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Terry Webster wrote:How does one go about finding a new conference?

I have no experience at this step, but here are some criteria:

- Identify Division 1 programs that preferably sponsor both Men's and Women's Swimming & Diving programs
- Determine if only our Men require a new conference home or both
- Select conferences offer competitiveness comparable to our current competition or, even better, stronger than our present alignment
- What travel requirements would we face and will we fund it
- Will any move help with our recruiting, e.g. offer greater challenges
- In a perfect world, a change would apply to more sports that S&D.
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WP, at most, wouldn’t this require we make 4 conference road trips per season, including the conference championships?

Stanford - San Jose, UCLA/USC - LAX, Utah - Salt Lake City, and AZ St - Phoenix. All travel can be done via Dallas Love Field on non-stop flights with SW Airlines. I just checked their website, on average individual airfares are under $300 r/t if booked early enough, so i can’t see cost by either side being that big a consideration.

Plus it fulfills your stated requirements of upgrading our conference affiliation while helping recruiting.

Seems like if the PAC-12 wanted to test the waters in Texas, this would be a good opportunity.

I also looked up the new AAC members. It appears only Florida Atlantic has a Men’s S&D team. Their facilities are simply an outdoor Olympic sized pool. They finished in 5th place in C-USA out of 6 teams.

Would seem a big drop down if we partnered with them.

SoCal_Pony wrote:I also looked up the new AAC members. It appears only Florida Atlantic has a Men’s S&D team. Their facilities are simply an outdoor Olympic sized pool. They finished in 5th place in C-USA out of 6 teams.

Would seem a big drop down if we partnered with them.

That is the issue for non-revenue sports, where schools selecting drop or don't sponsor many sports, especially Men's programs. As for FAU, that's a long way to go for one meet bi-annually. Actually, in Swimming & Diving, we don't have to have Dual Meets during the regular season and can continue scheduling regionally opponents, UT, A&M, TCU, etc. I like your PAC12 option most of all, unless SMU gets its all sports invite from Big XII. Candidly, I would think the Big XII would welcome us for S&D, when they lose UT.

It looks like SMU will have 3 men qualify for NCAA Championships - Colin Feehery 400 IM (3:41), Cotton Fields 400 IM (3:43) and Caleb Rhodenbaugh 200 breast (1:53.1). Colin should also swim the 200 IM and 200 Breast, Cotton - 200 IM and 200 Back, Caleb - also the 100 breast.
Justin Baker just missed in the 50 free.
No relays this year - hopefully in another year we will have multiple relays.
Thru 2 days of NCAA diving - no divers qualified - but possibly someone will tomorrow.
First time in a very long time we have had 3 individuals.

Thanks, ponyswim

Having three men qualify for the NCAA is great news and progress, despite not having qualified in any of our relays. Having relays there would demonstrate be even greater progress, as the team aspect is more obvious and brings more swimmers, who might only go as part of a relay.

Encouraging.