The Mid-American Conference announced this week that it would reduce its men’s and women’s swimming & diving championships from 4 days to 3 as part of conference-wide cost-cutting efforts.
This is part of a number of dramatic changes to the conference’s scheduling this season. The plan is expected to cover the next four seasons, but does come with the ability to re-evaluate as clarity and stability returns to collegiate athletics.
Changes announced by the conference:
- Men’s and Women’s Basketball will move to 20-game conference schedules, which is an increase in 2 games from prior years. This will allow, presumably, lower travel costs as the MAC is a regionally-compact conference. The basketball conference tournaments will field 8 teams each, and opening-round games on campus sites have been eliminated. Last season, the men’s conference basketball tournament was played in Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, home of the Cleveland Cavaliers That arena has a capacity of almost 20,000, though the biggest attendance was under 8,000: a capacity that could be handled by several on-campus arenas.
- Field hockey – conference tournament cancelled
- Men’s soccer – conference tournament cancelled
- women’s soccer – conference tournament cancelled
- women’s lacrosse – conference tournament cancelled
- softball – conference tournament cancelled (full conference round robin of 30 games)
- baseball – conference tournament cancelled (full conference round robin of 30 games)
- Volleyball – conference tournament reduced to a four-team event
- Men’s & women’s swimming and diving – reduced from a four-day event to a three-day event
- Men’s & women’s indoor and out-door track & field – reduced to a two-day event
- Men’s & women’s golf – reduced to a two-day event
Many conferences already use a 3-day conference championship meet, though the 4-day event, with a two-relay opening evening session, has become more popular to put less strain on athletes as they chase best times or NCAA qualifying times. The SEC conference has a 5-day event.
With 5 men’s teams and 8 women’s teams in the conference, the reduction of 1 day of travel would be around 140 nights in a hotel room (for double occupancy) or around 70 nights (for quadruple occupancy) across all member schools.
Men’s swimming & diving programs:
- Miami (OH)
- Ball State
- Evansville
- Southern Illinois
- Missouri State
Women’s swimming and diving programs:
- Akron
- Ball State
- Bowling Green
- Buffalo
- Eastern Michigan
- Miami (OH)
- Ohio
- Toledo
The Akron women won last year’s MAC Conference Championship meet ahead of Buffalo, while Missouri State slid past Miami on the men’s side. The conference didn’t have any swimmers or divers qualified for the NCAA Championships this season, which were eventually cancelled, though 14 divers earned All-America honors. The conference is located in Zone C of the NCAA zone diving qualifying system; as the only zone that didn’t complete qualifying, the CSCAA awarded all remaining competitors in that zone All-America awards.
No changes were made to the MAC football championship game. Last season, that game was held at Ford Field in Detroit, which seats around 65,000. About 22,000 spectators showed up to watch Miami (OH) beat Central Michigan.
This is good news, right? Financial hardship is here, the outlook is bleak, and saving money in this way has S&D doing their part while not really impacting student athlete experience in a devastating way.
So are they still going to charge each associate member $7,500 to compete in the meet and give the host $5,000? No brainer that they’re still having a championship, because they make $16,500 just from entry fees after the host cost. Maybe they’ll just give the host less since it’s a three-day meet.
So you think that the full-time members should bear the full cost and associate members should get to compete for free?
The MAC took its’ biggest hit when Kent State, Bowling Green, Ohio U and Western Michigan dropped Mens Swim!
The MAC conf leadership decided they did not want to support men’s swim in an effort to shore up failing football programs.
A little more history about the rich tradition of the MAC and the unfortunate trend of Men’s Swimming & Diving eliminations.
In the beginning – 1953 – it was the Ohio and BGSU show (on the men’s side). Less one team victory by Miami in 1955, just prior to the arrival of 1960 USA Olympian and gold medalist Bill Mulliken (200 Br), Ohio (3) and BGSU (6) had a stranglehold on the league finale. The next ten years saw the emergence of Western Michigan (2), Miami (2) and Kent State (1), the decline of BGSU (0) and the peak of Ohio’s championship squads (5). The following ten years saw the decline of Ohio (0) and WMU (0), the continued success… Read more »
In the 80’s, Kent State and WMU cut their men’s programs. In the late 1990’s, Miami survived a cut led by the alumni and Bill Mulliken (RIP 2014). The 2000’s saw Northern Illinois, BGSU, Toledo and Ohio get axed. Ball State survived primarily on the selfless sacrifices of Ball State Women’s Coach Laura Siebold-Caudill via the women’s program giving up resources, combining assistant coaching positions and through the grit and determination of BSU men’s coach Bob Thomas.
In or around 2002-03, on the heels of the once dominant BGSU and league member NIU Swimming & Diving team eliminations, the MAC head coaches proposed to the conference office a merger with the Missouri Valley Conference schools. The MAC had Buffalo,… Read more »
So in summary, the following MAC schools once sponsored Men’s Swimming & Diving:
Marshall 1969?
Central Michigan 1982
Western Michigan 1983
Kent State 1988
BGSU 2002
NIU 2002
Toledo 2003
Ohio 2007
Buffalo 2017
EMU 2019
Did you know that Jim Steen ’71 swam and studied at Kent State? If you do not know who Jim Steen is, google him. He has led teams to more NCAA team championships then Eddie Reese, David Marsh, Richard Quick, Dave Durden, Greg Meehan, Jack Bauerle and Teri McKeever combined!
Standard Take: So back to the way it was for 40 years.
Hot Take: The MAC Swimming Championships were reduced to irrelevancy the day Scott Wetherbee ended the Eastern Michigan Men’s Swimming program. Texts from Miami alums in 2019 to EMU swimmers noting, “It’s not the same” said it all. When your most hated rival sends an “I miss you” note, you know even they hate what they’ve been left with.