Lots of news lately about possible conference realignments in the NCAA. I see the first official move was made today with Colorado agreeing to join the Pac-10. The Pac-10 is also looking at several other Big 12 schools. The Big Ten is looking at adding members with Nebraska and Notre Dame being mentioned.
So how will this affect college swimming? My gut tells me it's neutral or negative. I think football is the driving force in these realignments and it will just marginalize the non-revenue sports even more than they already are.
Any thoughts?
P.S. by the way, the Pac-10's possible realignment to a 16 team conference by adding six Big 12 teams will only increase the number of men's swim teams to seven in the conference (Texas and TAMU being the new ones). So the conference would go from 5/10 teams fielding men's teams to 7/16.
Latest standings from this year:
1. Stanford
2. Ohio State
3. Virginia
4. Duke
5. North Carolina
Yeah, the ACC sure does suck as an overall athletic conference. :)If I actually cared more, I'd have to dig into the data, the model, the weightings. There's something screwy here when UVA and athletics are combined. I'll give you UNC and Duke and Bernadino's done more with the UVa swim team over the years than I ever imagined, but I doubt if you asked the average American college sports fan to rank a powerhouse school that Virginia would be in their top 5. Maybe someone's ranking lacrosse too heavily in the algorithm?
Sadly, I'm still sad about the #1 team ... moreso because I believe it ... not for swimming, mind you, but overall, the Cardinal's pretty darn good. There, I said it. I'll never get invited to an event in Austin ever again.
Latest standings from this year:
1. Stanford
2. Ohio State
3. Virginia
4. Duke
5. North Carolina
Yeah, the ACC sure does suck as an overall athletic conference. :)If I actually cared more, I'd have to dig into the data, the model, the weightings. There's something screwy here when UVA and athletics are combined. I'll give you UNC and Duke and Bernadino's done more with the UVa swim team over the years than I ever imagined, but I doubt if you asked the average American college sports fan to rank a powerhouse school that Virginia would be in their top 5. Maybe someone's ranking lacrosse too heavily in the algorithm?
Sadly, I'm still sad about the #1 team ... moreso because I believe it ... not for swimming, mind you, but overall, the Cardinal's pretty darn good. There, I said it. I'll never get invited to an event in Austin ever again.
