By Greg Earhart

On April 13, the commissioners of the American Athletic Conference, Mid-America Conference, Sun Belt Conference, Conference USA, and the Mountain West Conference sent a letter to NCAA President Mark Emmert, asking for consideration of a reduction in NCAA Division I sports sponsorship minimums. This represents the single greatest threat college swimming and diving has ever faced*.

This request from the commissioners is an entirely different animal that threatens every team - men’s and women’s. This past Saturday the CSCAA united with seventeen other coach associations to hire the New York-based public relations firm, CounterPoint Strategies, to assist us in derailing this effort. Our time is short. The Division I Council meets April 23-24 and the NCAA Board of Directors meets April 29-30.

During this time we will need you!  In the past week at least twenty-eight teams, including two swimming, have been eliminated. This waiver would open the flood gates by enabling Division I schools to eliminate Olympic sports in order to preserve their Division I football aspirations. You can help in two ways:

• Sign the Petition - Reaching 100,000 names will help us move the needle. With over 300,000 year-round swimmers and 141,483 Olympic sport student-athletes in Division I, we hope to get there.

• Spread the Word - On Social Media making sure to tag @ncaa and use the hashtag #saveoursports. You can find talking points here.

We are not tone-deaf to the difficulties in higher education caused by this pandemic. We have had coaches furloughed, budgets slashed, hiring freezes, salary reductions and more. We can survive a shortened schedule, smaller staff and even scholarship reductions, but a team cannot recover from elimination.

Let’s be there for each other! #SaveOurSports

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*Before someone mentions Title IX, remember, Title IX created hundreds of teams and thousands of opportunities. It has never mandated the elimination of the teams. Those cuts were the result of poorly-managed athletic departments that blamed Title IX.