Hello and welcome to the swim reef. Recording early again on a Wednesday. We've got the whole gang here, the constantly rotating background of Joel Rawlings, proud resident of the state of Wisconsin. How are you, Joel?
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, yeah. Former resident, but you never know. There's always chances of return going home. So yeah, I don't know. It's a political thing that obviously we don't need to go. You get enough hate hate mail from Eastern Europe. Last thing I know is one from uh eastern Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_00Right. Right. Let's not poke the bear on that, obviously. We want to just keep all our Wisconsin-related content very positive.
SPEAKER_01Always exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Bucks and six. How are the Bucks doing? Actually, I don't care. So let's move on.
SPEAKER_01I'm doing well. I think they're 9-2 or 10-2, top of the East, but no big deal.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, great. Great. Great news for those of you that follow professional sports in the state of Wisconsin. Really, really, really good stuff. Well, we got a very exciting pod today. We're going to talk about an article that um Eric, of course, because Eric is the font of all knowledge for me and Joel, uh shared with us in regards to the U.S. men's national team.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that was that was my that was my one contribution ever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I I have to Jeff Saturday.
SPEAKER_02If it's non-swimming related, then it's my content. If it's swimming related, then it's Eric's content.
SPEAKER_00Everybody write the date down. Okay. This is November 16th, 2022. Joel actually shared an article that we're going to discuss on here. And I I just I'm so sorry. So we're going to talk about the U.S. men's national team. That's the soccer team. I guess they, you know, um get to just call themselves the men's national team, and you're supposed to know that it's soccer. Um, we're going to talk about uh a sports ball, all jokes aside, um, because uh Jeff Saturday, former um NFL player uh for actually a number of teams. I remember him as a Colts guy because you know I haven't followed professional sports for roughly 10 years, um, is stepping up as the coach, and there's an interesting story there to be had. And then, of course, um at the end, I'm going to uh give some comment on the recent news articles about the US OPC, Robert Griswold, uh safe sport complaints, lawsuits, all that, all that exciting stuff. Um so let's get into this US men's uh national team article right away. It's long. We're not gonna summarize it for everybody. Um so I just I guess since since you sent it, Joel, usually I go to Eric first, but you know, since I snubbed you already, that's right. I want to know like when you read this and you shared this, what was one thing you were like, wow, I I guess that surprised me, or I wasn't expecting to read that that you got out of this article.
SPEAKER_02Oh man, there's there's uh there's a lot in that article actually. It's hard to kind of pick one thing. I know, I know. I think you gotta kind of tell people what it's about a little bit, though, and about how basically soccer basically realized that they weren't going anywhere internationally, and they revamped their entire system all the way down to 1100 and and created a new new system, kind of basically where you have um kind of an elite-level academy style play going on at the top level. And so um I think you know a lot of things that could apply to swimming, uh obviously not 100%, but but there's things that you can take out of this article that I thought that were really interesting. And one thing is is they uh they identified that basically the college system isn't there to design to um to develop pros. You know, it's it's basically there to feed itself. Uh, and that's one thing I I took out of that was the same with with our collegiate system. What when one of the uh one of their um one of the coaches said that at the end of four years in a college system, you got a kid that's four years older but not four years better. Um I'm not saying that that's a you know a direct relation to to swimming at all. I'm just I'm just saying that I think sometimes that we look at you know, as far as like maybe this attitude's changing a bit, but in club swimming, it's always been like we kind of pass them off to the college system, and the college now that's when they're at their their peak of strength, power, et cetera. And so that's kind of preparing them for international swimming. And uh we just listened to that one pod a little while ago with um with Virginia, how they're kind of using their college swimming as like almost uh they said a mental break from the Olympic uh cycle. You know, that's that's pretty rare in itself, but also not really their job. Not that I'm saying that Virginia's not doing its job, I'm just saying that it's not the college's job to do this, really. You know, they they have to prepare swimmers for short course yard swimming, and they have to prepare it within the the calendar of the NCAA system. And if you know if they are doing something different than that, if they're not trying to win NCAAs, if they're not trying to do whatever the mandate of their school is, then are they really you know serving you know who the who's the who their boss is? And so I thought that was kind of an interesting aspect of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I'm gonna let you I'm gonna let you do a few more, but I want to respond to that one. I I have a dedicated listener to the pod who you know always wants us to address um this topic. And I think it's it's an ongoing topic. He's got a particular angle on it, you know, with some of the stuff that's going on with the changes um in name and image and likeness and amateurism and all that stuff, and whether that's an existential threat to college swimming. But I think people have been asking in a swimming context for a long time, you know, that there's just been sort of acknowledged that college is a part of our uh like elite development pop-up pipeline for swimming. Like that's just a given. This article was the first time I read something where I went, is that even a good idea? Like we're all worried about whether it's gonna fall apart, but none of us are asking the question, like, is this actually the system we should have? We've just all sort of assumed that this is the best system we can come up with, or is it the best system we're gonna get, and we're worried about it falling away, but is it necessarily? Um, and I think for sure, you know, the characterization of college sports in this um has a lot of flaws, and that you rightly pointed out in comparison to swimming. I mean, I think like especially in I would say in men's college swimming, most of the swimmers get a lot better um over the course of four years swimming in college. Um, Eric, I'll let you chime in on some of this here before before we go back to Joel.
SPEAKER_01No, I I agree with basically everything that Joel's saying. I think it's a really interesting uh situation that we're starting to see the beginnings of in USA swimming specifically. Um, we've talked a couple of times about what are they doing for coaches, and you know, part of my job with Speedo is to just kind of follow my club teams on social media accounts and and see what they're posting. And I'm seeing teams post pictures of their coaches in Colorado Springs talking about being at a summit. One of them just posted a picture of one of their coaches going out to Colorado Springs or an eye in the distance summit, which didn't really have much uh of anything like that in the past. So uh it's it's nice to see that there are some people within USA swimming, and I think at this point, it's it's fair to say that uh Brandon Hansen is really seems to be the person driving some of this kind of stuff. Um but but it it is cool to see some of those connections. I think there were some similarities in some of the ways that we felt like one of the quotes that stuck out to me was by one of the coaches for one of these development academies and or within USA soccer. He said we s we sort of develop players by accident, and we often maybe see or feel the same thing as we're just working on sheer numbers, and it happens to be working for us. I think there's a little bit, it definitely is different when it comes to soccer versus swimming, obviously, but there is certain things that we've, I guess, voice concern about when it comes to coach education and athlete enrichment and parent education. It's like it does definitely seem like, well, this is all still working, we have all our goal metals, so let's not worry about it. Now there's people saying, hey, you know, poking the bear, and being like, no, these things need to happen because we have giant boys and specific age groups coming through, and that's particularly uh the 9 to 12 area of boys. Uh it's it's become pretty thin in a lot of age in a lot of LSCs. So I have other stuff, but let's I want to go back to Joel.
SPEAKER_00Well, so I I guess Joel, you can take this wherever you want, but um, as a host, I feel necessary to ask you some kind of question. I guess reading this, you know, another thought that I have is that I'm always inherently skeptical of top-down solutions from national governing bodies. You know, like I just think there's so much that can go wrong, especially in a country the size of the United States, when you go, we're gonna project this from on high here at the national governing body, and this will fix something at your local soccer club, right? What if any lessons are there in this article for addressing that kind of issue?
SPEAKER_02No, I think that's a really good point. Um, as far as you know, you're you're you're fixing the elite level, and so many times it has nothing to do, obviously, with eight and underswimming, nine and underswimming, you know, whatever it might be, where you're getting the kids in at this point. Um and it the weird thing that I've always when I've talked to coaches is how it seems like a lot of times the 10 letter part is is is pretty good. You know, you're getting people in, getting kids having fun. And um after that, so when all of a sudden all the LSCs are like, we have to fix our state meet, we have to fix this level meet, we have to fix this. And it's uh kind of what Eric also brought up was the idea of like, you know, the development of an elite level swimmer, or in this case, they they said soccer player, like usually you could see they go from step one to step two to step three, and they said if you actually drew the line, it looked more like a bowl of spaghetti. Just also some kids late bloomers, they develop, and they're on the national team. Some kids go through the system and they've always been kind of earmarked as someone up there. And the same thing in a sense with with uh club swimming is like what are the steps to get to elite level swimming? Um, and one of the aspects I liked in this article was that they identify as like we have a very competitive system, but it's not an elite uh development system. And and that's the thing, is we have a lot of swim meets, we have a lot of things like that. Are they are these swim meets leading to um you know what whatever the end goal might be? And um they they said in this article, they show a graph how few people now that are in uh college system, they're just kind of going into the academy system. Or I guess in in for swimming, a lot of times I hear uh some coaches complain about the high school format, you know, um, and and trying to pull their kids from that. And what I liked about this article is it starts to go into that also, like, well, yeah, we're we're getting kind of what we wanted in in the soccer system by pulling the kids out of the high school, pulling kids out of college, and putting them into this elite-level system where they're learning a certain style of play, which obviously you need when you build a team, is like they all are familiar with whatever the style you're gonna run, versus swimming, which is you know more about individual training and things, uh, than fitting a certain style. Is the idea with a high school format? People are like, oh, we we we can't have our kids going off to high school to swim. It's like, well, the the article starts to go, what about the psychosocial development of the of that athlete? You know, who's it who's it benefiting by funneling a hundred kids into this elite level format for soccer? Because not all a hundred are gonna make that elite level. And they said, What's what's the landing for those 80 people that are that aren't making it? You know, what are what are you gonna do with them? So they didn't have the high school experience, they didn't have the college experience, they have the academy. You know, what where do you go from there? And so I look at that with swimming too. It's like, oh, we can't have our kids going off to these high school, or we'll just have them swim these meets. Well, again, what what's what's the soft landing for some of those other people? What are the kids that you know aren't going to be the gold medalists? You know, what level do you start going? Don't even swim at college high school or college. What what level is not supposed to be at that at those meets then? And how many meets are are just too many? Um so not to get too long and winded with it, but like again, you know, I I think there's a reason college swimming is in place. You know, it excites people, it gets people um, you know, kind of locks a lot of kids into the sport of the idea that they're gonna swim for a high school team or a college team, and then clubs along the way, then all of a sudden, whose goal is it for them all of a sudden to go on in this case using soccer, uh, to be on that national team? It's is is it is it that nine unders, or is it the coach who's kind of like, hey, this is the reason you're gonna keep on training?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I think you're pointing to something as I'm listening to you talk about that. You know, one of the things they identified in this article was that a lot of the kids developmentally were, first off, they were playing almost as much as they were practicing, right? So, and and a lot of these games were not competitive. And I think when you think about the high school format, my sort of predominant feeling is like, well, these meets are just fun. And it's it's really positive because you know, uh a lot of swim meets, in my opinion, just aren't fun to take part in. High school swim meets are fun to take part in, and that has a lot of value.
SPEAKER_02When you get to the um one thing, I mean not to interrupt, I'm sorry, but one thing is like not just a lot of meats, but they uh they did a survey, and that's something I don't think USA swimming's ever done with is you're like you have a lot of meets, but also how many of those are actually meaningful? How many actually feel you got something out of? So to trying to add to what you're saying, sorry, I didn't mean to detract.
SPEAKER_00Right. No, like exactly. I mean, uh our uh our uh shared mentor would say, you know, the kid who gets fifth place in his high school dual meet has a way more meaningful experience doing the sport of swimming than whoever gets 71st at the speedo sectional. Are they still called speedo sex? We're still the sponsor of the unconsciously doing a dig at speedo here. I don't mean that, but you know, at a sectional meet, right, even though the kid that gets 71st at the sectional meet is probably way faster at swimming, I guess what I'm thinking of as you're saying that, Joel, is that when you get to the elite level, like I I noticed this because I coach the second team of kids on our team. My kids get way more competitively out of competing in high school dual meets. The kids on our national squad, you know, the kids that are maybe like national level swimmers, futures qualifiers, junior national swimmers, it's much harder for them to get like a competitive value out of a high school dual meet, because for the most part, they're not racing against anybody that's anywhere near them. And I think that is one of the big distinctions between high school and college, and why college really, really helps a lot of our elite athletes develop because it puts them in that good competitive format, the dual meet format, the fun format. And yet, for the most part, they have a competitive race every time they have a meet, right? Almost no matter how good they are. Unless they're the the absolute best. Um, you know, that they're they're they're really have to compete hard every time. And so it it sharpens them um in that way. And I have no idea what to what to make of that with regards to high school swimming. Um, what else you got, Eric?
SPEAKER_01Um, I what I'm I'm reading, I'm reading this article, and I'm kind of going into the into it with the idea of the USA swimming and development within their own LSCs. So uh before before I got here in the world of swimsuits, caps, and goggles, you know, coaching for a long time, I was on our LSC board. And one of the things that I see here with this, and I look at it, is like, what can USA swimming do to build up these opportunities? So we saw the article with there's more meats than there are practices within soccer. Now that's not the same with swimming just because of sheer logistics of everything that go into it, but it's hard for us to hold the meat. But the one thing that I'm I'm looking at is like they're building all of this infrastructure in place to build these kids up. And where is that within USA swimming in terms of the the outreach to your LSCs and the benefit there to it? So I look at it from okay, we're trying to do these things, these things need to be available to LSCs, they need the resources. So, what resources are being allocated to an LSC to have an LSC-driven camp? Like that was one of the things it did before I took off, and it it never really caught hold after I left was I created an IMX-based camp. Chris, you were there at that camp. Um and nothing had been done in Midwestern LSC of 2400 swimmers like that. But it gave all of those kids across the state the opportunity to really see each other and see each other in a non-competitive environment and a training environment and learning from other coaches and just being in a different place. And I I see this article and I see what they're doing. In is there some way for us to do the same thing in USA swimming to give LSCs either the contacts or the financial resources or the financial bonus of putting these things together? Can you incentivize an LSC with something if they do X, Y, or Z, knowing that these experiences are great for some of those kids. Um so I just I'm I'm cautiously optimistic. I don't know the entire I don't know any of the plan of USA something as far as that, but it just seems like there are a lot of situations that you can take from this article that we can really immediately apply to the development of every LSC.
SPEAKER_00Um But Eric, when the UN's US men's national team washes out in the quarterfinals, um, should we take any advice from them? Because we're the best. We're assuming.
SPEAKER_01You know, yeah, because nobody in US nobody in US soccer thinks or has any delusions of grandeur. Most fans are expecting them to go there. It's like they get three games guaranteed and then they're out. It's like any other youth uh tournament. They're gonna have three games, they're probably not gonna make it out of that round. But the reality is that they're seeing over, I think it's what at least about half, if not over half, of this roster that they have right now came from this development academy. And this is the youngest roster in how many decades to go from an average age of like 27 to 21, which is really, really good for for this development of this particular sport because um for whatever reason they just haven't been able to figure it out.
SPEAKER_00So now hold on, let's go back to Joel because I really rattled him with the quarterfinals thing there. He's a huge US soccer homer, and he really he thinks they're gonna make the semis this time around. So, Joel, what do you got?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think what your point, um, you know, no matter how many idiotic points you make, sometimes a gem will come through, like right there. Uh, the idea that soccer is pretty terrible internationally. So for them to restructure everything, it's like, well, of course, let's do that. Uh USA swimming.
SPEAKER_00So we have to, because we're bad. Right.
SPEAKER_02And and so if you look at you know, 80s, 90s, you know, USA swimming, all these gold medals, where it's like, why should we change anything at all? You know, we're winning. Let's keep going with and so basically our success becomes we'll just keep on going forward with what we have done in the 80s, 90s. So even though training's changed, um, you know, all these other things have changed. We're like, we dominate, we'll just keep on kind of again get as many kids into the and just let them develop sometimes accidentally, sometimes on purpose. I think what was cool about the article is the idea that someone in soccer made a decision. And I I like, I really like people just to make a decision, right or wrong, make a decision, and they changed all of soccer and got everyone on board, and we're gonna try this, we're gonna go a direction. If it's not the direction, we'll try again. So obviously, there's a whole generation of kids maybe lost, but again, to be able to stop and go, we're gonna go this direction. And I think USA swimming, one of the things is obviously all these clubs are what pay you know the bills for USA swimming. So all of a sudden, if it goes the direction you don't want it to go, all the clubs like, hey, who's working for who here? Why are we funding all this? We'll just go our own way. Uh and and so it's it's such a you know odd thing to go. You know, what what is the right answer? Is it coaches education? The academy. System, what I liked about this was they said, you know, is it really the right thing? We don't know. You know, is it has it made better skilled players? Yes, definitely. Has it made better people? I don't know. You know, is it better for the kids? Yeah. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, there was there was a really good quote in here that was like, we think this has definitely made the experience better for the top 1% of players. Everybody else, not sure at all. And I was like, what? Who would admit that in a governing body?
SPEAKER_02Like I thought that was the greatest thing ever. Sure, it should be up to the kid to choose where they want to go. It's it's their career. Um I I used to, you know, when I coached in in a smaller school in Wisconsin, you know, we we lose out these kids that are like, I'm gonna go become a badger. And like, to do what? You know, again, you're you're a good swimmer, you know, again, a guy that's 439 to 500. You could be, you know, we'll have a statue in front of a school for you at the end of your career here. There, you're you're 25th at Big Tens, and that means you're first in line to cheer that evening when your teammates are going on. Again, there's you know, we have this idea of what an elite level athlete is, but really it's like some few chances to really see what an elite level athlete is that we that we start to go, I know what's best for this person to get to where they want to go. And you're like, at the end, is A, is it someplace they want to go? You know, B, is it really that level that that that you thought it was gonna be? You know, that that's the thing is there's uh what what's again, like you said, that that fifth place in a high school meet you're getting cheered for, it's it's a good place to be. You know, you got a relay, you got these friends, you got an experience out of that, uh a good healthy experience out of that. Or I'll just keep on being 72nd and move my way up, and all of a sudden I'm 42nd. Like that's your career.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Again, that that that 1% is is we keep on thinking it's 1%, but it's 1% of the 1%. You know, it's only two going to the Olympics, and that's it, you know. And and so um that elite level thing, I guess the thing I'm getting out of this, and I got long-winded there was it it'd be nice to have a soft landing for for people that are not going to be that one percent of the one percent. You know, we always we always hold the Phelps and the Ladeckies up, and that's a great model, and I think that pushes excellence. But in the end, what happens with the kids that fall a little bit short of that? Just a little bit short of that, and all of a sudden you're lumped in the same bucket with everybody else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know, Joel, I I I don't think you should be so hard on yourself. You're not long-winded. Eric and I are just short-winded.
SPEAKER_02Ah.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Got it. Um, let's let's let's move on to to Jeff Saturday. And um, I'm gonna lead this one off because I I I think I need Eric to explain this to me like I'm five years old. Um, again, because I barely remember who Jeff Saturday is. Um I remember him as the center for the Indianapolis Colts in a lot of games where they tortured my New England Patriots back when back when I was a Fairweather fan of the New England Patriots in the greatest era to be a New England Patriots fan ever. Not that not that I'm, you know, not that I'm mentioning it or bringing it up occasionally on this podcast. Um and as I understand it, he's uh he's uh shed some of that lyman weight, you know. He's looking like a normal human being, roughly. Um, and now he's a coach and he's been asked to step in. He he he's only had coaching experience at the high school level. So he went straight from high school to the NFL. Is that correct, Eric? Give us a little more background on the story and why you wanted to talk about it.
SPEAKER_02Briefly, though, because I've been sucking up all the oxygen.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god. Be short-winded, okay?
SPEAKER_01Oh, so in between coaching a mediocre high school team for three years, he spent a good amount of time uh going through the the I guess the path to get into uh the media side of things. So uh doing a lot of commentating. Um he was in fact he was a I guess a consultant with the Colts. Anytime you have a future Hall of Famer center, you know, that plays for your team who uh who has a lot of energy and has the ability to connect, um, you certainly want them involved. So there were uh you know what we're looking at is we have an owner in Irsay who has made a lot of decisions, and it's really kind of a tough who's doing more crazy things between him and Jerry Jones as far as like getting over involved. Um he ended up he ended up forcing the head coach to uh bench Matt Ryan and anybody who knows anything about football and Matty Ice down in Atlanta. He was a great quarterback, so he was struggling here in 80, and they were struggling at all facets.
SPEAKER_00Was he a great quarterback? I don't know, but then we don't we don't need to debate that on the swim beef.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, there's only there's only so many of them in the NFL, and the three of us aren't one, so as far as I'm concerned, he's pretty great. Oh any event struggling with the season. Umsay got into the decision making and had him benched for three weeks. They struggled after that, and then after making that decision, decided to fire the head coach and fire him over the phone. Oh and then at that point, he could have gone anywhere. There are a number of assistants available, he could have gone internally within the staff, but decided to go with a never coached a day in college football at any level or the NFL and say, can you step in? And um he did it, and getting some quotes from him in an article and an interview with Pat McAfee, um he the things that he spoke to, the way that he spoke about his his way to approach this was really truly nothing short of fantastic. It's a lot of the stuff that you uh you yourself preach in terms of uh positive psychology and a lot of things that we talk about as far as being professionals and just understanding where you are. So his his track with his team was uh just explaining that he he knows where they where they've been. He's he's obviously his results are there, you can look it up. He's got you know he's he's got the resume in that sense, but just saying, like, I get it, I understand where you are, I know what you want, I'm here to help you, I'm here because I care about you and your family and this team, and and then goes on to talk about how he doesn't have all the answers. He and he makes a point to surround himself with very smart people, people that are smarter than him, that can make great decisions, and then empowers them to do what they are capable of doing. So, in the case of his offensive coordinator, the guy never called plays in an NFL game. And he said, here you go. And it worked out. Like, I'm sure there were some issues and things didn't go exactly according to plan, but it's like if he doesn't do it, he doesn't have anybody else to do it. It's not like he's like, I'm gonna figure this out in 48 hours. It's like, here you go, man, this is yours. You've been working with these guys, I'm staying on it. And there's a lot that can be taken from this experience and and how we can apply it as head coaches of the program, or even a lead coach with an assistant coach, and then on top of that, as a coach, empowering our athletes to take ownership of their swimming and make the best of their experience. So um, I'm not sure what level of windedness that was, if that was Joel, or if that was like I think that's I would qualify that as medium-winded. All right.
SPEAKER_00I wouldn't say long or short. Uh you know, I uh respond to some of what you're saying there, because I think the big takeaway from this that I see in a coaching context, and we always like to bring up news stories, but we want to make them um relevant, you know, to swim coaches, right? You might be asking yourself, like, okay, great, this is a great story about a football coach who you know didn't have a lot of experience stepping in. I think one of the things I'm learning the longer that I coach is I'm learning way more what my limitations are. I'm learning way more what my strengths are, and I'm realizing that um certain ways in which I coach are actually built around those strengths and limitations. That, you know, um something that I do may not look like like it works to another person because they have a different set of strengths and limitations. They they don't have the same, they don't have the same opportunities, so they go, well, that that doesn't work. Well, it works for me, and and and vice versa. When I look at other people, I go, like, why is that person doing that? That's stupid. But all I can see is, you know, like I couldn't figure out a way to make that work coaching-wise. And I hear a lot of that um in the way that he is describing taking over, that he's you know, acknowledged sort of what his um like his biggest strength is the fact that he can empathize with the players, like he's a Hall of Fame player, you know. Um and at the same time, he's he's being pretty honest about what some of his limitations are, and you can't help but cheer for somebody um who's doing that. You know, he's won one game, so I don't want to get too excited. Um, Joel, what do you think?
SPEAKER_02I I love how you guys get positive stuff out of articles. I just like to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, here we go. Here comes the cynicism train. It's pulling out of the station.
SPEAKER_02As the owner or like any AD would be like, yeah, I'm gonna hire who I'm gonna hire. That that's it, you know, and so that that's that's kind of the end of it. Um but but I think that what he this guy does bring to the table is, like you said, is the fact that um not that he doesn't know anything, is that he knows that he doesn't know anything. And I think that makes you pretty darn smart. And see he has the ego to go, I need this person to do this and this person this. And I'm looking at a lot of these teams as they start merging like very large programs, you know, um on the college swimming end, for instance, or even the club level, where you've got a lot of different sites where you start out coaching because you love working with kids, you want to see kids get faster. Then as what I've seen is the older you get and the more, you know, the bigger the team gets, or you combine the programs, the more you become less coach, more CEO. And so then you end up coaching the coaches and staying on them. And so, like uh, like Eric was saying with Saturn's like you'd be the offensive coordinator, you gotta be do your job, but you also have to be able to go, and I'm gonna fire you in a couple weeks if this isn't working, because I got to keep my job. You know, but but it but it is, it's letting the people that you hire do their job and and letting them go with that. Um so I thought that's that's the takeaway I think you get as a swimming is understand that you have to let people, you have to empower the people below you, you have to um be strong enough to say you don't know something and that you're gonna keep on learning and keep on working with that. So I thought that was one angle of this article that's pretty interesting. I thought the other angle of it again was the idea that the you know owner's gonna hire who the owner's gonna hire, 80s are gonna hire who the 80s are gonna hire and what the needs are of each college. Is you know, we always think, well, that person's winning, you're gonna keep your job. Well, now, because again it has so little to do with winning at a lot of places. You know, we we always think again, like the elite levels of yeah, that's when winning occurs to you, but at the lower levels, you might be there for gender equity, you might be there for athlete engagement, making sure that you get as many people into the program, leaving with happy you know, exit interviews and that donate back. Or maybe you're just trying to get enough people on your team that your college stays afloat. Uh, and so there's a lot of levels that you get hired for. There's not many levels you get fired for, you know. So, like Saturday, you won one, that's great. What'd you do this week? And then you get fired tomorrow. Same for coaching swimming.
SPEAKER_00I know my most cynical mind actually, you know, just thinks maybe Ursay was like, what's the cheapest possible hire I can make at this moment? I can lowball this guy. He's never been a pro football coach. Like, we'll sign him for the bare minimum to coach our team.
SPEAKER_01That's that's what he's gonna do. Right. Oh, come on, we need you, Jeff. Like, you know, the the guys need you. Probably a super easy situation for him to to get into. And um, but I like like I said before, I think this is I I really wish this is something that we could just find a way to push through the coaching ranks and and and push into uh the sport of swimming as it is. And there's there's just you know, just there are a lot of egos out there that you have to try to get through to be able to kind of push this at a at a national level. And maybe it's just maybe this is the podcast that does it, you know, where we start sharing these kinds of situations. This is the one, you know, with our huge outreach. I think we're up to eight, or is it nine listeners now?
SPEAKER_02Um I I think the positivity is going too far again. I think what one other negative here would be again, it it's hey, it's a it's another white dude that got a job. That's true.
SPEAKER_01That was definitely brought up by a lot of people.
SPEAKER_02You know, so I mean they they they alluded to the Rooney rule. You know, who did the interview? No one. And so the same thing applies with swimming is a lot of times, you know, that that conscious, maybe unconscious bias of you're gonna hire the people that again you kind of click with, and a lot of times we click with people that look or act like ourselves. There are not a lot of women head coaches out there for both both teams. And so this is kind of again an instance where you know AD or or or or owner's gonna hire who they're gonna hire. It's like, well, I just clicked with this guy. He's like, well, isn't it kind of coincidental that this guy looks a lot like you do?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I just want to let the listeners know we are trying to set a record for most interrupting background noises in a single podcast. I think my phone has gone off twice. Magically, I have a sick four-year-old in the background. Joel also has a sick kid in the background. We actually haven't heard anything from them. Somebody's email chime is going off again and again. I think my ring doorbell went, my mailman delivered something, and he just wanted me to let me know. You know, there was a package on my so um I I don't know if anybody's tracking out there. You let us know, but I think this one probably might be a computer. That's giving it's like it's like a Microsoft, I think, notification, right? You guys, you guys use Microsoft.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for texting me that that was going off. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00I don't have work. I just I just wanted I just, you know, for the listeners who have been putting and then like I think Joel now is unwrapping something at some point. He was scribbling up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I got tired of hearing about your mailman and crap like that. Let's wrap it up.
SPEAKER_00All right, let's let's let's race to the finish. Um, you know, of course, I want to comment on this um news story. Uh actually, I really don't. If I start myself over again, um a lot of people have asked me, like, oh, you're gonna say something on the podcast about um the situation with uh Robert Griswold and the US OPC. Um if you head on over to Swim Swam, you can read all the articles about it. But essentially, um the US OPC and Griswold are being sued right now um under the accusation that he uh raped a Paralympic teammate. Um there's an accusation that he was placed in a supervisory role of um this Paralympic team. I mean, it's a horrible story, right? And nobody really wants uh to talk about it. And I think in any in any time um there's a there's an abuse story or a sexual abuse story like it. It's not it's not light reading, folks. You know, it is a tough, it is a tough, tough um topic. Um it it just strikes me there's there's two things, and I've said them on here before, but they are worth repeating, I think, until either situation changes. Okay. The first one is people need to be aware, and I'm not saying change any of the way you behave, okay, based on this, but people need to be aware and have realistic expectations for what the U.S. Center for Safe Sport is. Okay, in my opinion, it was not created to stop abuse in sports, okay? It was created to manage liability for governing bodies. Essentially, and they've they're they're geniuses about it, they've got it written into law now, where if you don't help them manage their liability, it's against the law, right? You you've gotta you've gotta send everything you've got into them, or you could be found liable for protecting the law. And actually, I think overall, I don't mind that. I think it's good that we have mandated reporting in the sport of swimming. I think it's really good that even the education programs that I don't particularly enjoy taking part in, the fact that people are getting educated about what abuse looks like, what grooming looks like, all that stuff is actually really positive. It's really positive that we've come up with rules that set much, um, that set boundaries that are well away from where abuse actually occurs so you can stop stuff before it happens. That said, don't have the expectation that these organizations are really the police for managing abuse in sports. They are there so that they can get a sneak preview and actually prevent situations like this. And when I say prevent situations like this, prevent themselves from being sued. And this time they weren't able to do that. You know, they um, according to this lawsuit, they had credible information or they had a report, they didn't act on it. Um and that brings me to my second point, which is uh essentially, in most cases, the only way you can actually enforce some consequences in this field is through a lawsuit. Right? So two um two staff members have been placed on administrative leave. We've seen members of USA swimming um get fired from their job based on lawsuits. So um unfortunately, the most effective measure for reforming sports organizations or for holding people accountable that we have right now is lawsuits. Um and I guess that says something greater about the country that we live in and uh the culture and society that we've created for ourselves. That's a bit of an American thing as well. Um, I don't like as in many other cases, I don't think that's necessarily the best system, but it is it is in all reality the one we have. Um all right. Thank you to everybody for listening. Um comment below, tell us um how many sound interruptions you caught, tell us what you think of Jeff Saturday, tell us what you think about legislating top-down from uh from a governing body. We want to hear all of it. Um like and subscribe. Posit psychology content, Christy Coach, Christy underscore coach, I should say, on Instagram, Christy Santa's coaching on Facebook. Um and of course, you can find this podcast on iTunes and as of a few weeks ago, Spotify. And we're on our way to setting, despite all of Eric's negativity about how many people listen. Another record for listeners this month. I'm very proud of that. I'm very grateful to all of you for listening. I'm grateful to Eric and Joel for being willing to do this to me. And um we we should, guys, we haven't even discussed this. We'll discuss this right when we get off, but hopefully we're gonna get another one of these recorded before the holiday so that you have a swim brief to listen to while you're avoiding your family on Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_02Or we could just re record this one, either way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, we could just do it over again. That sounds great. I love doing that. All right, bye. Thanks, Chris.
SPEAKER_02Bye.