Utah coach Greg Marsden deserves more credit than anyone else for building the modern success story that is NCAA Women’s Gymnastics.
But he’s getting a bit of heat online after floating ideas for change to the current College system.
Greg feels Women’s NCAA Gymnastics is still not appealing enough to the “normal” spectator.
… we have done little to improve our image or increase interest in our championship. Our rules continue to be difficult for the occasional observer to understand, and post-season events are too long, too complicated and anticlimactic in nature. Other than when hosted by a few institutions, who have their own large following, attendance has been disappointing. …
His radical proposal — one that he does not expect to be supported anytime soon — is to make Championships a live TV event. (The 2009 Team Finals will be broadcast by CBS sometime in May.)
… If we hope to grow, it is not enough to appeal only to hard-core gymnastics fans or to fans of our institutions. We should consider changes that would also allow an opportunity for our final event to be televised live. As Steve Penny of USA gymnastics recently said, “because of the way media is now set up, if you’re not live, you’re not real.” This will require us to make the difficult decision about whether we continue to be more concerned with maintaining our participation numbers in post-season events, or whether we will create events that are more marketable. …
some of Greg’s Utah fans at Championships 2007 – larger version – flickr – makkeboome
Here are some of his ideas:
1. Compete five (or six) routines per event and count all five (or six) scores. You may substitute at the end of your line-up if someone cannot finish her routine due to injury, but there will be a 0.5 deduction and the injured gymnast may not compete on another event.
*Counting all routines would make everything much more meaningful, therefore more exciting and even allow for more upsets.
2. Average all scores to determine post-season qualification.
3. 32-Team Championships Format
Four NCAA regional sites:
1. Eight teams (and individuals) will be assigned to each regional site.
2. Two sessions on Saturday at 1 PM and 7 PM, with four teams (and individuals) in each session.
3. Winners of each session (and highest ranking individuals not with a qualifying team) move on to Semi Finals at NCAA Championships site.NCAA Championships site:
1. Semi Final sessions will be conducted on Thursday at 1 PM and 7 PM.
2. Top two teams from each session qualify to Finals
3. Team finals will be conducted on Friday at 7:00 PM
4. Event finals will be conducted on Saturday at 7:00 PM
After carefully reading his full proposal, I’m convinced.
Greg’s right.
I agree with him that we need more upsets … like earlier this season when San Jose State beat Stanford. THAT would make the sport more entertaining.
8 comments ↓
I agree that live coverage would be more appealing. The CBS coverage tends to be more like watching a sports feature rather than a competition. It’s not a bad feature, but it’s seems kinda cheesy after you know the results of the competition, which I would expect most gymnastic fans do know the results when they watch.
Does anyone think a change to the olympic scoring format would be better? I would still like to see WAG in college become more of an olympic training ground. It’s fantastic that there are so many great scholarship programs out there with incredible training facilities, strength programs, medical facilities, etc.
Doesn’t it seem like these programs should be training world class athletes rather than recruiting them and watering down their skills? I would love to see athletes joining club gyms with the goal of competing for scholarships to college programs and then the best of those athletes training for olympic spots.
I think that may actually generate more interest in the sport too.
Before you had these USOC programs for the men, the male W/O gymnasts were all college athletes, now it’s lucky if one makes the team. I don’t think that changing the scoring system for WAG would make the NCAA an Olympic training ground.
As it is, some WAG that compete for weaker countries still try and make it. As far as I know, there were two NCAA WAG competing at the 2008 Olympics.
I think change to olympic scoring would be better. They need to do real gym. If they are not physically capable of equalling the 14 year olds, that’s fine. But they should still have the scoring so we can judge how well they did. Right now, the blizzard of 9.95s, for sub-difficulty routines is just silliness.
And Sher: 4 of 6 athletes on the team, were NCAA grads (two recent). 5 of 9 if you look at the entire team. They got a lot of training in NCAA.
“4 of 6 athletes on the team, were NCAA grads (two recent).” They were grads but they weren’t in NCAA at the time they made the team. They got more training before they even got to NCAA.
Umm, only one of the men on the 2008 team was a product of the USOTC: Joey Hagerty. Durante trained at Stanford before moving to OTC and even Hagerty says he would have done college gym if New Mexico hadn’t dropped their program. The Hamms trained at Ohio State with the NCAA team for two Games, even if they didn’t compete NCAA themselves. Right now, all but, I think, two of the men’s senior national team are NCAA gymnasts.
Jon Horton finished NCAA months before the Games, as did our current national champ David Sender. All but Hagerty and Artemev trained with NCAA teams to make the team, and still do. It has more to do with the fact that men don’t peak until after 21 than the NCAA not being a great training ground that “current” college gymnasts don’t go to the Games. Both Sender and Horton were world team members while competing. It just do happens the Olympics fell in years between their college careers. (They were also both at the 2004 Trials right before the started college.)
Personally, I don’t think a guy can train in a club for 10 years then go to college and suddenly become a product of the NCAA. Some of these guys were already on an Olympic trajectory before NCAA so I don’t think their success had any specific connection to the NCAA. Then there’s the guys who made World/Olympic teams after they left NCAA. Hey, that’s after. If their clubs don’t get the credit because they made the Olympics after they left, NCAA shouldn’t get the credit either.
I don’t follow the men. Their whole Team Chevron/Gattaca/USOC mashup confuses me. Anyway, my original point was that I doubt changing the WAG scoring system will turn the NCAA into a World/Olympic training ground.
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