On Friday, February 16th, SwimSwam reached a big milestone with 1 million (approved) comments in history on our site.
The comment section acts as a meeting place for swimming. It is a place for fans to go to discuss, debate, and bicker.
Our 1 millionth comment was not even about swimming as a thread began comparing Shaine Casas to New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez during the Day 6 Finals Live Recap of the World Championships in Doha. Notably, the comment was not by a troll or a bot. It was by a regular SwimSwam commenter who comments under his real name, Steve Nolan. Steve said, “Not even close, lol. A-Rod is legitimately one of the best baseball players of all time. Casas is like idk, Jeff Francoeur?” in reply to a thread stating that “Shaine Casas = Alex Rodriguez”.
To celebrate our 1 millionth comment, we’ve decided to highlight a few memorable ways on how we got there.
One of the largest comment section meme was Dean Farris. Farris continues to be a story of our comments section. As of the millionth comment, he was mentioned three times by three different commenters on three different articles during the beginning of this month (February 2024). Farris retired from the sport at the conclusion of his NCAA career for Harvard in 2022, but he has made a lasting impact. Farris was even our go-to April Fools joke for 2019, I mean, he is Irish right? The legend may have never made the Olympics for Team USA, but the legend made the Olympics for SwimSwam Commenters.
Another large meme was Southern Methodist University and the transfer portal. Every time someone entered the transfer portal, comments would come flooding in that the swimmer would be headed to SMU. For a while, SMU did not get those transfers. This past offseason, that changed. SMU’s biggest arrival was fifth-year Jack Hoagland who spent his undergraduate career at Notre Dame where he notably was a 4x ACC Champion. The team also welcomed the arrival of Christopher Mykkanen (UNLV) and Danny Kovac (Missouri).
For what it’s worth, Steve was spot on with Casas Francoeur comparison. Here’s a story about how Francoeur’s teammates had him convinced for an entire month that one of them was deaf.
https://www.mlb.com/cut4/video-jeff-francoeur-san-diego-padres-el-paso-chihuahas-deaf-prank/c-71916822
Bobo Gigi deserves a shout here!
1 million? Those are rookie numbers.
Those are moderated comments, in other words, no trolling counted or allowed. So they’re not quite rookie, especially for a niche topic like swimming.
2 things from “back in the early days of SwimSwam”
1) USRPT/Michael Andrews lit up the comment section
2) Psycho Dad was a regular commenter that could draw ire out of anyone!
@BradenKeith please respond I have a question. Why do you hate D3 swimming? I understand its not at the level of D1 swimming but you said you would be “scared for Coleman’s safety” to send him to do practice and pancakes at a D3 school. Do you really think its a bad thing that people are actually passionate about the sport in the comments? That would be like if Pat McAfee said he wasn’t going to Alabama for college gameday because they said mean things about Georgia fans. Do better
Most up voted comment? most down voted comment? Article with the most comments? Give us moar!
Steve does enough yardage in the comments
How about starting an offshoot site called Adult SwimSwam for all of the comments that don’t pass censorship muster? That would increase the total number of comments by at least two million.