Final Four?

I wonder if the New York Times did research here?

The NYT’s national commercial that I see every night during Jeopardy informs us that “It’s about the quality of the journalism…period.” Seeing as there is not yet a final four in swimming, in any division, I don’t think that applies to this story.

However, I have read some casual talk about instituting a Dual Meet National Championship Tournament in D1. Personally, I think it’s a great idea and would love to see it happen in all 3 divisions. They could hold the final 4 at Yale (http://yalebulldogs.cstv.com/facilities/facpwg-pools.html), bar none the coolest pool for a dual meet in the world.

That looks much like the Cook Hall pool at the University Minnesota. You can get to it follwoing a bunch of tunnels from the new pool.

@Deep Water wrote:

That looks much like the Cook Hall pool at the University Minnesota. You can get to it following a bunch of tunnels from the new pool.

Absolutely – exactly my thought. I visited the Cook Hall last year with a couple of older swimmers who actually competed there a “few” years ago and remembered most the looong cold walk from the locker rooms to the pool.

Derek you need to write the NY Times and tell them about the error. As the proprietor of D3 swimming.com it is your responsibility.

Once, my local newspaper back in Ohio said that I swam in a dual meet with a division one school that doesn’t actually have a swim team. According to them, I won all four of my individual events. I still have the story and it cracks me up to this day. they also used to butcher the yards/meters thing beyond belief. I was a 21.2 in the 50 meter freestyle in high school.

Here is the article if anyone is interested.

http://tinyurl.com/2nrfar

It’s actually a pretty interesting article about splitting Division III into two separate divisions. Either Division III and Division IV, or Division III-A and Division III-B, or something like that. Colleges that focus more on academics could go in one division, while colleges that focus more on athletics could go in the other. That’s one of the possibilities. Collegeswimming.com posted on here about this a while ago.

If a split happened, the implications for division III swimming would be huge, and could make things a lot less competitive. The Presidents of the colleges might think that such a split is necessary, but for swimming I can’t see how it would be a positive change.

@Vic wrote:

for swimming I can’t see how it would be a positive change.

I would have made nationals and it would have meant a heck of a lot less.

Another consideration that I’m really surprised the article didn’t talk about is the fact that there would need to be two times as many championships. Wouldn’t this also double the cost? Or, if costs were not doubled, both championships would be a lot less cool.

@Derek wrote:

@Vic wrote:

for swimming I can’t see how it would be a positive change.

I would have made nationals and it would have meant a heck of a lot less.

Another consideration that I’m really surprised the article didn’t talk about is the fact that there would need to be two times as many championships. Wouldn’t this also double the cost? Or, if costs were not doubled, both championships would be a lot less cool.

Yeah, upon reflection, there would be some positives. Conceivably, more people would get to compete in a championship, which would also lose some prestige. There are positives and negatives to this.

It’s interesting to think about which schools would want to be in which division. I think that a lot of it would come down to who is the president of that school at the time, and what his or her beliefs are.

@Vic wrote:

@Derek wrote:

@Vic wrote:

for swimming I can’t see how it would be a positive change.

I would have made nationals and it would have meant a heck of a lot less.

Another consideration that I’m really surprised the article didn’t talk about is the fact that there would need to be two times as many championships. Wouldn’t this also double the cost? Or, if costs were not doubled, both championships would be a lot less cool.

Yeah, upon reflection, there would be some positives. Conceivably, more people would get to compete in a championship, which would also lose some prestige. There are positives and negatives to this.

I was just pointing out that nationals would mean a lot less.. yeah, I would have gone were it two divisions, but would have been the value? Sectionals was easier to attend than Juniors, but it was irrelevant because it had no prestige.

@Vic wrote:

Yeah, upon reflection, there would be some positives. Conceivably, more people would get to compete in a championship, which would also lose some prestige. There are positives and negatives to this.

I see 0 positives.

At the rate they are eliminating men’s Div I swim programs we’ll go back to the old days when we had one division with two groups, colleges and universities, or are you guys too young to remember this?