Roster Caps Incoming: Swimming Set For Tough Transition to New Era
When the ongoing college swimming season ends, so will hundreds of athletic careers as the sport enters a phase of massive upheaval. The introduction of NIL earning potential to collegians, the creation of the transfer portal and conference realignment have all created new obstacles for the sport, but the incoming roster limits will be devastating.
Per a settlement in the House v. NCAA federal case in which former Arizona State swimmer Grant House was the lead plaintiff, colleges will be allowed to share revenue with athletes. Instead of limiting scholarship money doled out to each sport, rosters will have hard caps with universities given the option to offer full scholarships to all members. Walk-ons will no longer exist. This new model will apply in Division I major conferences (the SEC, ACC, Big Ten and Big 12) plus any other conferences who opt in and thus receive clearance to distribute money directly to athletes.
The previous scholarship limits in swimming and diving were 14 for women and 9.9 for men, with the money typically split into a greater number of partial scholarships. But beginning with the 2025-26 academic year, each program will max out at 30 participants. Conferences can institute lower totals at their discretion, a likely outcome for men in most major conferences, and the SEC has already settled on 22 spots for men.
Currently, most teams in the conference have rosters of around 40 swimmers and divers per gender. Athletes who lose their spot could opt to remain at their schools and keep their guaranteed scholarship money or seek an opportunity elsewhere.
The specter of these changes has loomed all season. Across all non-revenue sports, coaches have informed current athletes and incoming recruits that they are losing their spots. Universities will be even more motivated to cut swimming programs so they can devote scholarship money toward high-revenue sports. It’s a disheartening situation yielding broken promises and hurt feelings, and not a single person involved with the sport, including House, is pleased.
Bob Bowman at the Paris Olympics — Photo Courtesy: Andrea Masini / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto
Bob Bowman, the men’s head coach at the University of Texas and the architect of last year’s national title-winning team at Arizona State, spoke this week about his expectations for roster reductions in the coming months and its impact on his team. Bowman told Yahoo Sports, “That’s going to be an agonizing process. It’s going to eliminate what I love most about coaching — developing a diamond in the rough.” He added that the overhaul to the NCAA system puts Olympic sports “in jeopardy.”
In an appearance on the Unfiltered Waters podcast with Olympic medalists Missy Franklin and Katie Hoff, Bowman gave further insights into his thought process as he prepares to essentially halve his Longhorns roster, needing to drop from 41 swimmers to 22.
“I’ve tried to be as transparent as I can be,” Bowman said. “We just haven’t put our head in the sand and acted like it’s not happening. In the first meeting we talked about it and everyone knows. What we have tried to do is make it as objective as we can. Everybody here has a chance and has had a chance over the last six months to kind of put their best foot forward, and then we kind of look at the numbers.”
The blunt reality, Bowman said, is that if “you haven’t swum a time that would score any points at SECs, you’re not going to be moving forward.” He added, “We’re here to help you with your next thing,” suggesting that he and his staff would coordinate and advocate on behalf of the many Texas swimmers who will undoubtedly enter the transfer portal and seek opportunities to compete at other schools. Bowman added that he hoped to obtain waivers on behalf of his swimmers to enter the transfer portal before its official window to get a head start on finding a new team.
In response to Bowman’s answers, Franklin and Hoff expressed relief that swimming could depend on time to judge swimmers’ abilities, but decisions on the final few roster spots in the coming months will surely be among the most excruciating any coach is forced to make for their entire careers. Given the heavy emphasis on sprint events and relays, the pressure will likely be felt most heavily in stroke, distance and medley groups around the country.
“By the end of the month, we’ll probably have most of the roster in place so that we can help the other people have a longer on-ramp to wherever they’re going to go,” Bowman said in the podcast. “But for me it’s like taking a multiple-choice test where every answer is wrong. There is no right answer. Every answer gives somebody some pain, and every answer gives me total pain, but my job is to take us from here to there, to try to do it in a way that’s respectful.”
There will be few winners with these new roster caps coming to swimming and diving. Coaches will be forced to make gut-wrenching decisions, and swimmers will choose between ending their careers sooner than expected or starting over at a new college. However, there are no better options if college swimming is to survive into the next era of larger intercollegiate athletics.
