Major League Swimming? Professional Swimming Association? Whatever it's called, we need one

One significant way USA Swimming could have capitalized on the popularity of swimming after the Beijing Olympics would have been to create a professional swimming league. Yes, they were hamstrung by Michael Phelps' decision to take 5 months off after the Olympics. Phelps' fame and talent would without a doubt be the #1 key to the success of a professional swimming league. Could he have been enticed to return to swimming earlier if plans for a professional swimming league were in place? We'll never know. Maybe bong gate could have been avoided.

In any event, USA Swimming needs to consider starting a professional swimming league soon. A good time to start would be the fall of 2009 after NBC televises the U.S. Nationals and World championships in Rome. Public interest in swimming will be on the rise again and the window of opportunity would for a moment be wide open. They definitely need to do it before 2012, when Michael Phelps retires for good and he is lost to the sport forever.

Imagine Phelps and Lochte and Peirsol racing each other once a month in different events. A professional swimming league would give swimmers like Jason Lezak, Peter Vanderkaay, Garrett Weber-Gale and Eric Shanteau a high level competition on a regular basis and a way to earn a living through swimming.

We've read articles about Jason Lezak's struggles to find sponsors so he can continue to train as a full-time job. If an Olympian as famous as Lezak is having trouble finding sponsors, what about non-Olympian National Team members like Nick Thoman and Ben Hesen? Professional swimming would give these guys a way to continue competing and training.

What are guys like Michael Kleuh, Alex Righi and Rex Tullius going to do after college? If a professional swimming league existed, then like athletes in other sports, they would have an organized outlet for earning a living and competing. If a professional swimming league existed, it is possible that college graduates like Doug Van Wie and David Cromwell would not need to be training in Europe (although that is awesome).

The USA Grand Prix events are the closest thing the U.S. has to a professional swimming league. However, the Grand Prix events in their current format are lame. The only financial prize is $20,000 for the overall winner. Mary Descenza had the 2009 prize wrapped up after the first Grand Prix meet in Minnesota. Moreover, $20,000 is hardly enough of a prize to entice anyone to train hard and compete. Professional swimmers are competing in the Grand Prix events for the chance to race, because that is the only opportunity they have in the U.S. Nevertheless, the competition is generally mediocre. In many Grand Prix events the professional swimmers easily win their events. A professional swimming league would ensure a high level of competition and fiancial reward for all swimmers who participate.

How would this work financially? A professional swimming league could be modeled after Major League Soccer. Swimming is similar to soccer in that many children participate in the sport and continue on into adulthood. Nevertheless, like soccer, swimming has not taken off as a mainstream popular sport like golf or tennis in terms of fans who don't participate but enjoy watching and following it.

In the MLS, all teams are owned by the league. Player contracts are negotiated by the league and the contracts are between the league and the players and not the players and the individual teams. Revenues are shared equally among all teams. All of this works to keep costs down and to help ensure that the league survives. All of the corporate sponsors of USA Swimming and individual swimmers could be called upon to redirect sponsorship funds into the professional swimming league.

If a professional swimming league became financially successful, then it could gradually move away from this financial model and operate more like other professional sports. But in the first instance the financial goal would need to be the survival of the league over and above anything else, including compensation of swimmers. In other words, the survival of the league would be paramount even if it meant all swimmers were paid the same salary to participate. Michael Phelps and others who could earn additional money through endorsements would still be able to do so.

Would swimmers need to move to new cities and possibly be leave their long-time coaches? Maybe. I'm sure Michael Phelps loves living in Baltimore and Ryan Lochte loves living in Gainesville. But if they had to move to a new city and leave their coaches for the good of the sport wouldn't they do it? I doubt it was Brett Favre's first choice to live in Green Bay for 16 years. But he did it because that was the professional football team he played for and that's how professional sports work. Yes, sacrifices will need to be made and people will have to accommodate change. Nothing great ever happens without change and sacrifice.

In order for this to work, media support through television and the internet would be critical.
Swimnetwork.com apparently has a monopoly on the media coverage of the Grand Prix events. The job they do is sporadic at best. For some meets they have a live web cam for prelims but it's hard to figure out what is going on. For some meets videos of the finals are posted, but the participants are not always identified and little to no insight into race strategy or history is provided. Other meets have no coverage at all and other media outlets are precluded from covering them because of swimnetwork's exclusive rights. Does this make any sense at all? Swimnetwork has only a few interviews with the swimmers and without Gold Medal Mel (who is great), there would be nothing.

USA Swimming needs to allow outlets like floswimming.com become a more active participant in meet coverage. If there's competition in this area, the best will rise to the top. Failing that, let the guys at floswimming work with swimnetwork.com to report on these events. Isn't it better for fans and swimming to use the best swimming reporters? Every time I watch a floswimming interview or race video I learn something new. This should be the goal of USA Swimming. Combine the best of swimnetwork.com (Gold Medal Mel) and with floswimming.com and internet coverage of meets would be great.

Finally, television coverage of swimming events must improve. Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines are fine but they could be so much better. I cringe every time I rewatch the men's 4 x 200 meter free relay from the Olympics. The entire time Dan Hicks thought it was the 4 x 100 meter relay. He sounded surprised when the swimmers kept going after 100 meters and new swimmers didn't dive in. What better way to get improved television coverage than to have more events on tv? More events means more announcers, more chances for the announcers to get to know the swimmers, more chances for the announcers to learn about the different events and more chances for viewers to learn about and fall in love with watching swimming.

Television coverage of the NCAA meets is a complete joke. I watched not only the 90-minute NCAA championship coverage on ESPN2 but also the television coverage of the SEC and Big 10 Championships. The television coverage was done after the meets were held and the results were known. This is anti-climactic to say the least. The announcers made comments only about the top 1 or 2 swimmers in each event, foreclosing the possibility of the viewers learning about up and coming swimmers. Even so, little information was provided about the top swimmers. Many of the events were not shown in their entirety, but were abbreviated. The telecasts were boring and not informative. The feeling of anticipation and competition and the thrill of the race so prevelent in the Olympics was overwhelmingly absent.

I acknowledge that many of my observations may be viewed as superficial because I know very little about the financial side of professional swimming. For instance, I have no idea how professional swimmers pay their coaches, many of whom are also employed by universities. It may be unrealistic for an MLS model to work in swimming, but it would be interesting to hear the reasons and to see if some alternative solutions could be reached.

It saddens me that so many U.S. world-class swimmers have such a difficult time continuing their training after college because they cannot find the financial support they need. It also saddens me that the general public is so completely interested in swimming every 4 years during the Olympics but then promptly forgets that the sport exists because of the lack of media coverage. A professional swimming league would be fantastic, but needs to be started while stars like Michael Phelps, Aaron Peirsol and Ryan Lochte are still swimming.

This post is about why a professional swimming league is needed. I will write more about how I think it could work.