Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.
I’m sorry for the gap in publishing earlier this week. On Wednesday, I had to have surgery on my right knee so I’d be able to walk in time for the Extra Points Bowl later this month … and I didn’t realize I wouldn’t really be able to work once I got home from the hospital.
I’m still resting and recovering, so I think today is a good day to pass the sticks to a freelancer. Emily Mumola had a chance to actually physically go and cover something I’m very curious about: the College Swimming League. Let me turn the time over to her:
In the final race of the College Swimming League’s third meet in early October, Stanford’s 4x50 yard relay teams took first place in each of their events, giving the Cardinal its first lead of the night in a surprising home victory and creating a viral moment for a brand-new league.
The Cardinal’s winning score was only possible because Cal star Yamato Okadome was disqualified after taking off early during the relay. But it’s hard to blame the 2025-26 national champion for the mistake; he must have been exhausted. After all, it was the fourth swim he had raced in a matter of minutes.
In that final event, a series of relay races known as “Super Skins,” eight teams race four legs of 50 yards each; the bottom two finishers are eliminated, and within 90 seconds, everyone else goes at it again, repeating the process through a final two-team race. While that pace and repetition is bound to wear swimmers down, it also contributes an extra level of excitement at CSL events. With the Cardinal comeback, more than 2,000 fans rose to their feet for the climatic finish that would not have been possible anywhere else.
Photo credit: Emily Mumola
The CSL debuted this fall with a unique format: 30 events in roughly two hours, with only 30 total minutes of commercials during each broadcast. So far, the league has put on six regular-season meets featuring four schools apiece and a wild-card event Thursday; Indiana won, earning the final spot in Friday’s championship against NC State, Tennessee and Virginia. Each of those four teams will take home $25,000.
In the post-House settlement world, the CSL bills itself as a much-needed jolt for NCAA swimming. The college season runs through much of the academic year, from September through March, but the stakes don’t rise until late in the winter, so the CSL’s founders saw a long stretch of untapped potential in the fall.
“If you ask most athletes, nothing really matters until February,” CSL co-founder Kyle Sockwell said. “That fall part of the season was really where we were able to say, ‘Hey, can we create a little bit more excitement through a different layer of storytelling and still fit within the NCAA season?’”
The CSL takes advantage of the multi-team event structure that basketball popularized; teams compete for a non-NCAA title (like the Maui Invitational) while still relying on NCAA rules and providing results that count toward championship qualification. In recent years, volleyball has hosted several new MTEs on increasingly large stages as the sport has grown; ESPN announced record viewership numbers for the 2024-25 regular season and tournament, and a student-led study at Cal reported average attendance across Division I had risen 32 percent since 2017.
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“Volleyball’s done an incredible job,” said Sockwell, who cites volleyball as an inspiration for his league. “I never really watched women's volleyball. I had heard about it, and I had heard that they had a lot of momentum. And I watched it, and I was immediately hooked.”
Sockwell and the league’s CEO, Rob Kent, are hoping the CSL will have the same effect. They’re focused on creating fast-paced, competitive events to entice broadcasters; VIP suites; and sponsorships for everything from poolside boards to specific events. The league aims to increase swimming’s visibility and provide a blueprint for revenue generation, which is crucial as schools begin to cut non-revenue sports following House and other financial strains.
Sockwell calls non-revenue sports “at-risk” — yet the league’s revenue expectations have led to new risks, including cutbacks in access. The league signed only 12 of the best teams from across the country, and only two swimmers per school can compete in any given event.
The events don’t feature diving competitions, which normally pause racing for extended periods, and the league also took a chance by ticketing its events, shaking up the typically free model of college meets and introducing new costs.
“Right now, convincing an athletic department to ticket a swim meet is not easy,” Sockwell said. “Expected attendance is difficult to project, and a lot of people don't realize … the resources that have to go into an event if you're going to ticket it. You need security. You need people scanning tickets.”
The CSL has taken some major investment for its experiment; it now needs revenue to prove its value. Its leaders believe the best way to sell tickets, merchandise, sponsorships and broadcasting deals is to create the most exciting event possible — but will that be enough to prop up one of college athletics’ most at-risk sports?
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Speed is the name of the game in swimming — and a key part of audience retention, both at the pool and on ESPN+ and DAZN. And the CSL is structured around that principle: It gives swimmers bonus points for beating the field by a wide margin, and it treats any downtime as a drag. A DJ blares club music over speakers before and during all events. During rare breaks in the action, production staff throws t-shirts and swim caps to fans. And before they step to the starting blocks, swimmers pose in front of a wall of sponsors as LED lights pulse and fog machines belch mist.
Photo credit: Emily Mumola
Photo credit: Emily Mumola
The athletes get plenty of attention, with dramatic announcements at introductions, while they lead and when they win. Their headshots emerge on the videoboard as they touch the wall, and their scores are automatically calculated and shown in the team totals.
Their parents, of course, love it — many of them sitting in poolside suites that retail for $100 a seat. Take Matthew and Marnie Rodgers, whose daughter, Sienna, only competed in one event for Ohio State at the Palo Alto meet.
“All of our friends asked for my login code so they could watch,” Matthew said, noting they benefited from DAZN picking up the match being picked up internationally. Hours after doors opened, they still hadn’t touched their bags of VIP giveaways; Marnie was more interested in joining the “O-H” chant with the rest of the suite.
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In the Cal suite, Jason DeAnda was the rowdiest fan, wearing a bear costume jacket — despite the fact that his daughter wasn’t competing.
“A who’s who of Cal Bear royalty are here today,” DeAnda said of his suitemates. “You’ve got Olympians, you’ve got alumni. … This is amazing.”
His energy was matched only by a group of five Cal students holding a banner in the general admission section. They turned out to be members of the swim team who weren’t competing that day.
“I think it’s so much more exciting,” Caiden Bowers said. “It’s made for viewership.”
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Sockwell, the self-appointed “CEO of fun” in college swimming, is a decade removed from competing at Arizona State; he went into digital marketing after graduation. Now the COO of the CSL, he hopes to revolutionize the sport he once competed in, and his experiment might be an indicator of the future of “at-risk sports.”
“Is this community one that is ready and willing to invest back into itself? That’s the main test in Year 1,” Sockwell said. “Why can't we have an opportunity to invest in our sport, but also be able to enjoy the investment?”
Photo credit: Emily Mumola
The CSL has needed quite the investment. Besides the money that goes into game presentation and staffing — a higher number for ticketed events in any sport — the league funds transportation and lodging for all teams, relying on a budget of about $1 million for this first season.
That budget comes in part from its unofficial predecessor, the International Swimming League. The ISL was a team-based, scoring-driven private swim league that was massively popular across the swimming community.
Rob Kent, the CSL’s CEO, was the general manager of one of the ISL’s teams before he approached Sockwell about starting the a new league in October 2025. They applied the team model to collegiate athletics’ existing rosters, established brands and passionate communities of fans; the new league would even have financial backing from the ISL, which has announced a return with few details.
But the ISL has been plagued with financial concerns since its dissolution in 2022. Konstantin Grigorishin, a Russian-Ukrainian billionaire who is reportedly on Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs wanted list on charges of embezzlement, largely funded the ISL; when the war in Ukraine broke out, the league was unable to fulfill its financial commitments — obligations it’s still paying out to this day.
Asked about the ISL’s involvement, Sockwell was quick to emphasize that he and Kent have full autonomy and have made all payments. “That’s our new track record,” Sockwell said following the third match. “We’re the CSL, not the ISL.”
Sockwell said the CSL gives swimming a sustainable ecosystem to grow, but could the exclusivity of that ecosystem make operations even harder on smaller programs without Olympic-level talent?
Sockwell hopes the CSL can expand further once it proves it can generate revenue, broadening its impact across college swimming.
“Our goal isn't just to pick the top 12 teams … and just build like a super league within swimming,” he said. “It's, ‘Can we involve more programs? Can we expand the opportunities for programs to be able to compete in CSL style events?’ Creating more opportunity as opposed to, ‘Can we scoop up these 12 teams and make a ton of money, and then sell the private equity?’”
And if the CSL fails? Sockwell believes the attempt itself will change the conversation around at-risk sports.
“If we totally fail and in three years we just don't have the funding to do a four season, at a minimum, we've given these coaches the opportunity to walk into their athletic director's office and speak the language of all of these other sports,” he said.
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