An open letter to the swimming and diving public was recently published where the author, a respected collegiate diving coach defended the recent butchering of the NCAA’s championship meet. It was rebuilt under the guise of being good for TV. It eliminated the “B” finals, along with a laundry list of other changes. The “B” finals, many times determine the outcome of the final Team scores. It was a mess. Going so far as the minimal crowd chanting: “BRING BACK B”. Those “B” finals are also the incubator for the following year’s stars!! The experience those athletes were denied is invisible to some, but having to march out to your race with tv cameras in your face takes practice and experience. This year they were robbed of that experience.
All due respect to the letter’s author: Even a respected professional can get it all completely wrong at times and this letter delivers this rather completely.
If we are to have a March Championships, we are 4th down the line in viewer palatability. Men’s 🏀, Women’s 🏀, Wrestling, then Swimming.
This is a hard fact.
April then turns to nba,nhl, Indy lead-up, and early golf coverage.
This is a sport that peaks for viewers once Every Four Years. Hard stop. In that Olympic Year, viewership of ncaa swimming will rise, but never compete on TV with the aforementioned sports.
Even with the changes, it wasn’t even attractive enough for tv to break away from the ESPNU level of programming hierarchy.
They are not the bad guys, BUT: TV wants to hand pick the story, write the story, produce the story, broadcast the story, profit from the story.
Handing them the sport to do this will compromise every aspect of our sport.
In the old days, they had to watch it play out and pick it up in real time to tell the story of the meet, of the day, of the race. TV doesn’t do that anymore and we are in deep denial believing that they will caretake our sport.
TV is one giant infomercial. That’s all it will ever be, selling time to sponsors.
The solution to this year’s debacle? There are many. Maybe run the meet the way we know it, maybe build a production team and build the show ourselves and buy the tv time just like usa swimming does(or did). Yes, nbc produced all those nationals, but that air time on Sundays was purchased, just like an infomercial, by usa swimming. That’s why you only saw usa swimming sponsor ads! They helped buy the air time!!
Then, in an Olympic year, the network would weave it into their programming as part of their Olympic contract as a lead into the Games.
Maybe it’s time to stop selling our sport to writers and producers when the actual sport writes itself in real time right in front of us!
I was a part of a coaching staff that won five NCAA championships back in the 1990’s. The meet was shot for tv tape delay and shown the next week. That was a solid trade-off for the stories of the meet to be told as they happened, instead of how the tv writer/producer types of today want to prepackage it.
Sometimes progress means digging in and NOT changing with the wind. We super fans are going to watch the live stuff on our devices as it happens(live). The casual viewer is going to either stumble on it and stay to watch, or just wants the highlight show. Let’s offer both, without compromising the sport!
Every Four Years™ 