This post was written by Gary Brown, director of the NCAA News.
OK all of you casual golfers out there. Say you had access to a new-tech driver that helped you regularly launch 300-yarders down the middle of the fairway. You'd bite, wouldn't you? Even if it cost you $300 or so - that's just a dollar a yard, with a return on investment of being the best in your foursome.
You're happy, and so is the guy who made the club. Except your buddies aren't - that is, until they buy one, too, and then we're back to square one until the next advancement comes along.
Well, something similar is happening in college swimming, where this weekend's Division I Men's Swimming and Diving Championships will feature the reduced-drag, full-body techno-suits that have been taking the sport by storm. They've already been prominent at the Divisions II and III championships and the Division I women's nationals over the past two weeks, and we've seen NCAA records fall in about two-thirds of the events. So what's the problem? Nothing, if you like fast swimming. But the times are so much faster that people are raising eyebrows. Coaches don't seem to like the new suits, and they're starting to wonder aloud if the revolutionary buoyant material is having too much of an effect on the sport. One coach said, "The suits make moderate swimmers fast and fast swimmers really fast."
But student-athletes don't seem bothered - they just want to go fast. One of them at the Division II women's meet who was put off by the notion that the suits were overshadowing natural talent said, "If you put the suits in the water, they're not going to swim by themselves."
What's the right balance? Everyone wants to perform better in their respective sport, and when it comes to equipment, people usually will invest in whatever they can to help that performance along. It's not cheating, for goodness sake, is it?
But it's causing issues. For one, there's an arms race going on that is expensive at a time when athletics departments can't afford it. Yet administrators and coaches are caught in the middle - they want their athletes to be able to compete, and they know they can't at the elite level without the suits. So they have to acquire them one way or another - and if the department can't bear the cost, then the student-athletes will. After all, if you've invested most of your life competing in the sport you love, you'd most likely spend the extra dough to get what you need, wouldn't you?
And the records keep falling. Mark Gole, the head men's and women's coach at Truman State University, pointed out that Alexander Popov used to be the world record holder in the 100-meter free, and just a little more than a year with the new suits, Popov is barely in the top 50. Too much for you?
OK, now you play the role of NCAA swimming committee member. What's your pleasure? You want to try to regulate these things amid antitrust laws? You want to get in the business of testing suits and setting standards based on exhaustive research? Or do you want to maintain the environment of "anything goes," figuring that the sport benefits from the publicity of world records?
Who knows? At least with everyone wearing them, it's a level swimming pool.By the way, I'm wearing one right now, and even though I used to be a 100-words-per-minute typist, I banged this post out in an NCAA national-office-record 1:22.05. I like it!
