Buy the Dartmouth Swim Team on eBay

The truth is that it is the football and basketball programs that bring in the big donors (often regardless of whether thay are winning or losing in any given season) and provide the nationwide exposure that make college athletic programs possible in the first place. Without those programs (and all the expenditures necessary to make them viable) the vast majority of schools would not have athletic departments at all - club sports would be it. As a swim coach I hate that situation. But, having spent a goodly portion of my prior career inside the upper administration of big-time Div I college athletics, I understand why lots of sports are in line for the chopping block, with swimming at or near the front of the line. I was in the Univ of Houston athletic department when the Cougar men's program was one of the first to be axed in this long and growing wave of athletic financial load shedding by universities. Swimming programs tend to generate bigger negative cash flows than any other sport in their schools. And they generally do not generate much (or any) of the kind of publicity that endears college administrations to them. Facilities for competitive swimming cost more to build, staff and operate than for any other sport (assuming you remove the cost of spectator seating from the equation) - and have little additional income generation potential, unlike facilities for football and basketball. Universities are not the Evil Empire in this - they have hundreds (or thousands) of worthwhile directions they can send their money. And no matter how many 0s are in the budget, the income side of every budget is finite and the expense side of every preliminary budget is ALWAYS bigger than the income side. The budget scalpel WILL be wielded EVERY budget cycle and only those programs that can 1) bring in sufficient cash/donations, or 2) generate big exposure, or 3) broadly serve student/faculty needs are going to survive the operation. Swimming, in general, doesn't do any of those things. Swimming has made little or no progress (heck, not even real attempts at progress) in carving out a bigger chunk of the spectator/donor market. Until it does, we will continue to see college programs whittled away at - that's just economic reality. Swimming, in it's current form, simply doesn't measure up to the economic demands of big-time college athletics. And if we really want to talk about how best a university might serve its population AND the sport of swimming, it would be set the 50mtr pool up in SCY configuration and take that $211,000 and plough it all into swimming classes and intramural swimming with an eye toward having as many graduates as possible enter the workforce with swimming skills and a love for personal participation in the sport. LATER, when there are 40,000,000 Masters swimmers out there instead of 40,000, you'll see colleges and universities falling all themselves to court that spectator/donor market. So, starting right now, we Masters can do our part by getting every Masters swimmer to actively recruit new swimmers! If every Masters swimmer were to bring two new swimmers into USMS every year -in 7 yrs time we'd be there. Let's ROLL! later - e -

The truth is that it is the football and basketball programs that bring in the big donors (often regardless of whether thay are winning or losing in any given season) and provide the nationwide exposure that make college athletic programs possible in the first place. Without those programs (and all the expenditures necessary to make them viable) the vast majority of schools would not have athletic departments at all - club sports would be it. As a swim coach I hate that situation. But, having spent a goodly portion of my prior career inside the upper administration of big-time Div I college athletics, I understand why lots of sports are in line for the chopping block, with swimming at or near the front of the line. I was in the Univ of Houston athletic department when the Cougar men's program was one of the first to be axed in this long and growing wave of athletic financial load shedding by universities. Swimming programs tend to generate bigger negative cash flows than any other sport in their schools. And they generally do not generate much (or any) of the kind of publicity that endears college administrations to them. Facilities for competitive swimming cost more to build, staff and operate than for any other sport (assuming you remove the cost of spectator seating from the equation) - and have little additional income generation potential, unlike facilities for football and basketball. Universities are not the Evil Empire in this - they have hundreds (or thousands) of worthwhile directions they can send their money. And no matter how many 0s are in the budget, the income side of every budget is finite and the expense side of every preliminary budget is ALWAYS bigger than the income side. The budget scalpel WILL be wielded EVERY budget cycle and only those programs that can 1) bring in sufficient cash/donations, or 2) generate big exposure, or 3) broadly serve student/faculty needs are going to survive the operation. Swimming, in general, doesn't do any of those things. Swimming has made little or no progress (heck, not even real attempts at progress) in carving out a bigger chunk of the spectator/donor market. Until it does, we will continue to see college programs whittled away at - that's just economic reality. Swimming, in it's current form, simply doesn't measure up to the economic demands of big-time college athletics. And if we really want to talk about how best a university might serve its population AND the sport of swimming, it would be set the 50mtr pool up in SCY configuration and take that $211,000 and plough it all into swimming classes and intramural swimming with an eye toward having as many graduates as possible enter the workforce with swimming skills and a love for personal participation in the sport. LATER, when there are 40,000,000 Masters swimmers out there instead of 40,000, you'll see colleges and universities falling all themselves to court that spectator/donor market. So, starting right now, we Masters can do our part by getting every Masters swimmer to actively recruit new swimmers! If every Masters swimmer were to bring two new swimmers into USMS every year -in 7 yrs time we'd be there. Let's ROLL! later - e -