Buy the Dartmouth Swim Team on eBay

The facility described in Splash was a training pool. Pools get expensive when you need to expand the deck (HVAC costs increase tremendously) and add spectator seating and expanded locker rooms. You're probably looking at least 10 million for a 50 meter pool PLUS the costs of real estate, etc. I don't think people in the swimming community are going to succeed by complaining about how much money is spent on football. That's the major problem with the approach that many are taking when trying to fight shutdown of programs across the country. Some organized body is going to have to find a compelling story that goes well beyond the "tradition" of competitive swimming to raise a lot of money to build new expensive facilities that can support swimming. I think there is great potential in a strategy centered around the benefits of state-of-the-art fitness facilities at colleges and universities. Perhaps we should align ourselves with vendors that manufacture such equipment as well as major swimming vendors and come up with a nationwide marketing program to promote the benefits of such centers (with pools) to universities (it helps them attract good students) and alumni (keeps your alma mater competitive) and students (healthy bodies, healthy minds). Seems to me that USA Swimming has the most to lose and should lead but USMS has a lot to gain and has the credibility to honestly promote swimming for fitness.

The pool in Kentucky (indoors) had ample spectator seating for those who would attend a Dartmouth swim meet. I had only pointed out the Kentucky pool as a sidenote that pools don't HAVE to cost outrageous amounts. Really, the facility shouldn't be the issue. They're doing just fine right now with their pool and so are a number of other college swimming programs. Programs with pools built in the late 60's/early 70's that may be outdated but are still functional. The bigger issue is the cancellation of the sport due to "budget constraints" or however they want to word it. If every college and university took the athletic department finance sheet and eliminated each program that they run at a loss, they would have to cancel almost ALL of their programs. Swimming certainly falls into this category, but it should be the duty of any athletic-affiliated school (D-I,II,III) to offer the traditional amateur sports at the varisty level. Unfortunately the NCAA and its member institutions have lost sight of the original ideals and focus of college athletics. It's now a business centered around the bottom-line. Another fact out there is that there are many schools offering swimming programs that are in much greater financial hardship than a school like Dartmouth, or big state schools like Nebraska or Iowa State. Cutting a program (whether it be swimming, wrestling, gymnastics, track) with such an insignificant budget (relatively) makes absolutely no sense. Cutting the athletic program... now that would be a cost-cutting move. Think of it this way, if your company needed to do some financial housecleaning to meet its numbers what would it do... fire Joe who works on project X, a non-revenue generating, dead-in-the-water R&D program OR eliminate project X? OK, I tried. -RM

Rain Man: Your analysis is logical if you look at the revenue/costs numbers for the athletic department etc. The real rationale behind keeping big money losing programs like football is that they contribute to university-wide fundraising from alumni. At virtually every Harvard home football game there is some associated alumni-related activitiy in the adjacent Murr Center. I've not noticed similar activities for swimming AND THATS OUR PROBLEM. We need to stop complaining about all the money that football get's and start mobilizing our supporters in such a way that there contributions are linked to swimming. That's a university-by-university challenge. We also need a global marketing program that shows how building new pools helps ALL STUDENTS on campus. Re Paul comments on USB. It's obviously true that simply getting student fitness facilities will not guarantee survival of varsity aquatics. However, if the people spearheading these facilities are tied into varsity aquatics AND MASTERS then the chances are much better. My recommendation for keeping Darmouth swimming is to fire the people who manage their endowment (5% loss) and outsource it to Harvard management. With the money saved and better returns on their endowment they will have all the money they need for a new pool (and other new facilities).

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 -

To compare Stanford and the Ivies is not a legitimate comparison. Stanford has the largest sports budget of all Division I schools. While Stanford is clearly an equivalent of the Ivies academically, in my opinion, they are not in the least bit equal in their spending on athletics. Many have complained about Stanford's excessive spending on sports these days.

My favorite school is the University of Chicago (where I went to grad school.) It still has the best overall football record, percentage wise, in the Big Ten, but dropped out of the league because it felt football had an inappropriate effect on campus and academic life (more accurately, its academic standards and admission policies were having a negative effect on football success.) Now it plays an active Division III sport schedule, with lots of student participation. Another favorite school is the California Institute of Technology which plays a complete lineup of competitive sports, also in Division III. The teams are not very good, but given how small the student body is, the percent participation is very large. It is a mistake to think that an athletic department should be self-supporting. Instead, a comprehensive sports and recreation program is part of the college education - recognizing that the brain and body are part of one person, and no person can be complete without developing all aspects of oneself. Nobody expects that the college english or sociology or biology department pay for themselves, the athletic department and the individual sports should not either. The schools I mentioned understand this, as does Stanford and (most) of the Ivies and many of the liberal-arts colleges that are around. On a personal note, a significant factor in deciding what college to attend was that it have a swimming team that I could participate in (and I did not attend better academic schools just because they had *too* good of a team.) I went to a school very similar to Dartmouth (isolated, cold, small) so I could very well have selected Dartmouth instead of the one I did. The strenth of my college application was my academics, not my swimming (I was not recruited by anyone), but I know that I would not have gone to any school that did not have a team. I'm sure that Dartmouth will not notice the loss of acceptances by the few applicants that feel the same I did. But Dartmouth, next year, will be less of a school than it used to be.

I compare them only in the sense that they both treat athletics seriously and support many athletic teams. Stanford spends a lot on sports - including the minor ones, because the school thinks that sports are important. I assure you that they do not have state-of-the-art swimming, and baseball, and . . . facilities because these programs make money. Why should anyone complain that Stanford spends too much money on Gymastics and other on-the-edge sports? I compared Stanford and the Ivies to other schools, not to each other.

I recognize that every school has its own seemingly unique issues. Nevertheless, I do see one common denominator in particular that seems to determine whether or not swimming (or gymnastics or wrestling -- those sports are hurting even more than swimming) survives -- it's the presence of football. As examples let me describe two universities that I happen to be familiar with. The first is New York University, a "mere" division III school (despite having around 50,000 students, 10,000 of them undergraduates), where I attended college. NYU recently opened a new state of the art aquatics facility, even though it already has a facility that's less than 20 years old and sill in use. It has a very extensive athletic program, including a successful swim team and a water polo club, as well as men's and women's basketball and other sports. What it does not have, and has not had since the 1930's, is a football team. There was never any issue of whether swimming would cause other teams to make "sacrifices." Indeed, the pools were supported as recreational facilities for the whole school, including the teams. The other school is Hofstra University, where I endured law school. It too has a state of the art 50 meter swimming facility, that's about 10 years old. But it doesn't have a swimming team. It's unwilling to create one despite having all the facilities needed because that might mean reducing the football team's roster a few slots. Now I'm not against college football -- I didn't take much satisfaction when a college in upstate New York recently dropped football and added (yes, added!) swimming. Football players are just as entitled as swimmers to pursue their sport (althought they shouldn't be more entitled). What I do suggest is that at schools with football, the priorities of the athletic departments and the administration seem to be skewed. The result is that other sports must sacrifice, or be sacrificed, for the good of football. Several of the posters in this thread have explained that as being because football is a way to generate alumni support and involvement (read, donations). That perception I think is the problem. Sports are no longer seen on those campuses as an activity for the students, but as a business. The difference between NYU and Hofstra to return to my example, is that when NYU's recently retired long time President, L.J. Oliva first took office he made a deliberate and publicly stated policy decision, that athletics and athletic facilities (a school with 10,000 undergraduates needs extensive recreational facilities) were to be for the benefit of the students involved, not a fundraising tool. And, by the way, NYU has been doing just fine since then in both fundraising and alumni involvement.

Now, most of you never attended either a community college or a cal-state school. Football and basketball are not much money makers at them. Most of the students are commuters that work 30 or more hours a week. Unlike UCLA, both Fullerton and Long Beach had few people that attended the football games and in fact Fullerton had their games at a community college field. Now one of the UC schools in California has never had Football, UCI but it has always had a swim team water polo team. UCI is pretty commuter for a UC school. At a tradtional college setting Football and basketball make money but at JC's and commuter schools no. So, a community college or Cal-state school drops a program they might also drop basketball and football along with swimming or track and field. For those back east the Cal-state system is kind to similar to the city college system in New York. Maybe, their is a good reason to keep a swimming team at Indian River Community college in Flordia since they do offer scholorships but many of the JC programs are at a level from C level age group swimmers up to pre-nationals and many good high school teams can beat them. California has swim programs at the community college level where the schools are less than 10 miles apart. If one of them drops swimming or other sports, someone can always go to another school that is close.

I think that Emmett is on the right track. We need to stop complaining about football and start mobilizing people to support SWIMMING and remember that varsity teams are a small (but important) part of our sport. Again, masters can play an important role but getting more students BACK INTO swimming -think about the 40,000+ freshman entering school every year who will give up organized swimming when HS, Summer and Y involvement stops when they enter college. This group should be our prime recruiting group for masters--it certainly has proven a very good group to target here in New England. These non-varsity swimming college students are the future of our sport and can be the immense popular base to support swimming at ALL LEVELS.