Are the ACC, Big 12, SEC At An Advantage For Not Postponing Fall Sports?
After huge decisions by the Big Ten and Pac-12 on Tuesday to postpone the fall sports seasons for the upcoming school year, the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), SEC and Big 12 have maintained they will go forward with fall sports for the time being. Although swimming is a winter sport at the NCAA level, the sports has still been hindered by the coronavirus, as it first felt the effects from the virus when the NCAA championships were canceled in March last season.
Now as a new season approaches, there is still a lot of unknowns over the status of the safety of having meets. If it is deemed unsafe for teams to travel from state to state for competitions, then what does the season look like?
There are still a lot of uncertainties over whether the virus will still be a problem in the United States by October and November when the swim season really gets underway across the nation and whether it will be safe and viable to allow the student-athletes to train and compete during those months. As of now, the Pac-12 has shut down sports until January and the Big Ten has not made a decision whether winter sports can even practice, meaning that the winter sports season will be anything but normal as the U.S. enters month five of a global pandemic.
Assuming the season goes on without a hitch and without the Big Ten and Pac-12 schools this semester, here is what the top 10 from last year’s NCAA psych sheet would look like without those schools.
Men (bold teams are eligible)
- Texas, 474.5
- California, 442
- Florida, 269
- Indiana, 251.5
- Michigan, 249.5
- Texas A&M, 243.33
- Arizona State, 178
- Alabama, 177
- NC State, 177
- Louisville, 176.5
Women:
- Virginia, 374
- Tennessee, 304.5
- California, 272
- NC State, 248
- Michigan, 233.5
- Georgia, 217
- Stanford, 193
- Southern Cal, 177
- Kentucky, 159
- Auburn, 150
Only six teams from each of last season’s top 10 would be returning to a “normal” season, as the three power five conferences have maintained their stance that they will be participating in fall sports. The status of the swimming and diving season has still not been decided, but one thing we know already is that it will definitely not be a normal one that we have been accustomed to.
Some senior student-athletes in conferences without a fall sports plan in place, like the Ivy League, have already decided to retire to pursue a life outside of the pool after college and are not willing to hang on to train for one more year when the status of the season is still up in the air.
Are There Advantages to Going Forward With the Season?
If the college swim season does end up going forward in October or November with either a vaccine in place or a green light from the CDC, do the teams in the three conferences that have yet to postpone fall sports have an advantage over those in the other two?
Many schools have not been able to hold organized practices this summer as the swimmers have either been swimming at local club teams or training on their own. And if some schools were able to hold organized practice, then they weren’t able to do it on campus, which would be hard to sustain during the school year. Neither of those solutions fill the void of being apart of the tight-knit group that is a college team, so if schools in the Big 12, ACC and SEC are able to hold organized practices when schools resume classes in August, then that gives them a leg up in terms of forming a team culture and getting everyone in the water at the same time, and for consistent work.
But even if schools in the Big Ten aren’t able to compete in the fall semester, there is still the possibility that they can hold organized practices, which wouldn’t put them at a huge disadvantage from their peers in the other conferences. If the Big Ten schools can return to training but no meets, that scenario is better than nothing. There is just not one universal decision being made across the NCAA and across the U.S. allowing the swim teams to hold organized practices, which puts disadvantages at play.
There is also the threat of losing eligibility if there is no season. When the NCAA canceled the spring season last year, it granted an extra year of eligibility to those student athletes that had the season wiped away out of their control. How will that same issue be resolved for the Big Ten and Pac-12 student-athletes when their peers in other conferences will be unaffected? The Pac-12 postponed sports until January so they could in theory still have a swim season if deemed safe, they would just miss out on the fall semester.
Arizona State made the decision to redshirt its entire team before the conference postponed fall sports. Stanford incoming freshmen Regan Smith and Lillie Nordmann have both decided to defer their enrollment to Stanford to stay at home and train with their club coaches ahead of the Olympic Trials. Ultimately if there is no season, then none of these hypothetical questions will matter, but until a final decision regarding the fate of the winter sports season is made, the question needs to be asked: can we have a fair swim & dive season if conferences make separate decisions regarding who participates?
We posed the question last month if Arizona State’s decision would cause a ripple effect among the NCAA swimming community regarding the upcoming season. In just the two weeks that have followed, two power five conferences have decided to postpone the fall sports season, with the winter sports season under threat as well if there is no real progress in containing the virus. There is still time for the other three power five conferences to make a firm decision, but for now they have put their foot down and decided to go forward with the fall.
A postponed fall sports season doesn’t directly affect the winter sports necessarily, since they would still be permitted to practice if given the green light by the school and the local health department. The likelihood of them competing in meets would be low, but a fall sports postponement doesn’t mean the winter sports season is gone as well.
There is so much uncertainty regarding what will happen to the swimming and diving season since each conference has made different decisions that jeopardizes the fairness of a normal swim season.
Powerhouse swim programs at Texas, N.C. State, Virginia, Florida and Georgia, among others, would have the potential to return to campus as a swim team and be able to participate in meets this fall (for the time being), while the teams at Stanford, Cal, Michigan and Indiana, among others, will not be able to have meets in the fall. Almost no schools have finalized schedules for this season because there is so much unknown with what could happen.
Will this negatively impact recruiting as well? It is perhaps too late for athletes at Pac-12 and Big Ten schools to go somewhere else, but it may lead to some uncommitted high school juniors to rethink their decisions. Of course it may mean nothing in the long run, as the American people are hoping for the virus to be an afterthought at the start of the 2021 season. But the 2020 season still has a lot of questions surrounding it.
This is all assuming that it will be safe in a couple months from now to hold a season, but the Pac-12 and Big Ten decisions have put a serious damper on the swim season, whether it happens or not. Even if the season goes on without them, it will be a huge blow to the Cal-Texas men’s rivalry, and the Stanford-Virginia women’s rivalry as those schools were early favorites for the 2021 national title.
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