Week four was a week where what happened on the internet surpassed what happened on the competition floor in engagement and relevance. I’m going to attempt to restore some balance to the world by putting gymnastics front and center. Then, after that, I will engage in Takes. You know me. I can’t stay away. Gymnastics front and center, for sure. But then at the end, there’s definitely space for meta-opinion about Tweets.
You know the drill: disputing, discussing, and naturally, discoursing.
Question: Why is Division III apparently not impacted by scoring depression?
As tighter scoring continues to be the foremost narrative of this season, DIII teams are chugging along in the background scoring record after record. You expect it from the brand new programs, but the phenomenon goes beyond them. Five DIII teams have scored over 190 in January, and UW-Oshkosh already has a 194-plus. Rhode Island College set a program record this week, and we’ve seen event and individual top five scores flying across the whole division.
One possibility is that the overall talent level in college gymnastics has genuinely improved. Coaches often talk about level 10 gymnastics getting deeper, and especially with the potential for roster size limits around the corner, that means more college-ready gymnasts might be unable to find a home at a Division I team (or make the choice to go DIII regardless). With an increasing number of strong gymnasts available, Division III teams are probably benefiting from a deeper talent pool.
I’m also not sure how the incentive structures of the new SCOREBoard system work for Division III. Do judges who routinely judge DIII feel very motivated by the possibility of NCAA postseason assignments? That’s not a rhetorical question; I genuinely want to know. Is the whole concept of the program relevant to them in the slightest? Were judges who more regularly judged DIII meets already scoring routines more accurately? Is Oshkosh going to go 196 before the season is out? It’s a mystery to me.
Bonus Questions:
Is Cal just killing time until Ondine Achampong’s legs are ready to go? Cal’s always a team that likes to construct lineups as though it has no depth while actually there are like six former top recruits sitting on the bench. But putting Jordan Kane in as the bars anchor is really a choice, and it’s not the only one that’s confused me this season. I know you have better options, Cal. I’m actually really sure you do because I saw them in exhibition.
Is Illinois State making a real push for regionals? Getting a top-five all-time team score in January is a pretty big deal, and being ranked in the 20s at the end of January is a bigger one. This is a talented yet high-variance team; the routines are there, but they’ll have to keep their heads. Case in point: I outlined this article on Tuesday afternoon, and then on Tuesday evening the Redbirds counted a fall on bars and got a season low. NQS has some grace for this sort of thing, but it might not be enough to erase the tendency of ambitious small teams to slide back down the rankings as the season progresses.
Comment: The future is now for Arizona.
Arizona got a little lost in the shuffle of an incredibly eventful Sunday night (and I don’t just mean the gymnastics meets), but its Territorial Cup victory in Tempe was one of the most impactful results of the week. The Wildcats hadn’t won this dual since 2016, and if you don’t remember what Arizona State was like back then, it’s probably for the best. While Arizona has improved a lot over the past few years, this rivalry meet has remained firmly the Sun Devils’.
When the tide finally turned on Sunday night, it was resounding. Arizona led throughout the meet (with the help of a season high 49.125 on vault, which for a team so traditionally weak on vault is a big number for January on the road), but ran away with it in the final rotation on beam while Arizona State struggled with floor landings.
This was also both teams’ Big 12 opener, and it’s a very promising new beginning for Arizona. This 196.650 is the best score in the conference this year except for Utah, and the Wildcats are lying third but creeping up behind Denver at No. 2. Also, speaking of promising signs for the future, the only 10.0 in level 10 so far this season (excluding non-regulation event finals) belongs to an Arizona signee. We might look back at this meet as the beginning of an era.
Bonus Comments:
Kentucky is, as usual, flying under the radar. I’ll be honest, I thought Kentucky would struggle a little more to replace the 2024 senior class. Apparently not. This team looks very much its usual flavor of quietly composed and prepared while everyone else is still trying to figure out which direction the landing mat is. It’s definitely a nationals threat, and it was silly to think anything else.
Thank you Iowa for that utterly ridiculous scoring versus Minnesota. It made me laugh really hard, and I was getting really sick of the revival of “overscoring is a SEC problem” discourse. And it let its guest benefit too! How generous.
Concern: SCOREBoard is dead, long live SCOREBoard.
I had as good a time as anyone with that Livvy Dunne tweet. We got some great jokes out of it. People got to apply my beloved Patriots Principle. How silly, right? Coming out as pro-overscoring because, what, you’re annoyed at losing to Arkansas? Being willing to sell out the soul of the sport in exchange for a few ticket sales when we’re already seeing sold out arenas and attendance records weekly because your personal fans who never understood the sport or cared to try are confused about a 9.875?
I totally understand being worried about the future of non-rev sports in the revenue-sharing world. I am too. I definitely think programs will be cut in the upcoming years. I don’t think whether an already-famous gymnast gets a 9.95 or a 10 has any bearing on their survival whatsoever, and I think it’s cheap to use them as a bargaining chip in an argument that otherwise only applies to the top gymnasts at the top teams, but I thought it was pretty unlikely that she’d thought that far.
And that’s when I ruined the fun for myself by becoming a conspiracy theorist, because I increasingly suspect that other people have thought that far and that this sentiment is part of a serious and coordinated attempt to kill the SCOREBoard and judging reform that will probably succeed.
There’s a lot going on behind the scenes here, and I’m only privy to very small parts, but there are enough rumors and snatches of information circulating that I think that there are people with power in the sport who explicitly want the scores to stay high and are throwing their weight around to do it. It just doesn’t make sense to me otherwise. I’d love to think that we as a community could understand that scoring had reached a point of being an existential threat to the sport’s integrity and that standing by and allowing it to continue because 10s draw crowds is equivalently morally bankrupt to turning a blind eye to doping because it’s cool when muscley man go faster. I’d love to believe that deep down, everyone involved in gymnastics does believe that there is a core truth in the Code of Points that we are all imperfectly aspiring to reach and represent. But I’ve been around for long enough at this point that I understand that the biggest threat to gymnastics’ credibility as a real sport is that a critical mass of people on the inside actually and seriously do not want it to be one. If the PMAC is full and the NIL money keeps flowing and the leotards are Swarovski, who cares what we sacrifice to get there? Well, I do. But there might not be enough people who think that way to save judging.
Bonus Concerns:
The SEC Championships format gets more and more stressful to me as we learn that there really isn’t a weak link in the conference this year. It took Alabama two just-fine meets in front of appropriately strict judges to land on the bottom this week. Whoever gets the short straw in the end will almost certainly miss out by a brutally thin margin.
We all know there’s some astoundingly lazy choreography in the country, but my photographer friends have drawn my attention to a particular trend I’m now noticing over and over: A surprising number of floor routines are choreographed to play toward the student section and almost never turn to face the other directions. It is a 3D sport, people. Please.
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Article by Rebecca Scally
I will never forget a judge years ago stating that an ESPN “worker” (not a commentator, but not sure if producer or another exec) told them pre-meet that they were ready for some 10s (essentially a wink wink, nudge nudge sort of deal). At that point I just kind of realized that ESPN will now dictate college gymnastics. So for now, I guess we just bow down to the mouse, except KJC because she’s a real one!