College swimmers don’t get paid. That doesn’t stop money from being the most important factor controlling the outcome of the Big East Championship every year.

For Syracuse head coach Lou Walker, enticing recruits to come to SU and its rising tuition rates is a constant struggle because men’s swimming is the only NCAA sport at Syracuse that is not provided with the maximum amount of scholarships allowed by the NCAA.

Jamie Mullin, SU associate director of athletics for team services, cited gender equity rules as the reason for the under-funding, but declined to comment further. Because of Title IX, women’s swimming is completely funded, while the men’s team is not.

In the Big East, a conference that features both public and private institutions, it’s often difficult for SU to offer a recruit what a state institution can offer.

But even the money SU swimming is given does not go very far in Big East recruiting. In an equivalency sport like swimming, where scholarships are divided among athletes, the difference between public and private schools becomes notable. A public school may be able to offer a recruit a half scholarship, leaving him to pay $10,000 a year. For SU to bring its cost to match $10,000 a year, it would have to commit 75 percent of a scholarship, instead of half.

‘As far as scholarships and what they do for you, it’s the same as financial aid,’ Walker said. ‘A school costs $10,000 and another one costs $40,000. If the $40,000 school gives you $20,000, it still costs $20,000 to go there. If the $10,000 school gives you $2,500, that’s a whole lot less than $20,000, but you only have $7,500 left. So what’s really the better deal?’

This discrepancy forces Walker to commit a larger percent of a scholarship for his bottom line to equal that of a Big East public institution. SU carries the third-highest tuition rate in the Big East (behind Georgetown and Notre Dame), and is nearly double the cost of public schools like Pittsburgh and Connecticut. This makes partial scholarships worth about half as much in comparison.

When a school starts out with fewer scholarships and the ones it does have only go half as far as public scholarships, what’s left is a budget crunch.

That budget crunch forces SU to compete with smaller rosters in comparison to Big East foes. This year, the women’s team has a roster of 13 athletes, the smallest in the Big East and about half the size of most other schools. The men have it a little better with 20, but are still below the average team size.

The discrepancy among team sizes has produced skewed championship meet results for both the men and the women, with SU on the bottom. Notre Dame has won the women’s championship meet for the last 10 years. During the 24-year history of the meet, only three different women’s teams have won: Pittsburgh, Villanova and Notre Dame. On the men’s side, Pittsburgh won eight straight championships between 1997 and 2004. For SU, the last men’s championship came in 1996. The women have never won the conference.

For Walker, these results stem from the fact the Big East allowed each team to bring an unlimited number of participants to the championship meet, provided they met qualifying times. This differed from other major conferences and the NCAA, which have restrictions on the number of competitors teams can bring to the championship meet.

‘If you’re going to unlimited entries we can’t compete with a Pittsburgh or a Rutgers,’ Walker said.

But this year will be different. For the first time, the Big East will institute an 18-person roster limit on teams at the championship meet. Athletes still must meet qualifying standards, but those standards have been relaxed to level the playing field and make the meet fairer for teams top to bottom.

‘It could be said that some of the lesser funded programs or less competitive programs were impeded by that (the old system),’ said James Siedliski, the Big East Associate Commissioner for Olympic Sports. ‘And so with this new methodology, the standards have actually been reduced. In layman’s terms, they’re easier.’

Walker and Siedliski agree the new system will not have a large immediate effect. When the Big East applied the new rules to last year’s meet to simulate the possible results, the only change on either the men’s or women’s results was a move from ninth to eighth.

‘It’s going to take a couple of years as things come around,’ Walker said. ‘You get an 18-person roster limit again and you can get into a situation where we can become competitive.’

While an 18-person roster may not do much for a women’s team of 13 (a number that will change to 12 at the championship meet, where divers count as one-third of a swimmer), the SU men’s team is looking to capitalize. Halfway through the season, the team has already qualified 10 swimmers and one diver for the meet.

In the meantime, Walker has been able to find success outside of the Big East championship. He has substituted his lack of depth for athletes that can represent the program at the national level. Case in point: Luk Boral is a two-time Big East conference champion in the 200-yard breaststroke and placed 14th at the 2006 NCAA Finals in the same event. Despite this, SU has never finished better than fifth at the Big East championship meet with Boral on the team.

Walker is quick to point out that despite his lack of success at the Big East championship meet, SU has had as much success from individual swimmers as any other program in the conference throughout his tenure.

Mullin agreed that while it would be nice for SU swimming to be in the running for the national championship, the current system restricts this. The substitute for team success then becomes individual success.

‘Coach Walker is trying to find a niche, and he’s done a really good job of that at Syracuse,’ Mullin said. ‘He has a reputation and he has a history of swimmers competing at the national level. Not the team, but individual swimmers who are competing at the national level.’

So while SU may be challenged financially to recruit swimmers, Walker finds positive in the situation. He feels lucky he has a good educational institution he can promote. Factors like the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the new building of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management weigh in heavily with swimming recruits, Walker said.

‘You’re not trying to get a kid who you know is going to stay and sign a big contract,’ Walker said. ‘That’s not the nature of what we do. The kids are academically interested.’

In the end, money ultimately controls the fate of SU swimming recruiting. But for Walker, every program has its difficulties, and this just happens to be his.

Said Walker: ‘It’s the nature of the beast.’

Published on January 28, 2007 at 12:00 pm