The CardBoard
Another one bites the dust - Printable Version

+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: C-House! (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-5.html)
+--- Thread: Another one bites the dust (/thread-24273.html)

Pages: 1 2

RE: Another one bites the dust - M T - 07-13-2023

Yeah, that Richard Quick was just no good at coaching.  Look at Janet Evans' times - they just went downhill.....



it happens...

RE: Another one bites the dust - Jamesy - 07-13-2023

(07-13-2023, 08:17 PM)BobK Wrote:  5 of the last 6 years two thirds and 3
National titles
With swimmers not improving that’s amazing coaching

As others have pointed out, there are parallels between the women's swim team now and football 4 years ago. In 2019, you could say the football team had won 3 PAC-12 titles in the last 7 years plus another pac-12 title game, but we saw how the team went from there. Stanford will always field top 5/top 10 teams in women's swimming and if that's the standard we're using, we'll be fine, but the recruiting has dropped a notch, the swimmers currently in the program aren't improving the way other schools' swimmers are, and the NIL/transfer landscape makes it harder for us to compete.

RE: triangle2 - cardcrimson - 07-13-2023

(07-13-2023, 08:42 PM)triangle2 Wrote:  This makes me wonder out loud - what’s the societal good that comes from reserving spots for athletes and placing them ahead of other academically qualified kids who didn’t win the VO2 max lottery but might nevertheless be excellent well-qualified students? I mean, in the NIL and money era, I can at least see why big DI schools are in the game to make money, but what justification is there to do this for a place like Williams, or Pomona, or even for schools like Stanford, or Northwestern, or Brown? Like BC, I’m saying this as a fan, and it makes me sad that I’m struggling to find a moral justification for my fandom.

Never in a million years did I expect my kid to be in the middle of a collegiate recruiting cycle. But here I am. 

I think athletes add a lot to college student bodies--drive, commitment, and at good schools, intelligence. They also add someone local to connect to and perhaps cheer for, and I think that's a good thing. Athletes can also provide diversity, in more aspects than just race. When I look back at my years at Stanford, did any of the athletes add to my academic experience. No. If you were to ask if I added anything to any of my classmate's academic experience, the answer would be the same. All of the students contributed to the culture that was Stanford before it hated fun.

In water polo, DIII schools started a national championship just a few years ago, and the enthusiasm has been off the charts. In the inaugural tournament, over a thousand fans showed up, and the winning team went nuts when they won. That's what's collegiate sports is about and it was great to see. Even without the scholarships, the NIL, and the like, the kids still want to compete at a high level, and college sports can give them that. 

One of my daughter's best friends is headed to Wagner College to play D1 polo next year. Before this year, I'd not heard of Wagner or knew they had a D1 program, but I guarantee, I'll be rooting hard for them. That's one of the great things about college sports, it's personal.

RE: triangle2 - M T - 07-13-2023

(07-13-2023, 10:21 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:  Never in a million years did I expect my kid to be in the middle of a collegiate recruiting cycle. But here I am. 

I think athletes add a lot to college student bodies--drive, commitment, and at good schools, intelligence. They also add someone local to connect to and perhaps cheer for, and I think that's a good thing. 

 I'll be rooting hard for them. That's one of the great things about college sports, it's personal.

Congrats, and I agree with much of what you said.  I would add that if I ask myself what did my sports participation add to my college life, it was a lot.

Even those athletes getting NIL and transferring from school to school, I have to believe they don't see their sport as a job.  At least I hope not.  I think that virtually all student-athletes are competing for themselves and their teammates, much more than for the glory or the money or even for the school.

But, you did raise a question in me.  Can D-III athletes be paid NIL?  I suppose so since true commercial value is irrelevant.  Do the D-III schools permit athletic ability to be a factor in admissions?  I know a half century ago, my school's conference allegedly did not.  I certainly know some D-III schools that somehow always have enough good athletes to do well nationally. But, at private schools, I can't see how it would be blocked.  So, a wealthy donor could buy just a few athletes for a D-III school to give them a team to beat all other D-III teams.  It seems wrong and a shame.

RE: Another one bites the dust - Leftcoast - 07-13-2023

I have no dog in the fight when it comes to Meehan's coaching ability but it's foolish to judge any coach by an internet post's comment section.  

Comment sections are where intelligent thought goes to die.  Simply reading them lowers your IQ by 20 pts and I've seen WCW wrestling matches with more thoughtful arguments even after someone got blasted with a collapsible chair.

RE: Another one bites the dust - cardfan77 - 07-14-2023

Swimswam comment section is notorious for crazy comments, thoughts, expectations and ideas. Even when Stanford was winning back to back championships, fans on that site love to hate Stanford. 

Stanford dominated women’s swimming in the 90s but it took 19 years for Stanford to win another championship (1998-2017). Could Stanford W swimming team perform better? Absolutely!!!!

Sadly with transfer portal and NIL, I think it’s to be expected to lose some of our top student athletes. As someone previously mentioned, everyone has a price and student athletes will go where they get can more $$$$$, some not all. I am not saying that’s what Claire Curzan is doing.

I hate what’s happening with college sports. I agree that college athletes deserve $$$$ but there’s need to be a cap or tighter regulations on NIL and transfers.

RE: Another one bites the dust - Mick - 07-14-2023

I think that athletes add a great deal to the collegiate experience. You could consider it from a number of different perspectives. 

There are eight forms of intelligence, including logical-mathematical, spacial, naturalistic, linguistic, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal and bodily-kinesthetic. The latter two are often inherent in athletes to a greater degree than others.

A dozen years ago, I had a conversation with Harvard's Assistant Athletic Director, who doubled as sort of a Director of Athletic Admissions. She told me that Harvard, for a period of time, sought exclusively a "well-lopsided" student body, but that the result was a not-very-pleasant campus experience. They had moved to a rough 50/50 blend of "well-lopsided" and "well-rounded" students. She said that there has to be a place for both the best cellist in the world, and the student body president/captain of the basketball team/4.5 GPA/33 ACT and that both contributed to the campus experience.

Now whether the athletic experience needs to be at the very highest, Olympian levels as they are at Stanford -- that's up for debate, certainly. Harvard and Princeton have approximately the same number of sports, but compete at a more modest level (lower end of D1). They seem to do well with it, and MIT does very well another level down (D3). BTW, the SF Giants recently drafted two Princeton baseball players. First time since 2014 that Princeton had more than one player drafted. At least they're accustomed to wearing orange and black... ;)

RE: Another one bites the dust - Branner77 - 07-26-2023

Some current and former LSJU swim stars on Team USA at Worlds this week in Japan. Where France and China and of course the Aussies are all giving Team USA a run for the money.

Rough butterfly relay leg today for Huske in the mixed 4x100 medley. She seemed to hesitate and almost "double-clutch" on her dive, as the breaststroker was charging to the finish and then surprisingly skipped a final stroke and instead finished with a long glide. Huske ended up diving in way too deep, lost probably at least half a second in resurfacing, frantically tried to recoup against the Chinese superstar Zhang Yufei, got a bit tired in the final 25 and then finished with a long glide to the wall herself. The result was a 58.1 split, about 2 seconds slower than her individual 100 fly earlier this week!? Bronze medal.

Ledecky defends her 800 freestyle title on Saturday morning at (I think) about 5 a.m. Calif. time. She'll likely just 2-beat kick the entire race other than for the first 25 and final 50, and win by half a lap.

RE: Another one bites the dust - 81alum - 07-27-2023

(07-13-2023, 09:59 AM)msqueri Wrote:  I also am starting to have philosophical thoughts about Stanford's place in the world, including the sports world, and what the natural order of things is. Thoughts way too nascent to put into words but part of it is wondering what were Stanford's decades of athletic dominance based on and is that any more right/proper/natural than schools with large passionate fan bases soaking up the fun? If Stanford's dominance was based in part on having more resources to spread across more sports, is a resource-intensive shifting of the power balance to schools that actually have fans a bad thing or just the Stanford rich kids finally getting put in their place by schools whose riches are more a function of having a large student/fan/donor/community base than Arrillaga-driven oligarchy? 
Deeply thoughtful analysis.  I've often wondered how many Sears cups we would have won without Arrillaga.  A little like how far would Oregon track have gotten without Phil Knight.

Other schools have always seen us this way.  I remember when the SJSU football coach brought his team up to play us here in Palo Alto, and rather than drive straight to the stadium, he gave his team a tour of the Stanford campus.  He wanted them to see the privilege and luxury that Stanford students enjoyed compared with SJSU.  As I recall, it worked that year.

RE: Another one bites the dust - DenverCard - 07-31-2023

The women's swimming equivalent of the starting quarterback at Alabama transferring to Georgia:

https://swimswam.com/ncaa-champion-claire-curzan-transferring-from-stanford-to-virginia/

RE: Another one bites the dust - PVTree - 07-31-2023

Well, that sux.

RE: Another one bites the dust - fullmetal - 07-31-2023

Feels bad :(  Is Muir paying attention?

RE: Another one bites the dust - 2006alum - 07-31-2023

What is Muir supposed to do? Unilaterally ban NIL? It's not a coincidence the unprecedented number of out-transfers from Stanford over the past year has coincided with the maturation of big $, essentially pay-to-play individual NIL and collectives. And honestly, I think boosters of other schools just have more appetite to buy athletes than Stanford and its boosters do. I find the practice totally unseemly, as it seems like many around here do. Clearly UVA doesn't. So be it. 

Sucks, but then again, I'm very quickly losing all remaining interest I had in "collegiate" athletics anyway, so maybe these nails in the coffin will just make the mourning process shorter. 

And now with all that free time not spent following college sports, maybe I'll finally have time to read Infinite Jest...