I have a solution.
If you follow me on the platform formerly known as Twitter, you know that I’ve been railing against Last Chance meets for the last week, and for years.
Last Chance meets are boring, they’re tedious, they’re unserious, and they’re counter to the spirit of competition – and if you aren’t invested in the spirit of competition of collegiate swimming, then the 2025 reality is that you aren’t invested in the existence of collegiate swimming.
So far this weekend, I have seen a 1:13 as an official recorded time in a women’s 200 free relay, and a swimmer who stopped a 200 free after the first 50 recorded as the official event winner. That’s all of the evidence I need to know that these glorified time trials are just not in the spirit of sports.
And to clarify: I don’t blame coaches for taking advantage of the system. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do within the rules in the best interest of your athletes. That is why I am proposing a change of the rules.
I have seen a few good counterpoints in favor of them, with the best being that you’d hate for a potential NCAA scorer to get sick during their conference meet and miss the chance to swim at NCAAs not because of training plans or effort or race execution, but because of illness. And I agree with that, to an extent.
So I have a new, radical proposal
that so many old school coaches, who want control, are going to hate.
First, we must remember that the current NCAA selection procedures are a zero sum game. One individual in means one individual out, so “taking away someone’s opportunity to make the meet at a Last Chance” is also the same as “giving someone the opportunity to make the meet at a Conference Championship.”
The idea is sort of borrowed from track & field, and sort of borrowed from basketball. Sort of.
- First,you chose the NCAA field until you get to 10 remaining slots in each individual event.
- Then you host four Regional Play-In sites, where anybody not already qualified who has at least a “B” cut can attend (there are a ton of those – 150+ per event).
- Top 2 from each region, plus the two next-best ‘wildcard’ times, fill the last 10 spots from NCAAs.
Here are the reasons I think this would be an awesome spectacle:
- It would create a “prove it in the pool” scenario for those last spots. “If you want my spot, then beat me for it.”
- It would be incredible must-see TV. It will have that Olympic Trials feel, where there’s absolute euphoria surrounded by absolute heartbreak.
- It would be equitable, and all swimmers would get their chance, in the water, where sports are meant to be played out.
The two downsides I anticipate being brought up are cost and pool choice, which I really don’t think are that big of downsides. It can’t be more expensive to run these four regional meets than it is to run the 15 scattered Last Chance meets, especially if there’s some offsetting revenue from ticket sales or advertising on a stream. In terms of pool choice (aka home pool, or one pool being faster than others for wildcard slots), that’s just a part of sports.
In the ‘cynical, I’ve watched swimming refuse to do anything good for too long’ brain, I assume that this shift would be too radical to ever pass muster with the powerful coaches’ committee that makes these decisions, so it is probably dead before it gets going, but if anyone has any other reasons why this idea actually sucks, leave them in the comments below.