The Devil and Miss Manaudou

Comeback Success For the French Olympic Queen A warm welcome back to the lovely Laure... Yesterday at the French Olympic Trials, Laure Manaudou sealed her return to the Olympic stage with victory in the women's 100 back. Her time - 1:00.16 - was no joke. Just tenths off her lifetime best, and fast enough to put her back in the game for the medals in London. An Olympic champion eight years ago in Athens, with a lifetime of celebrity and scandal stuffed in between, one of the greats of her generation is back.

It's become tiresome to preface every race result with that fast-suit disclaimer (we all know everyone was faster in the warped years of '08-'09), so let's keep the suits out of it. The sport is a more interesting place with Laure Manaudou in it. Compared to what she's been through, times on the clock are boring and incidental.

To review: From 2004 to 2007, Manaudau was arguably the greatest female swimmer on earth. In Athens, she won gold in the 400 free, silver in the 800 free, and bronze in the 100 back. Her victory in the 400 made her France's first woman ever to win Olympic swimming gold. It also made her a massive celebrity across the pond. Two years later, she broke the unbreakable - Janet Evans' world record in the 400 free. A record that had stood untouched for 18 years. A year after that, at the 2007 World Championships, she broke the world record in the 200 free too. At the Worlds in Melbourne, she also defended her world title in the 400, and added silver in the 800 and the 100 back.

Then the wheels came off.

A month after '07 Worlds, Manaudou announced that she was making a traitorous move - she was leaving her longtime coach, Phillipe Lucas, and she was leaving her country. She was off to Italy. She was chasing a guy. The man in question: an Italian lothario named Luca Marin. A fellow World Champs medalist (bronze in the 400 IM in Melbourne), Marin held the keys to Laure's heart. He also held some very compromising pictures of his girlfriend.

That December, at the short course Worlds in Budapest, Hungary, the lovers had an ugly public quarrel. A ring was thrown, a break up was announced. And that very day, those pictures surfaced online. (I'll resist the impulse to provide a link; if you haven't seen them, go ahead and Google it...) Marin denied having anything to do with it. Sure, buddy, so did Rick Salomon... (Paris anyone?)

Regardless of who pulled the trigger, the damage was clearly done as far as Manaudou's psyche was concerned. She showed up at the Beijing Olympics a broken swimmer. She flat out quit in the final of the 400 free, fading to a hard-to-watch 8th in the 400. She added a lackluster 7th in the 100 back, and didn't bother to make it through the semi-final in the 200 back. And then she was gone. Retired at 21.

Fortunately, that was not all she wrote. What's the best revenge for a broken heart? Why, shacking up with a better man, of course. Manaudou soon did just that. Marin was a pretty good swimmer, a World Champs medal is nothing to sneeze at, but he's nowhere near in the same league as the guy who replaced him. A guy named Fred Bousquet: former world record holder in the 50 free, and one of the fastest men on earth for many years now. (The guy is also as ripped as a cartoon superhero...) In April 2010, the French power couple had a baby girl named Manon.

Any wonder why Manaudou's comeback has been a success?

She flew across the pond to States, moved to Auburn, where her man Bousquet had achieved such soaring success for the Tigers. And it all came back.

As we've seen in Australia, the fate of the comeback crew has been pretty grim. Thorpe, gone. Klim, out. Huegill, no show. Trickett, a semi-success, an alternate on the Aussie relay. The coming track record of others on the trail will likely be just as grim. It's tough to comeback.

But when you retire at 21, before you've even reached your peak, when your personal life comes full circle to a family and a happily ever after... Is it any wonder Miss Manaudou is back on the Olympic stage?

And So Much for That

Thorpedo Fails to Launch... 12th in 200 free at Aussie Trials

Despite every sign, I refused to believe it. I just couldn't conceive of Ian Thorpe failing like this. He seemed to have prepared (convinced?) himself for this outcome awhile back, but I suppose I thought it was his way of managing those crushing external expectations.

Turns out, the sad fact is that Thorpe just no longer has it.

Yesterday in the 200 free at Aussie Trials, he delivered a respectable morning swim of 1:49.1 - good enough for 5th place. Since the Aussies aren't quite as deep as the Americans, the best among them can cruise a bit through the heats. Checking out Thorpe's prelims splits it looked like he might have just shut it down on the back half. His split at the 100 - 51.7 - was by far the fastest of the bunch. But then he was crawling home, in a weak 29.2. Appears he wasn't just conserving energy. It wasn't there.

In the semifinal later that night, he relaxed a bit going out, flipping in 52.1. He was still in the game but fading badly at the 150, with his 3rd 50 over a second slower than his 2nd. And then... nothing.

1:49.91. 12th Place.

His last lap was slower, by significant margins, than all but one of the Aussie semifinalists.

There was a time when that last lap was a thing of beauty. When his feet went into overdrive and accelerated away from the field. Just like Phelps and Lochte and Biedermann, and the rest of the guys we so hoped he'd be racing in London...

Thorpe still has the 100 left. Maybe he'll sneak onto the Team with a 5th or 6th place finish and return to the Games as a relay alternate. But the Aussies are currently the favorites for gold in the men's 4x100 free relay, and it's clear Thorpe is not close to the league of his young compatriots who'll be on that relay in the London final.

Goes without saying that Thorpe handled the disappointment with class. No surprise there.

But here's one comeback junkie who probably should have never gone back to the sauce...

Trials, Now or Later?

Brits and Aussies choose their squads while Yanks wait till June... Finally it gets interesting. Covering the swim beat isn't much like being on the trail of a pro sports league. No real season to track, no daily, or even semi-weekly highlights for SportsCenter. Just long underwater intervals between meets, when we get a peak at what's been going on in those endless workouts... This suits me just fine. How can one care about 162 games of anything? Still, those long slow winter months can sure try the patience of your earnest swim fan.

But that's all over now. It's March and it's an Olympic year, and that means the results matter.

Last week, British Olympic Trials kicked things off. The London hosts were decent, sure to be a few Olympic champions amongst them. Hannah Miley's 400 IM (4:32.6) and Rebecca Adlington's 400 free (4:02.3) were a couple of stand-outs, with Adlington primed to defend her Beijing gold on home soil and Miley ready to square off against Australia's Stephanie Rice and defending world champ Elizabeth Beisel.

Still, the Brits are like the Canadians (pumped to be in Montreal in two weeks time...) and the Germans, the Dutch, the South Africans and the rest. Always a few amazing gold medal threats mixed in there, but still a tier below the big guns when it comes to overall Olympic dominance. That, for now, remains the domain of two nations above all others. The Aussies and the Americans, of course.

One of those superpowers is in the water as we speak; the other still has a few months before the Team is chosen.

Last night, on day one of Aussie Trials, Stephanie Rice showed she's still got it, super suit or not, with a fast 400 IM of 4:33.4. The other finals were respectable (an Aussie record for Thomas Fraser-Holmes in the 400 IM, at 4:11.8), but not exactly podium potential.

Tomorrow - or make that in a few hours, Aussie time - is when things really get interesting. It's Ian Thorpe's return - with his 200 free prelims and semis. By almost every indication, time, and quote, the Thorpedo will fail to launch. Which is why I'm hoping he drops an insane swim out of nowhere. A 1:45 or so, to really get folks chattering, taking back all that schadenfreude that's been circling his comeback for months. Of course, Michael Phelps went 1:45 last weekend at the Grand Prix in Columbus, coming straight from altitude training in Colorado Springs, so maybe it will take a lot more than for Thorpe to impress...

Whatever he does, it will overshadow the greatest swimmer Down Under. A 20-year-old kid named James Magnussen, who happens to be the greatest 100 freestyler on earth, and has to be considered the even-money favorite to take gold in London. He'll probably beat Thorpe in the 100 by two seconds or so, and get a lot less ink in doing it. No matter, Magnussen would have to swim one armed to miss making the Team, while Thorpe may need that full-body suit of old just to deliver a respectable top-6 showing in an end lane.

Once upon a time U.S. Trials were in early March of the Olympic year too. That changed back in 2000, when USA Swimming moved the Trials up, just a few weeks before the Games. The tactic clearly worked beautifully, so they stuck with it. Fact is, that strategy probably works best for their best performers - guys like Phelps and Lochte and Coughlin and Franklin. Swimmers who don't necessarily have to peak at Trails to make the Team. They have to be fast, no question, say 95% or so. But they don't need to leave it all out there in Omaha. For swimmers who need every last bit of mental and physical energy to get their hand on the wall in 2nd - or 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th in relay events - that tight turnaround makes an Olympic peak a whole lot harder.

In the meantime, there's still plenty of NCAA and Grand Prix action ahead, for those you merely interested in results stateside.

Before you know it, the rest of the dry land world will be paying attention too...

Forgotten Architects

The Coach and the Credit... Breakthroughs are coming. Lifetime performances on that one-fine-day when it all comes together... At Olympic Trials throughout the world over the next few months, certain swimmers will stand up and do the things they've always dreamed of doing. They will be the chosen few. The ones who peak at just the right moment, who swim best times beyond their wildest goals, and earn their place on the Team. When this happens, they will weep and throw pumpers and thank the many fine folks who helped them get there. They will likely start with their coach. But which one?

There has long been considerable complaint from the club coaching ranks about this sensitive issue of credit. You know the story: After coaching a kid through years and years of growth, bringing him to the cusp of greatness at 18, the swimmer goes off to college, a prized recruit for some lucky coach. A year or two later, after weights and maturity and a great new training group, this swimmer takes the next step into the big time. Trials roll around and there he is, racing for a spot on the Team. In recognition of his swimmer's achievement, guess who gets named to the Olympic coaching staff?

Yeah, one can see how that might lead to some bitterness...

Problem is, that club coach, the one who leads his senior elite squad of high school kids? There might be someone else thinking the same thing about him. The swimmer's age group coach - the one who taught this kid the right way to swim from the beginning, who put that whole foundation in place.

Sure, it takes a village, we get it. And yes, there's always going to be an element of trickle-down ego bruising. Everyone wants to be recognized for their contribution. It's human nature. But is this also an example of backwards priorities in the coaching ranks?

Last week, I wrote a story about the "myth" of Michael Phelps' talent. The basic point, supported by a growing body of books disproving the primacy of talent, was that Phelps' greatness has a whole lot more to do with his perfectly designed "deliberate practice" when he was a kid than it does with his daunting natural abilities. Specifically, it can be attributed to the work he did with Bob Bowman between the ages of 10 and 15. The time when he never missed a day, when he set the foundation for the ultimate Olympic career.

If that's true, and there's a lot of evidence to support it, then the most important thing to observe should be exactly what Michael was doing in those pre-teen and early teenage years. And just as importantly - who was teaching him back then? The answer, of course, was Bob Bowman. The same man who's teaching him today. (NOTE: "teaching" and "coaching" are synonyms...) In this, Phelps is immensely lucky and so is his coach. The athlete never had to interrupt his progress learning a new system and the coach never had to consider sharing an ounce of credit.

The great majority of swimmers are not so lucky. They usually have three coaches, minimum. The age group coach, the head club coach, and the college coach. You can guess the order of prestige. But if we can admit that the root of Phelps' greatness can be found in those early years, shouldn't we question that pecking order of the traditional coaching ranks? Because what that age group coach is doing might set up the swimmer for future greatness in ways that his 'elders' simply cannot.

This should not come across as a criticism of the head club coach or the college coach. They earned their positions of authority for a reason - and they came up through the ranks, probably spent a few years themselves as overlooked age group coaches. Nor should it belittle the work they do with the swimmers they receive along this path. It's all a progression, and in plenty of cases, the work of a coach involves getting a swimmer back on track - because the coach before him badly screwed up.

Yet, when viewed from afar, how can the age group coach not be viewed as the cornerstone of all future excellence? How can this essential piece of the puzzle receive so little credit at the moment of truth?

Here's one swimmer who doesn't seem to have that problem dishing out the credit to his all-important age group coach. As it happens, he's the second greatest swimmer ever, and the one guy who's ever been able to dethrone the mighty Phelps. Ryan Lochte followed that three-coach formula growing up. He also happens to follow the perfect model of development for those in the "talent myth" camp. See, Lochte was groomed since birth for swimming greatness. His dad, Steve, is a lifelong coach who made sure his son was put on that path early. But who was Ryan's age group coach growing up? That would be his mom, Ileana.

At the Golden Goggles Awards last November, a slightly swaying Lochte stood behind the podium after being named the Athlete of the Year for the third year in a row. He dutifully thanked Coach Troy, the man who's guided him since he arrived in Gainesville nine years ago, he thanked his teammates, thanked Michael for always pushing him to more, but then he saved his biggest thanks for his mom. Maybe it was just for being, you know, his mom.

But maybe it was also for being the not-so-forgotten architect of all that success to come...

The Myth of Michael's Talent

Questioning God-given Gifts... It's easier to chalk it up to talent. It's that unfair distribution of destined-for-gold genetics that a rare few are awarded with in rich supply. Some got it, most of us don't. Or so the thinking goes...

And one guy was born with more of it than any human being ever dipped in water. You've seen this movie, right? The one about Michael Phelps being so perfectly born to swim that it's pointless for mere land-dwelling mortals even to try to compete? Indeed, four years ago, at the start of the Beijing Games, NBC ran a feature about his freakishly flawless proportions. They called it "Designed to Swim." (Check it out on You Tube right HERE if you missed it.)

The piece was well done, and hard to dispute. I mean, they were dealing in facts: stands six-foot-four; wingspan is six-foot-seven; short legs and a super long torso; size 14 feet; hands the size of dinner plates - ok, that one might not be technically fact, but you get the idea. At the top of the piece, Dan Hicks' voice-over tells you that "If you were to build the perfect swimmer, the finished product would look just like this."

Fair enough. The resumé speaks for itself.

Yet, even with all those physical facts, something essential has been lost. And it's probably the single most important element that explains Phelps' greatness. It's not those one in a million genetics. In fact, I'd argue that his genetic gifts aren't really one in a million at all. They're one in a lot, no question. Say one in a couple thousand? But he's not the only guy walking around who looks like that. Hell, hang out on deck at any national meet; you'll see plenty of guys with proportions not so different.

Nor is it his work ethic. As has been well documented (by Phelps himself), that work ethic comes and goes. When he's on, it's scary, we know this. The guy has done sets that are superhuman. But the guy has also missed a boatload of workouts over the past eight years. During the same period when he established himself, beyond all doubt, as the greatest swimmer of all time.

So, what the hell is it?

It's what happened a long time ago - back in the mid to late 90's, when Phelps was a kid, from age 10 to 15. If you want to understand Michael Phelps' greatness, stop looking at his God-given "gifts", and don't put too much stock in the many workouts he might have missed in the years since Beijing. Instead, go back about 15 years, back to a time when the kid never missed a day. Ever. For thousands of days in a row.

He hasn't been coasting on his talent these last few years. He's been coasting on perhaps the greatest base of training and aquatic education that a kid can receive.

There's a powerful book out there that breaks down this theory beautifully. It's called "Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else." It's by a Fortune magazine writer named Geoff Colvin. A business book in nature, it should be required reading for every coach who reads this. Buy it on Amazon right HERE. (Mr. Colvin, if you see a slight bump in sales, you're welcome...)

Colvin's thesis centers around the notion of Deliberate Practice. That is, doing specific things over and over and over again, with constant feedback. Identifying exactly where you need to improve, and obsessing on every last detail with brutal commitment. If you're like me, you've responded to that thesis like this: No shit.

Every swimmer and coach knows the necessity of deliberate practice in his bones. Nothing groundbreaking there. It's beyond obvious to swimmers. But like all good reporters, Colvin takes something that should be basic and peels back endless layers. To reveal that most of you do it all wrong -- over and over and over again.

Phelps did not. Correction: Bob Bowman did not let him. During Phelps' most formative years, Bowman, by every account, was a grand master of deliberate practice. So much so that I was truly surprised to find no mention of Bowman or Phelps in Colvin's book.

Here's who Colvin does analyze: Mozart and Tiger Woods. Two other guys who've long carried the mantle of God-given Otherworldly Talent. Of course, we soon learn that, though plenty "gifted", both Mozart and Woods were the creations of early, obsessive - and flawlessly designed - training in their youth. Mozart's father was a composer himself, who retired when baby Wolfgang was born to devote the rest of his life to teaching music to his son. And we all know the story of Earl Woods and his all-too-deliberate golf practice before Tiger could walk. These two prodigies were made, not born. And so was Michael.

This should be good news, for all involved. For Phelps and Bowman, it should give credit where it's due -- to the years when the ultimate foundation was laid for a swimmer.

For everyone else, it should be good news for the opposite reason: It should confirm that you are not racing someone who's "just better." Who has infinitely more talent than you, so why even try... The playing field might be a lot more level than you think. It just takes a level of commitment - from a very young age - that few are willing even to consider.

If you're having a hard time buying all this, I can relate. As a swimmer, I used to carry around barrels full of bitterness for swimmers I deemed "more talented" but less willing to work as hard as I was. This is defeatist thinking, to be sure. It also misses quite a few points. Some aren't so easy to admit - like maybe I was doing the wrong thing over and over for many thousands of yards of fly sets. Or maybe that some of those sprinters over in lane eight, dicking around doing workouts that seemed like a joke -- maybe there was something a whole lot more deliberate in their practice. Things that produced results when shaved and tapered, but not necessarily things that looked tough or impressive at 6am on a random winter Tuesday.

I realize talent does indeed exist. It's not all myth. And no amount of perfectly deliberate practice starting at infancy is going to help a swimmer compete with a Phelps if they stop growing at five-foot-six, with small hands and feet. There is a limit to all this overrating of talent. But it's also time to demystify that word.

God might give out plenty of gifts, but he doesn't give away gold medals.

The Price of Momentary Madness

The Saga of Nick D'Arcy: Brawler, Butterflyer It started with disrespect. It always does, doesn't it? Buckets of booze, a slight, righteous rage... A standard story on the night train - when things get weird and nothing good happens after the clock strikes two.

Bar fights. The shameful domain of macho tools...

By all grim accounts, Aussie flyer Nick D'Arcy used to be one such macho tool. And boy, has this kid paid one hell of a price for it.

Four years ago next month, D'Arcy broke the Commonwealth record in the 200 fly at the 2008 Australian Olympic Trials. The night he was named to the Team, he went out big with his mates. Went to spot in Sydney called the Loft Bar. At some point late in the night, after Lord knows how many pints, fellow swimmer Simon Cowley said something that pissed D'Arcy off. They took it outside. D'Arcy used his elbow. You know, instead of his fist. More damage that way.

Here's an accounting of the damage he did: broken jaw, broken nose, fractured eye socket, fractured palate, crushed cheekbone. He messed up Mr. Cowley something fierce.

He was arrested and charged with what it was - assault. He was thrown off the Olympic team. A year later, he was convicted in court, received a 14-month suspended sentence. Then he was thrown off the '09 Aussie World Championships team. It wasn't over.

The damage D'Arcy had inflicted on Cowley did not heal overnight. There were reconstructive surgeries to his face. Braces to realign his demolished jaw. Post-traumatic stress disorder. His face now held together by titanium plates and screws. Years of fallout and pain thanks to that crushing elbow. So, Cowley sued and won. The court awarded him $180,000 in damages. Forced D'Arcy to declare bankruptcy. Now his next Olympic prospects in 2012 were in doubt too...

Somehow, as the collateral damage mounted, for both victim and criminal, the criminal stayed in the water. Kept training, kept at it, remained among the greatest 200 flyers on earth. (To D'Arcy's supporters who may balk at hearing him called a "criminal" - this is a literal, factual label, not an opinion. "Macho tool", on the other hand, yes, that's an opinion. There is a difference.)

Yesterday this saga seems to have finally reached its end. 1,422 days since D'Arcy's assault, the Australian Olympic Committee cleared him to compete in London, should he make the Team next month at the Aussie Trials. This shouldn't be a problem; D'Arcy is currently ranked first in the world in the 200 fly, with a big chance to be on the podium in London.

He has paid a high price, and like every criminal who does his time for the crime, it's time to forgive him, let the kid move on with his life. Though he's probably not much of a kid anymore. Just 24 years old, D'Arcy has been forced to grow up in a hurry. He was 20 when he leveled Cowley that night, and it soon emerged that it wasn't the first time. A few weeks after the incident, another Aussie sportsmen, an Ironman named Tim Peach, alleged that the same thing had happened to him. A bar fight with D'Arcy that resulted in a mangled face, albeit nowhere near to the extent of Cowley.

A pattern perhaps... The image of a cocky, quick-tempered jock is easy to conjure. Or maybe the kid was just living up to an unfortunate side of Aussie jock culture. Back in '08, when this story was a swirling scandal Down Under, the Reuters newswire even took the time to note that "while nightclub fights are commonplace in Australian football and rugby teams, they are rare in swimming."

So, the story was that a swimmer was behaving as poorly as the rugby meatheads? Ok, so would this mean that D'Arcy's blow was just immensely unlucky in the degree of damage it inflicted? If fights like this are so commonplace, then does that mean that half of Aussie Rules football players are walking around with faces held together by plates and screws? Surely a few of them, but that's hardly the story here.

The story is about a drunk 20-year-old kid out celebrating on the greatest night of his life, the night he became an Olympian. He was feeling indestructible that night. Tough and dumb and too young to grasp where one bar fight could lead.

Now he knows.

Respect the Dragon

Splash Time with Jeremy Lin... Make a splash, they say. Stir it up. Welcome some new folks into the pool, open it up for all. Damn right, the more the better.

That goes for every sport, right? Even when our notion of "diversity" is turned on its head, or when our definition of diverse is far too narrow...

Over the last week and a half, the NBA has bore witness (Lebron who?) to one of the greatest sports story ever. Yes, ever. The Arrival of Jeremy Lin has already reached folklore status. Did this kid sell his soul at the crossroads, Robert Johnson-style, for the devil's gift of basketball genius? Is Jeremy Lin about to usher in a new era of Moneyball-thinking in the NBA, proving the blindness of so many men paid so many dollars to assess basketball talent?

Make it a tale of dark mystery at the crossroads or a prime example of paradigm shifting sports economy. Or make it a Disney movie. Take your pick. Jeremy Lin's already epic story fits every template of storytelling. Here's what else it does:

It reveals the too-often forgotten minority in our earnest discussions about diversity in sport. The Asian-American community.

According to the latest demographic figures from the 2010 U.S. census, the African-American community makes up 12.2% (37 million) of the U.S. population. The Latino community makes up 16.3% (50 million). And what about Asian-Americans? 4.7% , 14 million.

Now, I can tell you that African-Americans are 2.6 times more likely to drown than white Americans. I can also tell you that the drowning statistics for Latinos are almost as grim. I can tell you these things because programs like USA Swimming's Make a Splash campaign have done a fantastic job about getting this message out. However, never once, not a single time, have I ever heard a thing about the Asian-American community in this campaign, or any other like it. Why is that?

We all know that swimming has been an embarrassingly almost-all white sport for far too long. Gratefully, great strides are being taken to change that. The African-American and Latino communities deserve every bit of attention and focus they are receiving in this regard. But how many Asians do you see on the blocks at U.S. Olympic Trials? Fair to say this is a group equally underrepresented. Yet where is the outreach to them? Hell, where is even an ounce of acknowledgement?

Now, full disclosure: I am married to an Asian-American woman. My daughter will grow up identifying herself with two ethnic identities. This thrills me to no end, the opportunity to embrace and understand two cultures... So, this is a subject, quite literally, close to home. Scratch that, not close, it's a subject that is home.

So, where are her examples?

Actually, there's a wonderful one right in our midst. Not that anything's being said about it. The greatest sprinter in America today happens to be Asian-American. That is, every bit as much as he is a Caucasian American. His name's Nathan Adrian. You might of heard of him. His mom is Chinese, born and raised in Hong Kong.

I'm not trying to heap any unfair responsibility on Mr. Adrian. This can be uncomfortable terrain, being of mixed race and suddenly facing questions about barrier breaking for a culture that is, by definition, only half your own. Nathan's training partner, and soon-to-be teammate on Team USA, Anthony Ervin, understands this better than most. Back in 2000, when he was the 19-year-old sprint phenom stroking to gold in Sydney, Ervin found himself being asked about his African-American identity. Being of mixed race himself, he was caught unfair and unawares. What are you supposed to say?

Unfortunately, that's the way it goes with these delicate subjects. Celebrate and simplify. It's well meaning, we all get that. But these aren't exactly sound-byte reduced issues.

I'm not interested in hearing about anyone assuming the mantle for an entire race and competing as the shining example of a certain minority. No more than I'm interested in Michael Phelps representing all of the good folks of Baltimore. Where you're from should be shared and celebrated, sure. But sports fans are really just interested in celebrating one thing - winning.

Which is why, like the rest of New York City, I am currently obsessed with Jeremy Lin. Because the kid is sick. I watched him out-Kobe Kobe at the Garden last Friday night. He's been the best basketball player on earth for the last 10 days. I'll be looking forward to jaw-dropping times from Nathan Adrian this summer for the same reason. Because watching athletes kick ass and do something transcendent is why I watch sports.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that these guys share some proud ethnic heritage with my wife and daughter...

In this Year of the Dragon, it's about time they got some respect.

The Unbitter End

Facing the Final Curtain with Class... The end is near. For the comeback junkies, like Thorpe and Evans and the rest; for the legions who'll hang up their goggles immediately after not making the Team at Trials; even for the mighties like Phelps who'll likely swim away after London... Everyone swims a last race. This athletic death will come with all sorts of fallout...

Partying

Depression

Compulsive Behavior

A satisfied walk into the sunset, it's not. Even if it all ends with a fine rendition of your anthem played while you stand atop a podium. Which it won't, for all but the chosen few. And if it makes you feel any better, they won't be smiling much either once they've stepped down and out of the spotlight...

Retiring is brutal. No matter how well balanced you think your life might have been as a swimmer, in the aftermath, you will feel as though your soul has been sucked away. It has been; for years your soul has been marinating in chlorine. It takes awhile to clear all that junk from your system. Dark memories on a winter's day...

Of course, some wise fools manage this transition better than others. They can actually cope, with that rare gift of perspective in the present. Last Sunday, in the New York Times, there was a piece on one such athlete. A washout major league pitcher turned novelist, on his way to play ball in Italy, after failing to make it in the Show. His name is Dirk Hayhurst. His perspective should be required reading for every athlete facing the end:

“I think people want athletes to say, ‘I’m never giving up, I’m going to fight till the bitter end,’ ” Hayhurst told the Times. “But that’s just it: at the bitter end, you turn bitter. You’re like a junkie, strung out... because that’s your whole identity."

Fighting to the bitter end... Such a noble down-with-the-ship sentiment. I'd never considered the adjective in that cliché. Like good strong coffee or the best rumor, bitter can have a nice bite, but one hell of an aftertaste.

So, how to walk away?

1. Try the Hayhurst Method - Ween yourself off the drug with a lower dose. Go compete in Europe on a stage with less pressure, a less crippling level of competition. Enjoy the sport. Enjoy the lifestyle around it. Maybe a few World Cups, the Mare Nostrum tour... With best times as an after thought.

2. Cold Turkey - Dangerous, but sometimes necessary. For those whose swimming careers were, and are, a matter of life and death, a slow ween simply won't do. You're the sort who can't do a little, who can't find any satisfying high in the halfway. If that's the case, you just gotta go dry. As in, showering should be your only contact with water for a good long while. You will be unpleasant to be around for this long while. You will probably pick up some bad habits along the way. Apologize to your spouses in advance.

3. Admit to your subconscious that a comeback is coming. When you retire, you won't admit this in words or even frontal lobe thought, but deep down you'll know. C'mon, all these champions currently on the comeback trail? You think they truly believed they were done all those years they were away? I don't. If the door has been left open, even a sliver, you know it. You might not admit it, as you're packing on the pounds, trying out new careers your heart really isn't into, but sooner or later you're going to hear that Olympic anthem on one of NBC's promos and you're going to find your way back to a pool.

When that happens, more power to you. This will just delay the actual end, of course, but that's a worry for another day.

Last week in London, failed comebacker Mark Spitz spouted off about how Thorpe, Evans, and others have lost their edge and were doomed to fail - like he did, 20 years ago. As Swim News' Craig Lord points out, Spitz conveniently forgets to mention a middle-aged woman named Dara Torres. A woman who sees no end, and no need to quit.

44-year-old Torres has been analyzed endlessly, compared to countless athletes across every sport. Maybe all along, we were looking for analogies in the wrong places. Here might be Dara Torres' closest contemporary: Keith Richards.

With all these drug allusions, how can you not think of the indestructible Stone? Quitting cold turkey? Weening your way dry? These quaint notions are for mere mortals.

When the end comes, impossibly but inevitably, for Keith and for Dara, there will be no bitterness... Only a knowing, mocking smirk for those who died trying to keep up.

Place Your (Charity) Bets

Gambling, for Good, on Olympic Sport... Everything's more exciting with a bit of action on the outcome. A gambler's truism if there ever was one. Many might go with the glass half empty outlook: Nothing is exciting without some money on the line.

Wherever you fall on the compulsiveness meter, this is the one week of the year where you're probably placing a bet of some sort. Super Bowl week: the time when even teetotaling Mormons know the spread. The time when hard core bettors go on a mad frothing bender... In Vegas alone, there will be an estimated $100 million wagered legally. A drop in the cash bucket compared to the estimates worldwide. If you count offshore Internet gambling sites, illegal bookies, and the countless 'friendly' bets made in every living room in America, some say over $10 billion is bet this week on the game of games, by over 200 million people across the world.

It's a beautiful thing. Depending on how you view this fine vice... I love to gamble. Always have. Horses and poker, mainly, but having some cash on the line in any contest will always make it just that much more...

Unfortunately, wagering on our favorite sport of all has never been an option. (Officially that is...) Much as I'd love to see odds posted at the biggest meets, that doesn't seem like an idea that's going to entice the good folks at USA Swimming or the NCAA anytime soon. But just envision it for a second: 2-1 odds on Lochte beating Phelps in the 200 free. 50-1 odds on anyone beating Phelps in the 200 fly. How about a favorite / longshot Exacta in the men's 50 free - Cesar Cielo and Anthony Ervin, anyone? How about being able to bet the Trifecta on any podium at the Games?

Obvious opportunity for corruption and scandal aside, the idea does have its upsides. Like legalizing marijuana in California or legalizing Internet gambling in all 50 states, opening up wagering on swimming could instantly cure many financial crises. Things like, say, all of men's college swimming... Alas, few want to hear about vice coming to the rescue.

In the meantime, here's a noble way to get your gambling fix on in Olympic sport. Take a look at Charity Bets. Do-gooding meets stock-picking, in sport... A way to gamble on your favorite athletes. And when you win, you give. Come again? Isn't gambling about getting? Yes, well, time to test that old Christmas cliché - it's better to give than to receive...

Here's how it happened: A few sporty finance guys in New York were looking to raise money for cancer research around an athletic event. According to the site, their approach can be summed up with this simple premise: "I bet you can't run this fast, or jump this high, or throw this far." The essence of every challenge between competitors, with an emphasis on the bet. These guys decided to go a step further, set up a site, started contacting athletes, and a beautiful charitable mission was born.

And here's how it works: Pick your athlete and issue your challenge. Pick your favorite charity. Place your bets. Athlete succeeds, you win, you pay up to your chosen worthy cause.

U.S. marathon champion Meb Keflezighi has been the early face of Charity Bets. By winning the U.S. Olympic marathon Trials in Houston last month, Keflezighi won his bets, and raised a boatload for the chosen charities. U.S. sprinters Walter Dix and Justin Gatlin are also on board.

So, the question is, why aren't any swimmers on Charity Bets yet? Why aren't the Olympic Swimming Trials listed on the site as events with open charitable wagering? Right now, there are plenty of options in running, biking, and triathlon. Where are the swimmers?

This is what swimmers do anyway. Last week, I heard Ryan Lochte and Conor Dwyer were talking trash at workout, challenging each other over who could do what in practice. Apparently Lochte tells Dwyer there's no way you can stand up and go 3:48 in the 400 IM, right now. Dwyer takes the bait. Stands up and goes 3:42. In practice. Same time he went at NCAA's last year... Impressing Ryan Lochte must have been nice. Seeing him have to pay up - to a worthy cause - would have been even sweeter.

I'm ready to place some bets. So, here's a challenge to kick this off: Lochte, I've got $100 that says you can't break your world record this year in the 200 IM. You pick the charity.

I would love to pay up.

Death in the Valley

Paterno Dies, Predator Coaches Still Out There... 10 weeks, that's all it took. Just 74 days after being fired in shame for his failure to protect victims of child rape. The official cause of death was lung cancer, of course. Plenty have said it was really due to a broken heart. No patience for that sentimentality under the circumstances. But here's a fact for you: If Jerry Sandusky's darkest secrets were still under cover in Happy Valley, Joe Paterno would still be alive today. Anyone disagree?

Well, one guy apparently...

His name is Joe Posnanski, and he's recently been named the 2011 National Sportswriter of the Year. One of SI's top A-list writers, with a fantastic blog on the side, Posnanski is a great read. He is also in the midst of embarrassing himself badly. See, last fall, well before the Sandusky storm hit, Posnanski was living in State College, writing the definitive biography on Paterno. He was in thrall with the guy, given full access and deep into an extended 300+ page puff piece about the coaching legend. In the days after the horror unfolded, he was quick to defend Paterno, claiming a rush to judgment by the university.

Earlier today, he penned a eulogy of sorts. Despite all that's emerged about JoePa's epic failures - ones that helped demolish the lives of children who were raped by one of the coach's oldest friends and associates - Posnanski is still entrenched on Team Paterno. "He did not die a bitter or broken man," writes Posnanski. How did he "know" this? Here's how: "I know this because I spent time with Paterno in his hospital room during the last weeks of his life."

Correction: This is exactly why you don't "know." Because, from Joe to Joe, you were being manipulated. JoePa was in control until the very end. As he always has been. It worked so splendidly because Paterno believed it every bit as much as Posnanski wanted to. He was guiding the final word still to be written about his storied life. And the writer was lapping it up.

Every leader who has ever held power for any length of time learns the necessity of controlling the message. Learns how to manipulate those under his command - for good and for ill. That's what great coaches do. They create their own realities, their own lofty spotless universes, and then they convince others to come along with them. To that promised land where everything goes just right, exactly to plan, where they will be lifted on shoulders and statues will be erected in their honor, in worship to their vision and leadership.

One can see how a few decades of this might cloud the old judgment a bit...

Which is why Paterno's death crosses the sports divide and winds up on a site devoted to swimming yet again.

For most, his death will probably mark the point when we can start driving the speed limit again. After the requisite gawking at the grisly accident on the side of the road, there comes the moment when it starts to fade in the rear view. The passengers will all remain respectfully silent for a bit; gradually you'll pick up speed. Soon it will be out of sight, out of mind. After all the outrage, now that Paterno is dead, how many will actually take a close interest in following Sandusky's trial? How many headlines will the justice not yet served even generate?

Those in the swimming world would be wise to continue to pay attention. Because two weeks ago, it happened again. "It" being another coaching deviant preying on children. In Gainesville, the coach of the Gator Swim Club, Bryan Woodward, was arrested after allegations that he tried to arrange sex with an underage girl. He was charged with using a computer to solicit a child for sex and for traveling to seduce a child into sex acts. Like all the others, Woodward passed every background check before he was hired.

We want these things to go away. We don't want to think of them, don't want to even acknowledge that it exists. Especially when you're a parent with kids in youth sports. But these predators are still out there. Hard words to write, harder still to face, but there it is.

Joe Paterno won 409 football games. Changed plenty of lives in the process. Books will be written about him that try to place his whole life in context, not just the sad, dark final days.

Tell that to the kids raped by Sandusky after Joe Paterno failed to protect them.

The Two Mikes

Jordan and Phelps - and the Power of the Slight... I'll show you, they say. You will pay. For your actions, for your words, for your insolence. And pay we do - to witness the ultimate level of athletic achievement. To witness the unfathomable. Their fuel? The disrespect of anyone who dared to doubt.

Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps - mighty rulers of air and water. Two men driven by eerily similar temperaments.

With a new Olympic year under way, likely the last for Phelps, there will be the inevitable search for context and comparisons, as the media descends around the most decorated champion in the history of the Games. There will be lists and tributes and highlight reel eulogies. That's what the media does, right? After the triumph come the replays, the endless analysis.

Phelps is going to finish up with somewhere between 17 and 20 career Olympic gold medals. It's pointless now to compare him to any other Olympian, no matter what happens in his London showdowns with Ryan Lochte. So, instead we're going to cross sports and start sizing him up with other icons. You see it coming, don't you? Tiger and Gretzky and Brady, they'll all enter the conversation. Probably even Ali. But the fact is, Phelps resembles one athlete above all others, another Mike. Another obscenely talented victory addict driven by nothing so much as the need to settle every last slight...

Last week, Sports Illustrated ran a heartbreaking story about the descent of Michael Jordan's high school coach, a guy named Pop Herring. This was the man, in Jordan mythology, who famously cut him from the varsity team at Laney High when MJ was a sophomore. It was a slight that Jordan never let go. He brought it up repeatedly throughout his career - the night they retired his number at the United Center in Chicago, the night of his now infamous score-settling Hall of Fame induction speech.

The story goes on to point out that this was not so much a slight as the wise move of a smart young high school coach. (Herring was in his late 20's when he coached Jordan at Laney...) Rather than let his precocious superstar-in-waiting ride the pine for an entire season as a sophomore, Herring placed Jordan on the JV squad - where he started and dominated. And because of that, when his junior year came around, Jordan was ready to lead the team. But today's story is not about rehashing Jordan's slightly fictional mania, it's about a single quote in that SI piece. One that might define Mr. MP as much as it describes MJ.

According to SI: "Jordan would become a world-class collector of emotional wounds, a champion grudge-holder, a magician at converting real and imagined insults into rocket fuel that made him fly."

It's that last line that made me stop reading. A magician at converting real and imagined insults into rocket fuel that made him fly... That made him fly indeed. Who was I reading about again?

The stories about this special rocket fuel are legion with Phelps, just as they are with Jordan. After his eighth gold in Beijing, in NBC's Olympic studios, he recounted for Bob Costas long remembered slights through the years. He recalled the 12-year-old who dissed him way back when, how he refused to admit he remembered the guy when he came up to him years later, backslapping the now famous aqua king.

And of course there was Mike Cavic, the maimed tiger poker. Back in 2009, do you remember his taunts at the World Champs in Rome? Well, they weren't really taunts, no more than Pop Herring cruelly ignored Jordan's talent. But they were enough to provoke the champ, someone forever attuned to provocation. After charging past Cavic in the 100 fly final in Rome, becoming the first man ever to break the 50-second barrier in the event, Phelps unleashed a defiant Jordan-esque celebration.

Post race, with sly understatement, Phelps had this to say: "Things motivate me -- sometimes comments, sometimes what people do. That's just how I tick."

Don't mistake this fuel for your standard locker room fodder disrespect. The half-bright bluster of a Rex Ryan quote that the Giants use to get fired up before the game. It's far beyond these manufactured how dare he clichés. It's also on another level from the guys who are forever determined to prove themselves after being doubted way back when... Consider the exploits of Tom Brady or Aaron Rogers, or even that guy named Tebow.

No, this is something relentlessly renewed, hunted for... It's personal and there is nothing phony or contrived about it. When it comes to the fire breathing competitive spirit of a Jordan or a Phelps, ever utterance can be converted into the need to crush any infidel.

It's pathological - in the most proud and productive sense. At least when channeled into the field of competition...

About a year and a half ago, back in the fall of 2010, I had my own brush with this dark magic. I was, briefly, the "slight du jour". It was over a piece that called into question Phelps' preparedness after falling flat in the 400 IM at the 2010 Pan Pacific Games in Irvine. It questioned his decision to swim the sport's hardest event after admittedly limited training. It might have poked at the tiger's ego a bit. Soon, the rumbles found their way back to me. I'd known the Phelps family since Michael was three years old, family friends going way way back in Baltimore. Now I was persona non grata. The enemy. A doubter. And doubters deserve to be punished.

This should not have been too surprising. In fact, a part of me probably wanted to pay -- a slightly selfish swim fan who wanted to provoke the greatest IM'er in history into returning to his signature race. Poke that ego a bit and maybe he'll feel the need to show me, and everyone else who doubts his ability to reach those Beijing heights again. Unfair? Only if you take it personal.

Which of course is the whole point. Who knows, another slight may even be found in this story (pathological?!), even as I'm comparing him to the greatest competitor of the 20th Century...

One can only hope.

Well Endowed

Tarheels, Bulldogs, Buckeyes, Bears, and Vikings... Yes, Vikings. Follow these leaders: Sustainable college swimming programs that get it... The headline isn't a euphemism, stop smirking. The Cambridge Online Dictionary defines well-endowed as "having a lot of something, especially money or possessions"... Or having a large something, right? But today's story is about what lies ahead for college swimming, not what lies beneath the Speedo. And those ahead-of-the-curve programs that get it...

Last week, a post called Pay Your Way quickly became the most read piece ever on this young blog. It tried to dissect what will happen in college sports when football and basketball players start getting paid, when swimming programs face elimination as a result, and want can be done to protect them. Based on the feedback that poured in, the story clearly touched a nerve for many. And rightly so, considering it's many of your livelihoods.

In the days that followed, I had a chance to email and speak with a few leaders in the sport who have been out on those front lines fighting this fight long before there was an Internet for bloggers to share their unsolicited insights. To a man, everyone's diagnosis was the same -- the situation is dire, perhaps terminal for some, and in need of immediate attention. And all agreed on something else -- there is a cure. The principal antidote? Endowments.

Want to protect your swimming program so your great grandkids can someday be Trojans or Mustangs too? If so, you'd better be well endowed. That is, with a healthy fund of alumni money set aside, accumulating interest, and paying for your swimmers' scholarships and training trips and, hell, even a brand new pool when the time comes. Without it, you're like a surfer without a leash. One big wave knocks you off the board and it's time to swim to shore, session over.

While that rather forced aquatic metaphor might describe many college swim programs, there a few teams out there that are sitting pretty. Thanks to the foresight of their coaches and / or their well-heeled alumni, they've made their teams untouchable. Come what may, these programs are now built to last. They're no longer the no-revenue-producing redheaded stepchildren of their big sport siblings. Pay their football and basketball brethren all you like, it won't affect these swim teams' existence. Because they figured out how to do it themselves.

So, who are they? Last week, I had a chance to speak to Bob Groseth, the Executive Director of the College Swimming Coaches Association of America. For twenty years, Groseth was the coach of Northwestern, taking the Wildcats from the bottom of the Big Ten rankings to perennial contenders with a roster of NCAA champions. Groseth took over as the head of the CSCAA in 2009. A widely respected presence at every level of the sport, he's interested in a whole lot more than the top 10 teams everyone sees at NCAA's. He knows college swimming extends far beyond its flagship meets, and that some of the programs most worthy of admiration aren't necessarily the ones stacked with Olympians.

But first, let's talk about one of those programs that gives everyone Olympic envy. When it comes to Cal Berkeley, there's plenty to be jealous of these days. They're the defending NCAA champions among both the men and the women. Their head coaches are among the most beloved figures on pool decks today. Recruits are lining up out the door for the privilege to swim here. (Untouchable, right? Tell that to UCLA...) But a few years back, they managed to do something even more impressive than win the team titles at NC's. They created the Cal Aquatics Fund. Led by a few deep pocketed alum (let's just say one founded the Gap, and another founded Dreyer's Ice Cream...), they made sure that every Cal water sport would exist forevermore. Men's and women's swimming and men's and women's water polo, all taken care of.

Sure, the Cal track record of excellence is plenty impressive, but it's also a state school, in a state than has just a few financial difficulties. Falling in-state admissions and rising tuition are serious issues in the UC system these days. No matter what place they got at NCAA's, the Cal teams had plenty to worry about. That is, until this Fund came into being.

Who else has patched together that warm cloak of endowment? North Carolina is a school frequently mentioned towards the top of the list. So is the University of Georgia. According to Groseth, both UNC's Frank Comfort and Georgia's Jack Bauerle have made sure that every single one of their scholarships is endowed. The UNC recruiting slogan almost writes itself: Take comfort with Comfort! Because his team isn't going anywhere...

Groseth also had high praise for Ohio State's Bill Wadley. In addition to building a new state-of-the-art pool, Wadley recently managed to get all of the Buckeyes' swimming scholarships endowed. No surprise that this is suddenly a program on the rise... Sure, the pool makes a major difference in impressing recruits, but according to Groseth it was the security of establishing the endowment that truly allowed Wadley to take ownership of his fast improving program.

All four of these schools mentioned above deserve plenty of props, but you might have noticed that they are all major athletic powerhouses, among the most accomplished athletic departments in the nation, across many sports. It makes sense that it's possible at schools like this, where there's bound to be plenty of passionate alumni support. But what about smaller schools, without any real sports tradition to speak of? What about a small Midwestern school, an institution less than 50 years old, a mid-major program that's never had a swimmer break 20 seconds in the 50 free? The sort of program that so often finds itself on the chopping block...

What about the Cleveland State Vikings?

According to Bob Groseth, CSU "should be the poster boy for how to create a sustainable swim team." The man responsible? Head Coach Wally Morton. Now in his 37th year as head coach, Morton has led a rock solid program with most of its scholarships endowed since 1999. And it's not just rich alumni who prop it up. The CSU team has made itself untouchable thanks to an active and ongoing effort to make itself indispensable in its college community. I spoke to Morton earlier, as he was about to board a flight home with his team from a Christmas training trip. (That right there should say something...)

"The money is key, of course," says Morton. "But more important is the relationship you foster with your Athletic Director, and even more, your college president."

Sounds simple enough - you want your bosses to know and care about you. Yet, this is something that just doesn't happen at so many programs. Case in point: During my sophomore year at USC, the Athletic Director, Mike Garrett, was giving a speech at our annual swim team banquet. His remarks were proceeding with the usual vague, overblown praise when he declared "and that's what makes the SC water polo team so important to this school." Silence in the room. A few snickers, probably from the freshman. It took Garrett a few uncomfortable seconds to realize that he was speaking to the swim team, and that now everyone in the room knew he was reading from a stock speech that he apparently read at every other team's banquet. The swim team was a faceless entity to this AD. He wouldn't blink if he was forced to cut it; he didn't even know who we were.

Something like this would never happen at CSU. That's because everyone at the school knows exactly who Morton and the swimmers are. And they know because Morton makes sure of it. Recently, Morton told me, the CSU president was traveling to San Francisco. So, the swim coach called up a few old alums who had settled out there. One took him to the San Fransisco Farmers Market. Another figured out his dinner plans. How much do you want to bet that this college president attended the team's next swim meet when he got back to Cleveland?

At the CSCAA conference last May in San Diego, Morton recalled a line from the keynote speaker Frank Busch, USA Swimming's National Team Director. After 31 years as the head coach of Arizona, Busch knows his way around the landmines of college swimming. To his assembled coaching audience, Busch had one piece of advice that resonated with Morton: "Don't be a mosquito to your AD and your college president." That is, don't be a pest who only buzzes around when you want something. Mosquitos gets swatted away, and then they get crushed.

But those wise well-endowed programs who get it? They'll be swimming above it all for a long, long time.

Pay Your Way

The movement to pay college football and basketball players... and what it means for college swimming. A righteous debate rumbles into deep water... Last Sunday, the latest media missile was fired into the mess of big time college sports. It hit its mark with precision, making the overwhelming and by now obvious case that NCAA football and men's basketball players deserve to be paid. This latest treatise was published in the New York Times magazine by Joe Nocera. Its unambiguous headline: Let's Start Paying College Athletes.

Agreed. But then what...

Nocera quickly clarifies his editor's headline; he doesn't mean just any athletes. And certainly not swimmers or other sportsmen and women in the shadows who generate exactly zero dollars for their schools. No, the journalist cum reformer makes the clear case that the only ones entitled to a share of the income are the ones who actually earn the income. In other quarters, this would be known as the Law. As opposed to a cartel or a plantation -- the two entities that the NCAA most closely resembles these days. (How do you feel about Colombian drug lords and slave driving 19th century Southern landowners? Maybe consider these two conscience-free classes next time you're singing your college fight song...)

Two months back, I posted a piece called State of Pay, which picked apart the tone-deaf ideas in a Sports Illustrated story that argued for similar reform. Under SI's plan, paying football and basketball players would mean slashing sports like swimming from scores of athletic departments. Fortunately, Nocera's plan in the New York Times refrains from such destructive half-bright suggestions. In fact, no other sport is mentioned once in the piece except football and basketball. He rightly points out that these athletes are employees of the schools -- workers who earn often substantial revenue for their employers. As opposed to the athletes in "non-revenue" sports who earn nothing for the university, and thus can fairly be called amateur. (Setting aside the sponsorship debate for the moment...)

I was nodding right along with the story until I came to one rather halting paragraph. Under Nocera's plan, not all universities will be able to afford the new required cost to compete. If each school has a set budget with a salary cap (to prevent Yankees-like monopolizing at schools like Texas and Florida...), some will not be able to afford that budget, even with a cap. Can't afford to pay, can't compete, goodbye program. Nocera doesn't seem particularly bothered by this. He estimates that the number of so-called "major" football programs will shrink from 120 to 72, and the number of "major" men's basketball programs will shrink even further, from 338 to around 100. Now, this would not affect the top 25 rankings in either sport, and you wouldn't even notice it during March Madness. It would merely eliminate those teams who are already kidding themselves about competing in the big time...

Except that's not what would happen at all. Under this plan, about 25,000 scholarships would disappear: 28 football programs with 85 scholarships each, and 228 basketball programs with 13 scholarships each. (Feel free to do the math.) Meaning thousands of ballplayers who might have gone to college for free now aren't going to college at all. We're not talking about high-income resourceful backgrounds here. If the scholarship ticket goes away, that means a great many would never even set foot on a college campus. As poor as the "education" is for so many of these football and basketball players, no college education whatsoever is not exactly preferable.

This won't fly. We know this. These football and basketball programs aren't going anywhere, even if they're also-ran schools with no hope of really competing at a high level. They still have a critical mass of fans and alumni who will absolutely howl at even the hint of cutting them. Guess what will happen? C'mon, take half a second to think about it... Football and basketball players suddenly start earning a rightful wage as proud income-producing workers of a university. Athletic Directors suddenly have to get financially literate in a hurry. They know they can't touch their sacred big ticket sports, even if they can't afford to compete. So, they start looking somewhere else to cut costs...

Looking at sports like... you guessed it. Swimming is in trouble any way you cut it. The financial model of the NCAA is so unsustainable and flat out busted that anyone not pulling their financial weight better start scrambling for their very existence. And that means everyone in the sport of college swimming.

Here's what it comes down to: If you earn nothing and yet consider yourself entitled to all the spoils -- scholarships, travel, private locker rooms, and the rest of those intangibles that so many swimmers consider birthrights -- if you feel you're entitled to all this and generate nothing in return, at some point, someone is going to come looking for you. With a knife.

So, how to avoid the assassin? There is a way. It's not too complicated either. It comes down to the simple wisdom learned (the hard way or not) by anyone who's ever held a job, didn't want to lose it, and hoped to be promoted... Three words: Make Yourself Indispensable. Make the people who pay your way actually give a shit about you. Make them think, no, truly believe, that they cannot do without you.

With all due respect, coaches and swimmers, your college swim team is dispensable. When it comes down to dollars and cents, you aren't worth keeping. That's a hard pill to swallow, but it's true. Competitive swimming is a bad business - for this basic reason: it requires a lot of time and space in the pool in order to thrive. Space and time, these are two expensive items, especially in a high maintenance tub of water.

But these teams are worth keeping, regardless of the unblinking bottom line. Anyone reading this surely believes that. So, the question is - how do you convince the two parties that matter most to embrace your existence and make sure you continue forevermore. These two parties? The university itself and your alumni. You need them both. They need to have your back and be willing to fight for your survival as much as you're willing to fight when the ax is raised...

If that's going to happen, it's time to wise up. The financial blindness of so many swimmers and coaches is astonishing. They can't, can't possibly!, grasp how a school could be so cruel as to cut a sacred institution like a men's swimming program. Yet, when asked what they've given back, what will the answer be? Deafening silence... Those football and basketball players have an answer when they're asked that question. They can point to full stadiums and TV cameras and ask how much their own coaches earn thanks to them.

Now, the answer will never be the same when it is put to swimmers or other 'non-revenue' athletes. ('Non-revenue', such a seemingly harmless word that's tossed around but says so much...) Money-generated clearly will never be the answer. Ok, then what about clinics and swimming lesson programs for kids in and around the college community? What about taking an active role in fundraising, with seniors picking up the phone once in awhile and calling alumni and wooing them as much as they try to woo star recruits? What about figuring out how to set up an endowment for your team? How about teams stepping forward to help the university as a whole, integrating itself as an essential how-can-we-help part of your college town? Something like that tends to bring grant money for young men and women who actually grasp their place in the wider community...

These are the sort of things that make one indispensable. They put you on the radar - in the right way - long before the Athletic Director / Assassin comes searching for ways that he can cut costs and afford to pay for sports deemed more important than your own.

I'm ashamed to admit that as a college swimmer myself, many years ago, none of these things ever occurred to me. I was a financial illiterate, an utterly entitled take-take-take swimmer. I was outraged when they cut the UCLA men's program across town when I was a freshman at USC. Yet, it never once occurred to me how it might have been prevented. It was Title IX's fault, it was unfair, and the mean old penny counters at the college just didn't get it. Maybe it couldn't have been prevented, no matter what was done. Many programs have been cut since, and many more will be in the future. But most of these teams are unwittingly putting themselves in harm's way by being so willfully blind to how they might help themselves.

Ground-shaking change is coming to the NCAA. College football and basketball players are going to be paid soon. Sooner than you think. The system is broken and the cries for reform are only getting louder. And the changes are going to hit swimming, hard.

If the sport wants to stick around on the college level, it's time to get creative. And it's time to start making yourself indispensable.

Story By Numbers

Who cares about commentary, where are the results? It's all about the times. That is, the numbers, those down-to-the-hundredth facts, the ones that tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Results are what makes this sport so objectively beautiful. It's a universal language where nothing can be lost in translation. There's no third party trying to interpret what just happened on a field of play. No judges holding up subjective numbers or rankings that are inherently open for dispute. A clock starts with a beep, it records your progress at each wall, and it stops for good when your hand touches the finish. Beyond that, all else is just passing the time.

Which is why this site is about to add an essential element. A Results section. (Perhaps you've already noticed the toolbar additions above...)

In the coming weeks, a calendar of international meets will be posted. And in an Olympic year, there will be plenty. When that meet takes place, wherever it is in the world, a link will be posted where you can find the results. Sound simple enough? These results can be found elsewhere, I realize, but it frequently takes some searching. It won't be all-encompassing, tracking down each and every regional junior meet from Florida to Shanghai; instead it will be a curated list of meets that fans of Olympic swimming might care about. Grand Prix's, World Cups, Olympic Trials, NCAA's, European Champs, etc.

As fun as it is to dissect and analyze the athletes and the issues, what else is there, really, that's more interesting to swimmers than the actual results of a meet? That's the first thing I look for, before I read anyone's report on what happened... I want to read the story in the numbers. Because those numbers are far more honest and eloquent than what anyone could report.

It's akin to baseball box scores, the past performances of race horses in the Daily Racing Form, or stock charts that look like numerical gibberish to those who can't tease out fortunes from the hidden-in-plain-site patterns... For the savants of any sport or business, the numbers will always tell stories rich with life, a narrative without sentences but filled with deep meaning.

Take a look at the chart below. These are the results from the men's 200 freestyle at the 2009 World Championships in Rome. It was perhaps the tipping point of the super suits, the race that forced regulation, the race that led Bob Bowman to threaten to take his proverbially ball and go home if something wasn't done about those damn suits. Have a look:

What story do these numbers tell? Without any context whatsoever, you can look at Paul Biedermann's splits and be astonished. Not only by the final time that shattered the world record by almost a second, but by each number that came before it. Going out in 50.12 to the feet. Widening his lead over the third 50 by a few tenths. But leaving Phelps within striking distance, just four-tenths back. The man with the greatest last wall in the history of the sport, the guy who breaks wills over the final 50 meters, the one who's proven time and again that, if it's close with a lap to go, it's all over. But not this time...

On this day in Rome, Paul Biedermann made Phelps look human. An outmatched, outgunned, overwhelmed human. Biedermann came home in 25.70. Almost a second faster than Phelps. You don't need to watch the race to get it. You don't need NBC's Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines to call the race and explain what just went down in order to get it. All you need to see is the numbers.

But do those numbers really tell the whole truth and nothing but? Not really. Do they point out that Biedermann was aided by a suit that seemed to enhance his performance - and his particular body type - more than that of his competitors? Do the numbers illustrate Phelps' total lack of post-Olympic training? Well, they do if you know the context of the race. But the stand-alone digits only tell the story on the surface. They tell the story of a race - one that started and ended for all eight finalists in 106 seconds. And on that day, no matter what anyone was wearing, no matter who had trained more or less, here are the facts as laid out by the numbers: Paul Biedermann swam 200 meters faster than any human ever has before, while thrashing the greatest swimmer in history one lane over.

"Remember that the life of this world is but a sport and a pastime."

Those lines came from the Koran, apparently. Not a text I can claim to know much about, but wise words worth contemplating. And worth considering the difference between the two perhaps... A sport, in its purest sense, can be distilled in simple numbers, in silence. In the results. A pastime? That's what the rest of us do, trying to understand it.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Blown Out on the Trail

Checking in with the Comeback Crew... There won't be many happy endings. Most of these stories will end with an underwhelmed whimper. Some will end well before London. If gold and a return to past glory is perhaps an unfair and unrealistic expectation, then what can be expected of this Olympic jonesing cast of comeback junkies? A proud and respectable showing? The ability to say the inevitable "I have no regrets" with a straight and believable face?

Two months back, I wrote about the strange trend of so many past champions unable to resist the lure of London. Back in the water, back on the sauce, desperate for another hit of Olympic crack. Well, now the results have begun to roll in. Some seem to have picked up right where they left off, some are exceeding expectations, and others... Well, others may be fighting that nasty virus called Doubt right about now.

So, let's take a look. Starting with the biggest dog of all... the mighty Ian Thorpe. I know I'm not alone in saying that there's no comeback I'm pulling for more. Thorpe is a class act. Much smarter than your average superstar athlete, with a self awareness and eloquence that has always cast our sport in the finest light. We all want to see him back on the blocks in London, flanked by Phelps and Lochte, ready to deliver a 200 free showdown for the ages. Problem is, that's beginning to seem less and less likely. His recent times are not inspiring confidence.

At the recent Italian Nationals, the Thorpedo was not exactly living up to his nickname. His times: 50.8 in the 100 free / 1:51.5 in the 200 free. Ouch. Now, don't read too much into this. Thorpe is still going to make the Aussie Team. He's going to drop a load of time in both those races at his Trials. I'm betting he wins the 200 Down Under and also qualifies on the Aussie's 4x100 free relay - one that will probably be the favorite in London. Still, he's running out of time; the Aussie Trials are in March. And while I can see him going 1:46 or so in the 200, that won't put him anywhere near the podium in London.

What about his guitar-smashing compadre Michael Klim? A bit faster lately - 49.8 in the 100 at a recent meet in Melbourne. Think he grabs a spot on the Team too, probably as a prelims-only guy on that 4x100 relay... Which will make his return a success, I suppose, but how much more can really be said about being the fifth or sixth fastest guy in your country in one event? As for Thorpe, he knows that anything less than a London dog fight with the two-headed Phepte beast will go down as a disappointment...

Speaking of smarter than average Olympic champs with flawless freestyles... Here's a comeback that's shaping up beautifully out in the Berkeley hills. Last week, Anthony Ervin showed he's back in the game with a vengeance, posting two impossible to ignore times: 19.4 in the 50 and 42.6 in the 100. While conversion from yards to long course meters is a highly inexact science, I'd say that translates to around 22.5  and 49-low in the big pool. I'll admit a bit of bias here, as Tony is a friend and former colleague here in New York, but like Thorpe, this is a comeback worth rooting for. Not only because it's a terrific story about re-embracing long discarded other-worldly talent, but because Tony is doing it with grace and humility. Congratulated recently for his times last week, he replied that while encouraging, there's still a long ways to go - and then cited Nathan Adrian's frequent schooling of him in Cal workouts as evidence of exactly what he's up against.

Ah yes, humility... And then there's the breaststrokers. First the good news. Brendan Hansen has clearly not missed a beat. His winning times at the recent U.S. Nationals - 1:00.3 in the 100 and 2:09.6 in the 200 - prove that he's not just on track to make the Team, but that he has a shot to threaten his arch-rival Kosuke Kitajima for gold in London.

A bit further down the breaststroke results page, you'll find Ed Moses. His comeback has produced a hip hop music video, a reality TV show, oh, and he made it all the way to the 'C' final at the recent U.S. Nationals. I'm all for shameless self-promotion, but only when there's a bit of substance to back it up... Note to the savvy programmers at Universal Sports: See 'Dan & Dave', circa 1992.

At the other end of the spectrum, there's a pair of ageless beauties with plenty of substance - Dara Torres and Amanda Beard. Both of these ladies clearly like to have their picture taken, and they've both been very savvy in promoting themselves beyond the pool, but they back it up, year after year after year, with brilliant performances when they hit the water. At some point, you'd think we'd stop being surprised. Months before the next Games, and there's Torres and Beard once again posting eye-popping times, on track to return to yet another Games. At some point a body has to slow and age. Doesn't it? No telling when with these two though...

Finally, there's the comeback that remains a bit of a mystery. Does anyone know how Janet Evans has been swimming? Despite repeated Google searches with every conceivable keyword, I could not find any results at all for her since she swam at Masters Nationals last summer. Those times - 4:19 in the 400 and 8:50 in the 800 - show that there's still a very long way to go - just to get to the U.S. Trials. But Evans was one of the hardest working, most determined champions in Olympic history; it seems ludicrous to count her out. Still, has she not been to a single meet this fall? At the Golden Goggles at L.A. last month, Summer Sanders conducted a table-side interview with her former Barcelona teammate, and the first thing Summer said was that she'd promised Janet she wouldn't ask about the comeback. Ok...

So, now you know. Fascinating stories, as they go... Everybody loves a comeback. But sooner or later, the clock stops. To steal a pun from Mr. Ervin: Only time will tell.

Just Kids

Letter from Junior Nationals... When Did These Kids Get So Fast? Maybe it's time to drop the "Junior." Can we just call them "18 & Under Nationals?" Because what just went down in Austin, Texas last week was anything but junior... Sure, the kids were all in high school, or even younger, but the times they posted - scratch that, the times it took just to get there - were stunningly accomplished. Some didn't seem real, not for kids born a decade and a blink ago in the late 90's.

Take a look at the times, right HERE. (Take special note of Mr. Ryan Murphy, soon-to-be Olympian, age 16, from the Bolles School: 20.02 50 free; 1:45.77 200 IM; 46.72 100 back; 1:40.90 200 back -- all NAG records... And take a closer look at the men's relays from Bolles: 1:19.82 in 4x50 Free; 1:27.77 4x50 medley; 2:56.94 4x100 free -- No high school seniors on any of these relays...)

There was a time when U.S. Juniors used to be a springboard to Senior Nationals. That was the point. For swimmers burning with ambition and a bit of talent, it was a way-station, a brief stop on the path to greener pastures. Problem was, for swimmers perhaps lacking those two essential qualities, it was also a plateau, a meet where once improving guys and girls decided they'd reached their station in the sport, and decided to stop dreaming and graze contently right where they were. The meet was fast. But not really...

Not like now.

Looking at the cuts just to make the meet in 2011, one thing seems clear -- if you make Junior Nationals in high school, you're swimming at a U.S. university. Very likely a Division I school, probably on scholarship, especially if you're a girl (given the extra scholarships...) It's not a springboard now but a calling card. One that says: I am among the very fastest teenage swimmers on earth. Oh, and it doesn't mean you're necessarily American. Some of these teens blazing crazy times carry different colored passports (aka Singapore's / Bolles' butterfly phenom Joseph Schooling), but they're as welcome at the next swimmer to tear it up at Juniors. Like NCAA's, this is a meet that has become an international showcase of short course yards at its finest. Just with kids a few years younger...

The analogy to NCAA's works on a number of levels. Now, if you make one fast cut, you can swim two more individual events, just like at NC's. Now, swimming the time standard in a given event means you're probably going to get a second swim at night. And now there's even some overlap -- the times Ryan Murphy posted in the backstrokes would already put him in the big finals at NCAA's!

A few weeks back, I wrote about the slow stalled cuts that it takes to make U.S. Olympic Trials nowadays, how they're mostly the same, or even slower, than they were twenty years ago. The idea is inclusion, for promising young talents to race alongside the likes of Phelps and Franklin at the biggest domestic meet there is. Fair enough. But curiously, the exact opposite has evolved with U.S. Junior Nationals. What was once an expected rite of passage for 15 and 16-year-olds at club teams across America is now a brutally difficult standard. In the 200's of the strokes, the cuts are four full seconds faster now than they were 20 years ago.

Trials stay the same, Juniors go insane. Go figure.

Full disclosure: I'm not exactly unbiased here. The team leading this youth brigade, the Bolles School, is my alma mater. I have an immense amount of pride in the House That Troy Built, and one of the only reasons I'm still scrolling through these Juniors results so intently is because these Bolles kids are so damn good these days. In the summer of 1992, I arrived as a Bolles border in Jacksonville, FL and quickly bought in. All in. The school records were the national records in many cases; the expectation was to go all the way -- whatever that meant for you. (Note: dreams are for the deluded, goals for the real...)

With this attitude, cuts become incidental. Whatever they are is what you have to make. Make 'em whatever you want, kids will figure out how to get there. That was Coach Troy's attitude, and it's one reason he's now the head U.S. Olympic coach, coaching the world's best swimmer, and a major reason he left a legacy at Bolles that continues to perpetuate itself 13 years since he left for the University of Florida. Ryan Murphy might list Sergio Lopez as his coach of record, but he's swimming deep in a tradition that has set a sky high bar across all of pre-college swimming.

Once upon a time, when you made a U.S. Seniors cut, you couldn't swim that event anymore at Juniors. No more. Now, when a 16-year-old superstar crushes a Junior National record, you can expect to see him again next year, eager to lower that mark further still. Fact is, this meet is more exciting than most "Senior" Nationals, and is a meet of more consequence.

How exciting is it to watch tired National Teamers swim beat up in-season times at Winter U.S. Nationals? It's always great to get any airtime at all from NBC, a nice way to promote the stars of the next Games, but even those bold-faced names will admit that it's kind of a joke to trot out the cameras and air them racing in competitions that are, essentially, glorified workouts.

Instead, swim fans, take a look at the current state of Junior Nationals. It's an event that's evolved in fits and starts. It used to be two meets, East and West, back in the day. Then, it was canceled altogether, briefly, around the turn of the century. Then, it was united and brought back, with time standards that prevented any too-soon plateaus. I still love the idea of Juniors as a graduation meet, a time when you earn your ticket to the next level. But there's a reason things like March Madness remain more compelling than any NBA Finals:

There's nothing like that first flush of success.

What Are You Wearing?

Speedo restarts the suit wars... Is this really happening again? Please tell me it's not happening again. The rhetoric certainly sounds familiar. The new technology is "revolutionary", unprecedented and performance-enhancing, world records will fall thanks to Speedo's latest innovation. The winter before the next Games, it must be time to stir up swimmers' suit insecurities... Because if you're not wearing the latest and greatest from Speedo, you can't possibly hope to compete for Olympic gold. (Right, Coach Schubert?)

Weren't we supposed to be done with this? Did anyone learn anything from that dark saga of the super suits back in 2008 and 2009? Well, we learned that polyurethane is bad, and that full suit coverage across men's torsos is unacceptable. We learned that artificial buoyancy amounts to cheating. We learned about things like compression and the nature of material that is far better than your own skin when trying to propel yourself through water at high speeds.

We also learned that suit makers really really want to be a part of the action. They want to be in the game, not just attached to it. They need to have a hand in those records. They want credit, damn your speed-reducing regulation!

The tone deaf nature of Speedo's latest announcement was comical. Last week, they introduced their new "Fastskin 3" -- now it's a system not just a suit. Fast suits are so 2009... Now you need a brand new ultra futuristic cap and goggles too! (Who knew this site would be so presciently named...) Take a look at aquabots Lochte and Phelps sporting their latest armor at last week's unveiling. Please try not to smirk...

Now, you can't blame the athletes for their glowing endorsements or for the goofy ways they're forced to model this stuff. Phelps said it makes him feel like a "torpedo" and that records would surely fall in London thanks to his sponsor's latest assistance. Lochte added that he now "feels as one" with his suit. I'd say the same thing if they paid me to say it. And what they're saying is probably true. I'm sure it works and I'm sure these guys are being genuine when they say it. But can we please have some self-awareness here, Speedo? Or at least some tact?

This is the company that led the way in dismantling the record books thanks to innovations that crossed every line of performance enhancement. Their LZR Racer was the first (but soon not the best) suit to make an utter mess of the sport. Less than two years after that LZR and its various spawn were banned, it might be appropriate for Speedo to acknowledge the market they warped and how the swimming community just might perceive that they're now doing the exact same thing again. Just with a new set of rules - ones that they're writing. Some free advice to Speedo's Public Relations team: Mention it. Say, perhaps, "we realize the swimming community has entered a new era of competition and performance, one not dependent on apparel, but on the body itself." Go on to state how respectful you are as a company of that important line, how you are there to assist not to enhance the performance of the swimmers wearing your gear.

This will be complete crap, of course. You won't mean it, but that's not important. At least pretend that you recognize how you might be perceived.

Instead, you trot out more scientists. Except this time, instead of citing NASA geniuses as your inspiration, you mention the innovators behind CGI special effects in film as your guides... You wheel out the head of your "Aqualab" in London, a guy named Tom Waller, who says that "we believe we're the only manufacturer to have ever designed something to work in unison. Taken together this is the fastest stuff we've ever created."

Yes, the same script you were using four years ago... Except if you can no longer tamper with the suit quite as much as you'd like, you go looking for new terrain. Let's face it, in swimming, there's not a lot to work with. You need to get creative in order to corrupt that essential purity of body moving through water... And so, you're left with the cap and goggles. How to get rid of that annoying, less than streamlined, face and head of every swimmer? By coming up with THIS.

There are plenty of folks out there who might applaud all this, call it "progress." Who might point to the long evolution of swimwear, back to the days of wearing wool, and shrug at just another improvement in a constantly evolving process. Or maybe you just love gear. Plenty of sports worship the stuff. Consider it an essential element of the game. But here's the thing:

Up until around the turn of the century, the evolution of swimwear was about freeing the body, getting the gear out of the way. From wool to nylon to paper... Some of those men's paper suits worn at the '96 Olympics were borderline pornographic in their coverage. (Here's looking at you, Tom Dolan!) They made Brazilian beach goers look demure. Then, the entire process was reversed. Suit makers realized that shaved skin was actually quite inferior to the fabrics they could come up with.

And now they've realized that shaving your head and wearing a pair of Swedish goggles isn't nearly streamlined enough.

What will they think of next? How about getting out of the way?

Watered Down

The Bloating of the U.S. Olympic Trials: Many cuts were faster 20 years ago... It's the ultimate swim meet. The most pressure drenched, heartbreaking, dream-making competition known to swimmers. Plenty of Olympians have said it was a bigger deal to them than the actual Olympics. The U.S. Olympic Trials, where the greatest aquatic athletes from the world's preeminent swimming nation gather every four years to vie for a few precious spots on the Team... If you've made it there, you've made it to the big time.

Except making it isn't quite as big time as it once was.

These days, making Trials is easier than it's ever been. In fact, in many events, the U.S. Olympic Trials cuts were faster 20 years ago. (A few examples: men's 200 fly cut back in 1992: 2:03.19. In 2012: 2:03.99; men's 200 back in '92: 2:04.19. In 2012: 2:04.99)  Feel free to have a look. Current and past time standards for U.S. national meets are available right HERE on the USA Swimming website.

It's absurd to state that making the American Trials is in any way "easy." It remains the deepest, most brutally competitive meet there is. But over the years, those Trials have put on a few pounds. The ranks of Olympic Trials Qualifiers have ballooned. Based on the number of swimmers at the meet, it is now three times easier to get there in 2012 that it was 20 years ago in 1992. The numbers don't lie. The cuts used to be faster, but the men and women placing first and second back then were a whole lot slower. That means that a lot less swimmers used to qualify for the meet. And the ones who did were in the game, each with a legitimate, if long shot, claim at making the Team. It was akin to making NCAA's. About 24 swimmers per event, the ideal being three circle seated heats in prelims, no more. Now we settle in for a marathon of unseated heats before reaching those top 24...

USA Swimming's Great Guru (I mean, Assistant Executive Director) Mike Unger laid it out for me at lunch last week. He knows these numbers off the top of his head. In 1992, there were around 500 swimmers at the meet. In '96, that number dipped to about 400. In 2000, when USA Swimming briefly eliminated Junior Nationals, the ranks of Trials qualifiers exploded, with a meet of 1225 swimmers. When Juniors returned, that number settled back down again; in 2004, there were 730 swimmers at the Trials in Long Beach. In 2008, at the sold out Quest Center in Omaha, there were 1225 qualifiers there. And next summer, back again in Omaha, how many are expected? About 1500.

Swimmers keep getting faster, but the price of admission stays the same. Or, in the case of most of the men's events, the price is cheaper than it was a generation ago.

There are many fine reasons for this. Indeed, the U.S. Trials is a better event now that so many are admitted. Just because it's easier to get there does not make it lesser. In fact, quite the opposite. The meet now sells out a 12,000 seat arena. If each of those 1500 swimmers brings their mom and dad, that's a quarter of the nightly ticket sales right there. Something like the AquaZone, that world's fair-esque attraction in the convention hall alongside the pool, would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. That's not a product of Michael Phelps' presence, it's due to the huge number of fast young swimmers now in his midst.

I'm told that some of this Trials-expansion philosophy came from Eddie Reese. He cited the example of a 16-year-old high school flyer who barely makes the Trials cut in the 100 fly, comes to the meet, places 86th, but gains the invaluable experience of being there, seeing what it takes. Four years later, that promising young flyer is now a sophomore NCAA All-American (presumably now a Longhorn, swimming for Reese!), and he's racing into the finals with a great shot to make the Team. Did that lower standard of admission help this sample swimmer's progression? The committee of top coaches who determine such things certainly thought so. They endorsed it 100%.

This mindset has created a curious new species of swimmer at the meet: the Trials Tourist. The swimmers who make the cuts and travel to Omaha without the slightest hope in hell of actually becoming an Olympian. Next summer, there will conservatively be about 1,000 or so Trials Tourists like this. Two-thirds of the young men and women who take their marks in Omaha will do so without any real dream of going to London.

Compare this to the men's 100 fly back in 1992. The Trials cut was 55.59. What did it take to make the Team that year? 54.01. Just a second and a half gap between the last seed who barely qualified and the time it took to become an Olympian. A second and a half. That's a realistic drop. A big improvement, to be sure, but nothing outlandish. Fair to say that every man in that event allowed himself to visualize making the Team and going to Barcelona.

20 years later, that 100 fly cut has become marginally faster (one of few). Now's it's 55.29. But what will it take to make the Team? Likely a 51-low. Four full seconds below the cut. A 54.0 won't even be noticed by anyone beyond your coach, parents, and teammates. It will be one of many, a mid-pack, heat 4, lane 7 prelims swim.

This says an awful lot about the insane depth of swimming in America. Unger points out that when they set the Trials time standards back in 2010, they expected around 800-1000 swimmers to qualify. They were uncertain what the effect of the now-banned super suits would have on the times. Turns out those suits weren't so valuable after all. No one expected 1500 to charge past these now pedestrian time standards. This says great things about the seemingly limitless depth in American swimming, says Unger. And the Quest Center can certainly accommodate these swelling ranks, with two 50-meter pools, another 25-meter warm-up pool, more than enough seating, and a meet spread over a long eight days.

It's a truism in swimming that there is no more depressing place to be than on deck on the last day of Olympic Trials. It's a time when 99% of the swimmers there are devastated, their Olympic dreams dashed. A small handful glide around deck with the new insufferable glow of the Olympian. The rest remain mere mortals. They got so close, but not far, or fast, enough. Maybe this was true back in 1992, when all the swimmers there had a right to dream of making the Team. But is that really the case these days? How crushed can the 1,000 Trials Tourists really be? It's not like they're arriving with realistic hopes of going to London. They're there for the "experience." Which is fair enough, but let's not pretend that experience is as prestigious as it once was.

This is a time, less than seven months from those Trials, when many young swimmers are currently tapering and shaving for regional meets, trying to make those elusive cuts, trying to punch their ticket to the big one in Omaha this summer. It's a high honor to be sure, but these days, many more will make it.

Most will be Tourists. But who will be Travelers?

Through the Decades, Out of Darkness

There once was nothing. I don't mean that in any figurative, profound sense. I mean, literally, there was nothing. If you were a promising female high school swimmer and had the desire to swim after the age of 18, sorry, nothing for you. There was no women's college swimming whatsoever. If you were a still-improving male swimmer who longed to keep going after age 22, nope, nothing for you either. Even if you won a basket full of gold medals while still in school...

This wasn't that long ago.

On Saturday at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles, I attended an event called Swimming Through the Decades. It was a sort of kick-off to Golden Goggles weekend, a gathering of past USA Swimming legends, one for each of the last five decades, on a panel moderated by Rowdy Gaines. I have to admit, I was skeptical. It had the smell of a U-S-A cheerleading session, a mass ego-stroking for a few of the all-time greats. As one of two Canadian Olympians in the crowd, I felt typically suspicious. I was way off. There was plenty of flattery, to be sure. (Not that the folks up there hadn't earned every bit of it...) But the vibe emanating from the stage was one of sincere collective humility. These five put a whole lot into perspective.

From the 60's, there was Debbie Meyer, the first woman to win three individual gold medals at one Games. She was 16-years-old when she did it, back at the 1968 Mexico City Games. From the 70's, John Naber, most decorated man on the most dominant American team in history - the 1976 men's team in Montreal. The one that won every event but one; Naber took home four of those gold. From the 80's, Matt Biondi, greatest swimmer of his generation, winner of seven medals in Seoul, five of them gold. The 90's: Summer Sanders, the golden girl of the '92 Barcelona Games, where she won four medals, including gold in the 200 fly. And from the '00s, it was Ryan Lochte. Resumé still in progress, you know the highlights... Not a bad murderer's row.

(Of course, there were two conspicuously absent. The two greatest Olympic swimmers in history. Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps. A shame these two couldn't make it, but as soon as the questions began, their absence was forgotten.)

As the elder stateswoman on stage, the other four tended to defer to Debbie Meyer whenever she had something to say. And there was plenty of wisdom in her replies...

ROWDY: How were things different back in your respective eras?

MEYER: (I paraphrase) Well, um, everything was different. College swimming for women didn't exist back in my day. There was nowhere for us to swim after high school. There were barely any opportunities for female swimmers in high school!

Come again? This was 43 years ago. A long time, yes. But Meyer is younger than my parents, and she could pass for 43. Hearing this from a pioneer, who looks and talks more like a peer than a grandma, was jarring. Did. Not. Exist. No women's college swimming, full stop. This was five years before Billie Jean King won the "Battle of the Sexes" in 1973. It was four years before Title IX was passed, opening the door for collegiate sports for women. Meyer was a full Olympiad before all this. Three gold medals at 16 is plenty impressive, enough to call it a career, but one has to wonder what Meyer could have gone on to accomplish if she'd had a full ride waiting to any school she pleased, and an apparel deal from Speedo waiting after that...

ROWDY: John, how about you? What was different in the 70's for men's swimming?

NABER: Well, unfortunately, I knew with certainty that no matter what happened in Montreal, I would go back to USC after the Games, finish my college career and that would be that. There just wasn't anything for swimmers after college. Nothing at all.

Even the mighty Spitz retired at age 23. Naber, who you could say was the Lochte of his era, was done right out of school, couldn't even consider anything else. Ryan Lochte completed his college swimming career at Florida in 2006. Safe to say he was just getting started...

ROWDY: Matt, you and Tom Jager were the ones who ushered in this new era of professional opportunities for swimmers. How did things start to change?

BIONDI: (Again, paraphrasing) It happened slowly. I remember in 1988, I got to know Germany's Michael Gross. He was sort of the 'other one', the greatest swimmer in Germany, and we were the ones really celebrated as the best all around swimmers. I remember feeling like I had more in common with him than my American teammates. It was very lonely, being in that position.

Even back in the early 90's, there was almost no one who stuck around after college. The opportunities just weren't there. But by the mid 90's, that all started to change. By this time, women's college swimming was a fact of life, funding the educations of thousands of promising young women who finally had other pools waiting for them after high school. And when they graduated, there was more waiting for the very best. Swimwear companies started to sign the now-profitable faces of the Games. The notion of the "pro swimmer" had become a reality.

There's been plenty of pessimism written about the state of college swimming, and about the new reality of professional swimming opportunities after that. I've written a lot of dark missives about it myself. But as Debbie Meyer and John Naber and Matt Biondi were answering Rowdy's questions, I was watching Ryan Lochte's reactions. Lochte has always come across as the most grateful of champions. But as he listened to his forebearers speak, he had the quiet overwhelmed look of a kid who's just been told he's the heir to a massive trust fund.

Which of course, he is.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone...

Boys Beating Girls

Here's the pitch: Awkward high school boy longs to swim. The only sport he's good at, the only thing that makes him feel good about himself. But, sigh, there's no boys swim team at his school. So, what does young Eddie (let's call him Eddie) do? He sucks up his pride and joins the girls team. See, thanks to gender equity laws, no one can stop him. Girls can join boys' teams, right? So, why not the reverse, if the same opportunities aren't offered to the guys? Girls reluctantly welcome him on their team. Heart-warming hilarity ensues. Thinking Michael Cera as the lead...

Anyone want to buy the rights? I'll bang the script out in no time. I'm in LA all week...

Actually, this is no pitch. It's the story on the front page of the New York Times Sports section today. Their terrific swimming writer, Karen Crouse, reports from the gender-blending world of Massachusetts high school swimming, where around two dozen boys are now members of their girls teams, since many schools don't have boys swim programs. As you might imagine, this has created a bit of grumbling. Particularly when a man-boy with bodily hair and unfeminine muscles stands up and smokes the ladies in the 50 free, and breaks the "girls" sectional record.

As the father of a daughter, I could not let this happen without some righteous ranting. I would very likely be like the father quoted in Crouse's story. After watching his daughter get beat by boys at the girls conference meet, the dad sneered "Good job beating the girls" to the guys as they walked by. He was asked not to attend the next meet. I'm just surprised he was so polite.

This feels like fiction. In fact, it would not surprise me if my pitch above was taken seriously by would-be producers... But beyond the utter insanity of this very notion, something else disturbed me in reading this, something not touched upon by Crouse.

That is: Why do so many high schools have only girls swim teams? We understand the plight of men's college swimming; the cutting of programs has been well documented. But does the problem extend all the way down to high school? Apparently so.

This makes for an ironic dilemma with regards to the current state of the sport. On one hand, we have the most famous swimmer in history in our midst. Thanks to Michael Phelps (with a growing assist by Ryan Lochte), swimming has never been quite so cool for guys to be a part of. And by cool, I mean in that superficial but essential high school way - ie, can you get girls by being good at it? On the other hand, you have diminishing opportunities across the country - in both high schools and colleges - for guys to take part at all.

This poses some scary long term scenarios. It might not show up for a generation or two, but with the balance increasingly out of whack between men's and women's swimming, you have to wonder where future men's national teams will be drawn from. After so many years of inspiring growth, will swimming shrink back to a regional pastime, only celebrated in seaside hotbeds like California and Florida? Looking at the sport in a macro way, this seems like the most likely result at the moment.

But it is reversible. Because there are legions of guys out there who want to swim. So much so that some are willing to emasculate themselves by joining the girls team, knowing full well the jeers that will be coming their way from their peers and the self-righteous dads of daughters. As bizarre as the situation is at these schools in Massachusetts, these guys need to be acknowledged for the courage they're showing by taking part. It's the schools that are failing them - and failing this sport.

Swim teams can be expensive propositions that offer little financial return. We know this. We know a big part of the men's swimming crisis (can we capitalize it and call it a Crisis yet?) comes down to money. But a bit of resourcefulness could easily solve the men's swim team shortage at these Massachusetts schools. A high school senior quoted in the story came up with one obvious solution: "It infuriates me that they can't combine two schools' boys to create one team," said Sarah Hooper of Needham High. Would that be so hard? Sharing resources, splitting costs, increasing opportunities? Much thanks to the wise Ms. Hooper, for doing administrators' jobs for them...

You could also take a look at those water-filled money pits and start figuring out a way to generate some revenue out of them. Revenue that could then fund the school's team. Like say, renting out blocks of hours to outside programs that actually turn a profit. (Full disclosure: I have direct experience with this one. There is a school in lower Manhattan whose swim team is funded directly by the lease our swim school pays to hold lessons at their pool.)

These are not complicated solutions, but they do require folks who care about the sport to speak up. Men's swimming is one half of the sport of swimming, and its presence is diminishing. Not because it lacks popularity among male athletes. In fact, it's never been so popular. It's diminishing at so many schools because it is viewed as expendable.

To get a race in Massachusetts, the boys need to suck it up, drown out the jeers, and go beat the girls.

Anyone have Michael Cera's phone number?