet, on the tape, whatever... Copies are made and then sent to volunteers who have signed up for time (long in advance) on a local community access channel of their cable network. The tape is then played as their time slot allotment. I am not versed in all the details of this and don't delude myself that it will save the swimming world and I suspect that it might be more applicable to larger metro areas than in places like where I live (the boonies), but it seems low-cost enough and better than just wringing our hands. Perhaps some colleges would be willing to make good quality tapes of their swim teams/meets (use the media-type majors as slave labor) and then show those also. OK, fire away!

I don't have the answers, but some food for thought: Back in the late eighties in So. Cal we use to watch swimming and waterpolo on a cable station Prime Ticket (mostly UCLA, USC, Cal, Stanford and Pepperdine) they would also air NCAA swimming and water polo championships. I believe that station no longer exists. Not to say swimming and waterpolo isn't ready for a rebirth in the TV market. The second thought is would all this attention spoil what we have come to love. Previous forums there has been complaints about the size of nationals, timelines etc. Just think what would happen if we did double or triple the participation at nationals - some people complained about taking the 4 to 5 days off to travel and particiapate, what would happen if that became 7 or 8 days for the meet. The last thought is the ever present economic question. Swimming costs money, utilities (water, electricity, gas) chemicals (chlorine, C02, acid, soda ash, calcium) man power (lifeguard, maintenance, coach) and insurance. Most pools have some governmental tie in - either by a Parks and Rec Dept (City, County, Special Service District) or by a school. When it comes budget time it seems Parks and Rec are the first ones cut, schools, police, fire are usually safe - but the schools have there dilemas build a pool or another 6 classrooms to accomadate the growing population - we know what the general voting public would choose. Of course I realize that with more exposure of swimmng as a valuable lesson it may help dodge the budget ax, but I really doubt it. I would compare my feelings towards swimming to Yosemite. When I go to Yosemite I don't want to be in the overcrowded tourists environment - stick to the backroads and enjoy things where commercialism hasn't spoiled the beauty.

Anyway, regarding the issue of publicizing the great sport of swimming, I have a few things to share. First, swimming is a sport that few (if any) non-participants actually get in to. How many swimming fans do you know that did not swim? I don't know any. Not that this is right, but it is just simple reality. Why is golf so popular? 2 words- Tiger Woods. What would need to happen for our sport to take off on the American level is for a swimming star on the parallel of TW to appear on the scene. What is the chance of that? Well, small but possible. It would behoove the USA-S oranization to over-publicize the potential "star" candidates. That is the only chance. Swimming isn't going to become a specator sport overnight. It's NOT popular. It is NOT trivial. It IS a very difficult sport. We need the appropriate personalties to take it to the next level (coverage-wise). I wish we could. I personally think it is virtually impossible. Without opening the sport to the inner-city youth and the urban poor we are stuck with what we have. White suburbia wealthy opportunistic swimmers. Expand the horizions, we need all the help we can get. Go swimming. Let's get the ball rolling. Let's start a fricken brainstorm of ideas for what to do. There is so much that can be done. We just need the ideas, the commitment, and the people to make it happen. -RM

Ion, I think showing the thrill and pain of racing (primarily the pain) would discourage people from getting invovled in swimming. I think (which may be the problem) triathlons in a way suffer from this, years ago in the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon - forgive my failing memory but I believe it was Julie Moss - who was in first place but collapsed just prior to the finish line, she eventually crawled across the finish line but did not win the race. This made for great TV drama, but the general public perception is who are these crazy idiots who push their bodies to that point of complete exhaustion. The vast majority of triathlons are not Ironman distances but shorter races that take most people around 2 to 3 hours to finish, yet when you mention you have done a triathlon/are a triathlete most people think of the Ironman races and that you must be some kind of compulsive fitness freak. The idea of putting the human intrest story in front of the racing would appeal to the general viewers more. Take for example Gary Hall - fast swimmer sure, so what. But when you put in that he is an insulin dependent diabetic - now all of a sudden you have a whole new audience, maybe diabetics won't take up swimming but at least they won't limit their thinking to the old school thought of being a diabetic you have to limit your physical exercise. Lance Armstrong is another example of this in regards to his battle with cancer - Greg Lemond was the first Amercian to win the Tour de France and up until this year had won the same number of Tours as Lance (3), lets not forget he missed a couple of years because of a hunting accident, but Lance I believe became more famous than Greg after just winning his first Tour because of his overcoming cancer (human intrest side of things rather than the sport). To get more publicity/involvement you need to address areas that are going to make people want to watch, you can go anywhere and watch races (swimmers, runners, bicyclists, boats, cars, dogs, horses...whatever)if all you want to do is watch a race, but the drama and overcoming of obstacles is what is going to get people involved- they need to be able to connect to that person in some way, either by the sport or by personal battles.

Well, some parts of the United States had to move from their white base, Southern California in point. Many of the age groupers are still upper-middle class but are more becoming asian rather than white. Also, hispanics that have made it to the middle class or beyond are also moving up the ladder of swimming in Southern California. The white population in LA and Orange which are strong holds of swimming has decline in the 1990's, so the clubs brought in more non-whites. Also, even expensive sports like Figure Skating have about 30 percent asian and 15 percent hispanics in the area of Southern California. Blacks are less of a factor there, since their population is smaller than the asian population in Southern California. However as stated before asians have the money to do swimming or much more expensive sports like figure skating than hispanics as a whole, since they are more likely to be college educated. But as Rain man stated, you need to appeal more to the lower income which in many places in the southwest tend to be hispanic, where soccer or baseball or boxing are king.l

Ion: You want to improve the image and accessibility of USMS swimming, that is obvious. Then, you state we should enforce strict National Qualifying Times, and by having layers of smaller competitions without Qualifying Times. You can't have it both ways. I reviewed the Fact Sheet on USMS swimming. No where does it mention qualifying times. In fact, what it does say is USMS is "Open to all adult swimmers (fitness, triathlete, competitive, and non-competitive) dedicated to improving their fitness through swimming ." We've all been through phases of life where we had to qualify to swim. USMS is not about exclusion, in my opinion.