Foreigh Athletes in the NCAA

I got curious and thought I would check the rosters of some of the top ranked men's swimming programs. Arizona has 34 on its roster which includes 10 swimmers from Arizona and 7 international swimmers. Auburn (located in Alabama) has 25 on its roster which includes 1 swimmer from Alabama and 6 international swimmers. I have to admit that it bothers me somewhat that there are more international swimmers on Auburn's team than swimmers from Alabama. Keep in mind that Auburn is a state school and we have several outstanding USA teams in the state - Huntsville Swim Association, Birmingham Swim League, Hoover Blue Thunder, Auburn Aquatics are just a few of the good teams we have here. I sure would like to see more than one Alabama swimmer on the roster. With 9.9 scholarships - care to guess what % was allocated to the international students? If only one swimmer is from Alabama then almost the entire team has to pay out of state tuition or receive financial aid (could be scholarships). I don't know how much difference there is in tuition in-state vs. out-of-state in Alabama. I bet Cesar Cielo gets 1 scholarship. That leaves 8.9 to be divided among the remaining 24 swimmers+divers.

Nope. Cielo went pro. OK - but in prior years Cielo probably had 10% of Auburn's scholarships for men's swimming/diving. BTW - not saying he didn't deserve it. We proved he was the world's best short course yards sprinter (and a fine LCM sprinter too in Beijing).

Lindsay - I have no doubt the times of the international swimmers are faster. What is disturbing to me is that it appears that Auburn, our state land grant university, is unwillling to cultivate the talent we have here. Wait a minute. Is the job of the coach to try to cultivate talent within the state, or to try to put the best team together he can to try to win? At lower levels, people should be trying to develop talent and make sure the kids have fun. But I'm pretty sure that in college, they want the team to win. If the football team at Auburn went 4-8 and the coach said, "Yeah, we didn't win, but look at all of the local talent I cultivated!" I'm pretty sure he'd still get fired. Is swimming all that different? Do you think they'd give the coach a pass on having a sucky team just because he gave lots of scholarships to Alabama kids to try to cultivate them?

Lets use the Euro professional sports model....maximum of two foreign swimmers per team That used to be the rule in socccer for example - but no more - the German League had team last year that put 11 foreign players on the field.

I went to a very small, hard, expensive college. I couldn't swim the entire time because I had to work. In this state the largest university doesn't have a men's swim team. In many other sports there has been a tremendous use of foreign students for decades. It has been argued that the Iranian revolution was in fact started by the huge number of Iranian young men here playing soccer for universities (I remember them on our streets in the time. Some were the best collegiate soccer players our country has ever seen) . They were able to see just how manipulative the US was in other nations' internal affairs. Okay now I've made everyone made at me again. The guy who was (might still be) in charge of running investigations of foreign students coming to the states went to the same little college I went to. I would argue that the scholarships that go to foreign born volleyball players ensure a more harmful view to our notion of foreigners going to our schools with sports scholarships than do swimmers. Many schools get these guys to their schools, if they don't win, the guy looses everything. Many of these guys coem from Brazil. Many have very weak arguments against calling themselves professional volleyball players.

I would argue that the scholarships that go to foreign born volleyball players ensure a more harmful view to our notion of foreigners going to our schools with sports scholarships than do swimmers. Many schools get these guys to their schools Ignorance on my part, but I had no idea men's volleyball was an NCAA sport until reading this. I remember thinking it was strange that the U.S. men's team did so well in Beijing considering it isn't an NCAA sport.

I'm not real sure but I think the only sport that men compete in on the collegiate level that isn't controlled by the NCAA is rowing. Which oddly is one of the first sports colleges competed in here in the States. It always amazed me also is how expensive it is to have just one person let alone 8 or 30.

I'm sorry I thought that Ultimate Frisbee teams had to have both men & women on the team. There are some local rules requiring coed teams, but most college teams are men's or women's.

Rowing is a strange one because there are quite a few very serious men's rowing teams. I'm sure the primary reason it's not added for men is Title IX compliance. Lots of schools have added women's programs in rowing for that very reason.

Lindsay - I have no doubt the times of the international swimmers are faster. What is disturbing to me is that it appears that Auburn, our state land grant university, is unwillling to cultivate the talent we have here. ... Seems our boys find happier homes at Alabama, Tennessee, and Texas. I think this is indicative of the situation at many programs, and I see this in the DC/Metro area annually. There are several great national USA-S programs in the area cultivating world-class swimmers (Rockville-Montgomery, FISH, Curl), and every year, I see the top kids go away for school rather than stay home and head to the University of Maryland. These kids want to have a college experience, and all too often, they want to be as far away from home as they can get. And why not? In some cases, these kids may be swimming in the same Natatorium for 10 years by the time they're done with college. You can't blame them for that, but at the same time, what are these universities doing to recruit these kids? ARE these local universities recruiting these kids? What about diversity on your team - don't you want swimmers from different backgrounds coming in? To Maryland's credit, the last couple of years, they've gotten a couple of RMSC guys with some real potential - my hope is they'll be the beginning of a pipeline back to the club and that they'll start bringing their younger friends in and help build our team with local talent.