It seems a move to the SEC is imminent.

All things considered, I think this is good for A&M.

WAY more men's teams:

Auburn
Florida
LSU
Georgia
Tennessee
Alabama
Kentucky
South Carolina

Women's - above plus:

Arkansas
Vanderbilt

Competition will be overall dramatically higher. It won't be just Texas any more. The men will probably not finish 2nd reliably though. We will likely be behind Auburn and Florida consistently. I'm gonna guess that recruiting could and should be better.

Our facilities are comparable to the best in the SEC except Tennessee (two indoor 50M + one outdoor 50M).

Thoughts?

I like it for swimming, very competitive and both teams would fair well within conference without ever really being in danger of coming stone last consistently.

It'd be interesting to see how (or if?) we would have to adapt recruiting strategy...

and would it change taper/season strategy as well?
The SEC champs are usually a little before big 12's, which I think would especially help our guys with their normal "double bounce" taper

Thumbs up for the swimming.

Will certainly make the meets more fun to watch...lots more big names coming to Aggieland for meets one would imagine...Can't really hurt considering that the regular season doesn't matter much.

Both programs will certainly get a ton more national respect. Being the #8-12 team in the country out of a conference like the SEC, that has 5 or 6 big-time programs, than the Big 12, which has two.

Will be interested if the men will be forced into swimming more meets than they're used to. With all of those teams in the conference, they're going to have a lot of dual meets (they don't usually swim many). The conference may end up swinging things into more tri-meet type of situations, sort of like the Big Ten does with their quad meets.

It will definitely change the way that both programs run. It's completely different going to a conference where there are more than 3 teams. It will also change the landscape of college swimming if Missouri goes SEC also. Where would tu go for swimming?

My guess is that Texas would cobble together a conference from other "rejects" whose conferences don't sponsor swimming. The few remaining Big 12 teams, The CUSA men (they don't have a real conference title), maybe the Sun Belt men's teams.

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Will be interested if the men will be forced into swimming more meets than they're used to. With all of those teams in the conference, they're going to have a lot of dual meets (they don't usually swim many).

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this will be very interesting. it will cost the team/athletic department a lot more money in the SEC. we all know it costs an arm & leg to host a home meet, and now that the travel is further away travel costs will be higher. it will be interesting to see how the move to the SEC will affect their budget, and other non-rev sports as well. ya the school will be bringing in more money overall, but im sure as weve all seen in the past, the non-rev sports wont see much benefit from that at all, even though it might be needed.

Well....the women's teams will have to see a benefit in some form or fashion. Can't escape that. It's the men's non-revenue teams that should be concerned.

Hopefully the plan in place is AT LEAST to cover the additional expenses incurred by joining a new-conference for non-revenue sports.

I really think that more tri-meets is the way to go. By the same accord, I think the men's and women's teams are going to have to work together more and swim more co-ed teams at the same time (so, travel together to Florida, or have both Florida teams in at the same time so as to save money from having to host two separate meets).

I'm not a big fan of having them go to meets as co-ed. I feel like thats one of great things about A&M swimming is the fact they are completely separate teams. I can see that money-wise it may be a little cheaper but it can't be that much cheaper can it? Also another note, I hope this still happens

I think it would benefit swimming in general for both our teams (and it seems that's the general consensus). The question of whether or not they would keep the teams separate is VERY interesting.

I would hope they keep them apart, if only for the reason that they are 2 teams with almost completely different approaches and challenges right now and I'm not sure how it would meld.

Honestly, I think the adding of dual meets and travelling would help our guys team - "Competition breeds success"

Think you are right about the advantages of more competition meets. Most of these kids comming in, between High School and Club, are used to swimming lots of meets anyway. Having said that, it would certainly change the coaching methodology/approach. Not sure about messing with that.

i was on the swim team way back early 80's we were one team men and women...was really cool we all hung out together all the time and it helped build total team chemistry...we were building each year to be better and it got better every year....even at the old p l downs....no problem with me having both teams traveling together to have double duals or quad meets ....

did the guys not get any freshman?

http://www.aggieathletics.com/SportSelect.dbml?SPSID=635361&SPID=94399&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=27300&Q_SEASON=2011



Looks like we are SEC bound....now what?

Our men's team is notoriously slow to announce its signees and the website is slow to get updates too.

Notice there is no 2011-2012 roster for the women yet.

What Spicewood said. Partially has to do with international recruits, and never being 100% certain about who's coming in until they've cleared all the hurdles...but only partially.

Top domestic recruit (that we know about) was a late signer - Albert Riley out of Katy/Fleet (because club swimming in Katy is just about dead). 20.7 50 free/45.0 100 free. Will fit in very well as another piece to the relays, and projects to maybe be a relay-anchor down the road with some B-Finals if all goes well.

CS has him ranked 199th in the class, though their rating methodology hurts him badly because his performances are pretty limited to the sprint freestyles (with a fairly good 200 of 1:40.3), and they rank based on 5 events. Probably falls somewhere between 17-25 in the class if you're raking just on sprint freestylers.

Agblastoff - why does Collegeswimming.com suck so much? They cover news stories reasonably well, but the message boards are soooo boring.

For a while it seemed the boards were over-moderated, and lots of posters just left.

Well, I won't get TOO far into it, but part of the issue that I've heard is that 99% of their content is press-releases, and as more original-content sites are popping up everywhere, people are finding those to be better outlets for discussion (which is a model that Texags has hit on very well, too). I don't think they've had the time to dedicate to the site recently (as is evidenced by the fact that their moderator has posted spam on the message boards and nobody has caught it yet).

Their database resources have a great foundation, though, and with a little more attention could be awesome.

[This message has been edited by AGBlastoff (edited 9/1/2011 11:37a).]

You're right. Most of the content is not original. Swimmingworld magazine's coverage of NCAA swimming and recruiting is getting better, it is more original, and more interesting.

CS was more interesting when active swimmers (such as Maverick Smalley) were active on the boards.

After we are gone the Bevo conference, on the men's side, would only have two teams, tu and mizzou. Wonder if that kills the chance of a conference championship for the steers?

They may as well not even taper for Big 2's. Even if BYU joins the Big 12-2-1 it would be for football only so still 2 in the conference. the horns could taper just the people who have no shot at NCAA's and still win the conference championship duel meet every year

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on the men's side, would only have two teams, tu and mizzou

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isnt mizzou rumored to possibly be joining us in the SEC? the conference meet doesnt matter for texas ever anyways, and its not like they have a "conference meet schedule", since they swim that silly little invite in october, and a dual agains us in february (which they would still have im sure. texas is basically unaffected by the change imo

tu's mens team barely tapered for Big12s before. None of their big guns did. There just isn't any good reason to have the men swim a conference meet after this season.

The women's team couldn't relax though so A&M moving out helps the women's team a good bit since the Big12 title was a two team race.

Agreed 09. On the men's team, Texas basically treats it as a "last chance meet," with only tapering the guys who aren't going to be comfortably in on relays and such anyways.

The women are a whole different story though. This is a definite boost for the women's team.

The question for the Texas men really becomes those bubble swimmers. If it becomes them swimming basically an NCAA sanctioned time trial for NCAA cuts (especially if Missouri leaves to), does a lack of competition make it harder for them to get psyched for a meet? Meaningless or not, "conference championship" still gives a psychological boost that results in good times.

I'd be most interested to see what they do with the meet that weekend (which I'm sure they want to swim anyways, just as a meet). They'll be hard-pressed to find other NCAA teams who will want to swim them that weekend. Maybe they'll join the CUSA consortium? It will just leave them in a weird sort of limbo in Division 1. They'll be like Notre Dame football - a powerhouse team without a conference to work with.

I think Texas rests a lot more for Big 12s than their fans like to admit, especially in their 'down' years (when they were a 4-7 type of team).