That’s a nice world you live in. In the real world of inspections and audits and compliance we all know that is not just possible, not just all too frequent, but part of the system for the one doing the auditing/inspecting to find areas of fault or non compliance and then the biases inevitably creep in and shape the justifications (one way or another, for good or bad) which way the hammer will fall.
Except I also live in a real world that the NCAA as we know it has been thrown completely upside down with any ruling they ever give. They literally are getting sued by their rulings on a weekly basis. So this idea that the NCAA is just going to inject whatever feelings they have on a ruling and basically against any procedures, you sir aren’t reading the room very well.
Again I’m not saying it’s a slam dunk. I’m saying we’ve reached the 1st finish line to move to the next step. And it had to be done this year and it especially helps to beat flag football. What I am countering is this idea that they are just going to start looking at the data and saying “nah we don’t like this” so nah we aren’t going to make it a sport.
Again the biggest issue I see is not the NCAA vetting. It’s that there are certain schools that potentially could “drop” it in the transition process. That will be the bigger killer of it, over the NCAA saying nah we don’t like tri, so we aren’t going ot pass it, even though the data shows we should.
There is real concern that there are schools out there that are doing this only with the knowledge that it becomes championship status, and if that fails, they will drop the sport very quickly. And no I’m not talking about small tri programs.
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Changing gears slightly, would you take a stab at how many hundreds of thousands or millions have been spent by schools, USAT, donors, etc getting women’s college triathlon where it is today? And how many participants are there at that level in college?
Yes, I agree with elite sport it’s always the case that the tip of the pyramid has a massive amount of resources flowing into it relative to the number of elite participants, but what’s crazy in thise case is the struggle seems to be from the lack of the base under that pyramid.
If we take most (all?) other sports, like track and field and football, etc we have this huge base funnelling into it and the schools/NCAA, etc putting resources into the top of that.
We are all so focused on high end professional sport that we skipped over building that base. Build the base and let the cream rise to the top. Don’t hand pick the cream from other sports and place it at the “top” of an empty bucket and expect it to float. That might be a quick way to try to find some Olympic quality athletes but it’s a trap of a cycle to get pulled into that doesn’t have you building anything sustainable.
You’re not seeing my point.
I once had an inspector tell me a storage closet need a window because the rules required and office needed a window in the door or to the outside wall.
It’s not an office, it’s storing boxes, I said. Yes but it could be used as an office, so you need to put a window door on it or cut a hole in the wall.
Luckily he never came back. He just checked the boxes of telling me, realized the insanity of it and moved on with his day. But if he didn’t “want” my sport so to speak, he could make that area of non compliance into an issue that shut me down (at least temporarily).
There’s always areas of non compliance that can be shown and argued by those with strong opinions if they are so inclined.
For clarity, when you say women’s college triathlon, what are you referencing? NCAA or NCAA + women’s club? And then wanting participation numbers and funding numbers?
I know we have the NCAA thread and this one, but I think a Slowtwitch article would be an amazing resource. Not sure if you, or Ryan would be interested in writing one (where did we come from, where we’re at, and the future). Your knowledge is appreciated.
As a USAT “Talent Scout” for my state, it’s often difficult to discuss post-HS opportunities with athletes as there doesn’t seem to be a cohesive bank of knowledge to draw from.
Yep Lurker, you win. All I can tell you is that I have actual experience within the NCAA parameters. My sport adminstrators have experience with these things, my sport admistator has overseen I believe 9 sports go from emerging sports to full time status. None of what you think or see has happened in the past during the “vetting” process. That’s all I can really tell you. It’s far less “opinion” and emotions and “seeing things” and arguing is that shirt purple or pink and more “does the data support us making this a championship sport”. That’s all I can say about the process. Again the 2 key metrics NCAA wants to see from an emerging sport:
- increase in participation numbers in your sport (which we have every year)
- met 40 school ncaa sport sponsorship minimum (which we did in year 10)
So yes they can “vet” the data, and they may not like a few schools choices, but again it’s going to be far less “we like you or we don’t like you” so that’ll be leading the decision; and much more- what is your data that you present to us showcase as a sport.
So all I can tell you is that we’ve met the initial assessment process to start the official championship status process. Nothing less, nothing more. How you think the process is going to go down is counter to anything I’ve ever heard or seen within the NCAA parameters. So thank god we aren’t talking general contracting I suppose.
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Ha funny enough it would be full circle. ST actually allowed me and ST to be the 1st media source to do a deep dive into the NCAA movement back in 2014.
I told Ryan I’d give him all the info (or better coaches to talk to) for an article once we had a better understanding of the decision. Right now it’s more “holding pattern”. In football terms we were facing 4 and 21 and got it down to the 5 yard line. So we didn’t score a touchdown, but we are damn close. We can still fumble it away if we don’t finish this off properly.
And again the NCAA is facing so many “bigger” issues than worrying about sports moving from 1 classifcation to another. Which means that could even be fast tracked, or it could be pushed back even further. There are actual “real” consequences with revenue sharing, roster cap limits with this House settlement. April 7th is a big day for colleges as a whole. They’ll have have much better clarity and then can move on to the next pressing issue.
We literally are moving foward in 2025 where teams in the same conference are going to be following completely different NCAA rule books. If you opt in to the setttlement, the NCAA rule book is goign to be ~15 pages. If you don’t opt in, your rule book is going to stay with the current ~400+ page rulebook.
So we don’t even know what happens to teams that don’t opt in to follow new ncaa rules. Are they banned from post season play? There are so many questions and literally info is changing by the week. It’s pure madness going on right now. Figure out college football, and everything else will settle down from there.
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Feel free to write that article. You know where to send it. 
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I think it officially goes before the NCAA the 2nd week of April. Right now 2 committees are being formed; one for the actual championship event and one more for the athlete+sport side of it. Many times the NCAA Vetting process have limited knowledge on the ins and outs of your sport. There have been NCAA people at like the last 3-4 women’s triathlon national championships to get a feel for just what it takes to then host the “ncaa national championship”. The vetting group just are vetting the numbers, vetting the competitions (3 student athletes vs at min another NCAA team that also must have min of 3 student athletes), again they have no opinion on whether it’s a good sport or bad sport, other than looking at the data. The data that you present will form the opinion of the committee much more than some preconcieved idea of “triathlon”.
Generally takes a year to vet, but again with all the moving parts in the NCAA currently it could be fast tracked, or it could be slow played. I wish the NCAA would fast track figuring out college football and then getting all the conferences back to the regional brands they were for 100 years. Current NCAA landscape is too violatile right now. And again the NCAA could close shop and if you aren’t championship status you are not getting into the ncaa game. No one really knows, it’s so much info changing almost weekly.
@Lurker4 if you were only referencing NCAA triathlon; there is roughly 300-350 NCAA female student athletes as of 2024 season (I think 210-212 competed over 3 waves at women’s national champs; I had 1 qualify that I didn’t race, others did the same; teams were only allowed 7 to race). USAT has spent ~$3.5mi of their own funds + $1mi from a private donation last year that was earmarked for NCAA only and so total $4.5mi over 10 years, basically $3.5mi from USAT’s “funds”. If you are talking collegiate women’s triathlon overall, your probaly talking about let’s call it 1500 women on college campuses all throughout college (NCAA + club women). That’s sorta a hard number to get exact as what do you qualify as a women’s triathlete? If they are on the club and female, but don’t race, does that qualify? When I coached NC State triathlon we had 70 members, yet I only knew of roughly 25, cus over 1/2 the team just wanted to be part of the team and didn’t want to race. Maybe they did 1 workout a week with a team member, so the club number is a little fuzzy.
USAT has at times low key funded several club programs over the years dating back to probaly post Athens Olympics that I know of. There was a run of athletes always going to grad school at Boulder for about a 10 year window.
NCAA has hundreds of millions of dollars it’s distributing. I’d be very surprised if with that much money going around there aren’t a lot of people and groups lobbying how those resources get used. And if some of that is going to go to triathlon and it’s a fledging sport, with random school with just a handful of girls participating, and it’s take a decade or whatever to get there, and you can hold whatever issue up as a reason why they aren’t going to get a slice of a the pie that multiple groups are lobbying for, I’d be surprised if there aren’t some machinations.
I guess I’m looking at this like the NCAA might be a little more pure than the IOC, but maybe not that much.
Bro your late to the party. All those hundreds of millions has already been decided by the NCAA on how it’s getting distributed.
If your a power conference w/ football you get A money (SEC, B10, ACC’s of the world)
If your a power conference without football you will be B money (Big East teams that have power basketball but no football- St. Johns / Seton Hall)
If your mid major with football you will get C money (MAC, C-USA, Sun Belt)
If your a mid major without football you will get D money (Horizon League)
Every athletic dept in the country already knows what they are getting from those hundred of millions of dollars. The ONLY additional revenue schools ever get is in 2 tournaments- men’s basketball tournanment and now women’s basketball tournament (as of last year). Every other sporting tournament there is no additional revenue based on how good you do, only basketball awards $$$ for actual wins. (It technically goes to the conference, and how it’s actually distributed can differ between conferences…at our mid major the majority of it goes to the team that won…shocking, the fairest way to do it)
And if you read the press releases on most of these depts, they are going to give football the lions share of the money, second men’s basketball, 3rd women’s basketball and then all the rest of the non-revs fighting over the 1% left of the pie. But again with revenue sharing, if you aren’t making money for the school, you aren’t going to get a ton of money; and no coach I’ve talked to doesn’t disagree with that. I certainly am not going to expect a handoff if women’s volleball is bringing in more revenue to the school than my sport.
And btw, if you ever want to talk ncaa opportunities for athletes, shoot me a line, DM, etc.
I always tell people when talking about the difference in D1 D2 or D3 (I’ve coached at D3 and now D1). I don’t think any is any “better” than the other; each has it’s own unique opportunities and challenges. I would actually say D3 allows “coaching” to likely matter the most, while D1 is more who has the better budget / scholarship allotment to get the best talent.
I always laugh at the story of why ASU even got triathlon. A rich family in PHX wanted their son to play ice hockey at ASU to be close to home. The admin said it can’t add men’s ice hockey unless also adds 2 women’s sports…it’ll cost $7.5mi. Said dad wrote ASU a check for $7.5mi a week later, and 2 women’s sports gets added. Well the USAT CEO Rocky Harris came to USAT after being the ASU AD, so he basically said to ASU "add triathlon’, they did and women’s v’ball. And now 10 years later they are the most successful ncaa tri program to date.
The whole “connect the dots” then allows USAT to “partnership” with ASU when it created it’s men’s collegiate Podium Project training group to call Tempe home and train on their facilities + scholarships to attend school there.
#smallworld
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And one last chess not checkers momemt for the actual sport of triathlon.
Prior to any of the ncaa tri movement, our USAT Jr program has a) been very successful b) stopped when kids became freshman in college and usually went single sport pathway.
Even early on in the ncaa tri movement the “best” jr talent still went ncaa single sport vs ncaa tri. Part not a ton of great options (most of these kids are the 4.0 gpa type of could go and as much academic money as they can athletic money), but also there was still a bit of “unknown”. Our 2 biggest names Knibb and Gorman both went single sport pathway. Since covid the top talent is staying in the sport in the key developmental years from juniors to senior elite itu level.
Now here’s where the men come in. For many years our top men’s talent basically were always forced to go single sport because well there is no scholarship money for men to go to college on. That has all changed thanks to the ncaa tri movement. We now have ncaa women programs that are treating men’s club as a “varsity” level sport with even scholarship $$$. It’s very specific schools (currently 4 ncaa tri schools also have varsity men’s club programs), but it’s also suddenly giving our top talent a chance to stay in the sport and actually get some money to do that.
That was never the case prior to all of this ncaa tri movement. And again USAT’s pivot to the ncaa tri movement was the specific Podium Project who basically goes after the ~1 top male each year from the junior elite pathway.
So suddenly now 10 years later, and the men suddenly have collegiate triathlon homes with some really good coaching / training enviornments. That was no where near a possibility prior to the ncaa tri movement (that is obvously women only focused).