One of the main initiatives of the CGA is to help protect the remaining 15 programs while also working to enhance our product so that we can reverse the trend and bring more programs back into the NCAA.

During our annual CGA meeting in May, we focused our rule change proposals on answering the following questions:

How do we make our competitions fit into a 2 hour time slot for in-house competitions and television?

How do we make our scoring more understandable?

How do we make our competitions easier to follow?

How can we make our product more attractive for television?

How do we increase parity and competitiveness within our competitions?

The proposals were discussed among the college coaches in a sounding board scenario during a full-day meeting on May 4th . Approximately 40 CGA members were in attendance at the meeting at JO Nationals in Reno. This meeting is used as a platform to share, discuss, develop and vote on ideas that will be presented to the NCAA Committee for consideration in our Rules Modifications document. 4 of the 6 members the NCAA Committee are also members of the CGA.

There are several layers involved in the process to change rules at the NCAA level. Our coach representatives will be bringing the proposals and subsequent straw votes of the coaching community to the committee meeting in June where rules will be discussed and voted on. From there, they will go to the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel where they will provide their input as to the best approach to move these rules along through the system. We wanted to share our thoughts with the entire gymnastics community, and the following rule change proposals were the headliners discussed at our CGA annual meeting in Reno. By no means do we believe that any one change is going to bring tens of thousands of viewers instantly, but making smart, strategic changes, focused on the challenges in our sport will help get it moving in the right direction.

10.0 Conversion System

Proposal: Use a 10.0 conversion system in conjunction with the open ended scoring system

Straw Vote: 21 in favor; 4 against; 11 abstentions The College Gymnastics Association recently discussed proposals that would make NCAA Men’s gymnastics better for the athletes, fans, television and athletics departments. Some may find it surprising to discover that the one common denominator to all of those discussions was the use of a 10.00 scoring system. In fact, in a straw vote, the CGA voted overwhelmingly to implement a new hybrid F.I.G./10.00 system. Here are the reasons why:

Relevance

Ask a non-gymnastics person how good a score of 15.00 is in the sport and they have absolutely no idea. But, if you ask them how good a 10.00 is they will tell you that it is perfection. They get it. The open-ended scoring system has made gymnastics scores less relevant to the general public including men’s gymnastics alumni. Men’s gymnastics has had little problem in retaining its die-hard fans over the years. The problem is that no new fans are being brought into the fold. It is foolish to think that the fan base will grow when the score is something that no one in the general public understands. Going to a new 10.00 system will bridge the gap to new fans who otherwise would remain forever unengaged.

Marketability

In today’s market of increasingly expanding media, television and streaming packages, one thing remains a constant -- the fierce competition for viewership. It is unlikely that the attention of viewers will be captured by an event if they don’t have some rudimentary understanding of the basics of the contest. Television producers have long lamented the change from the 10.00 to the open-ended scoring system because of its complexity. As a result, those same producers have been less likely to put out a neatly-packaged gymnastics broadcast because it is not relevant or understandable. In short, a men’s gymnastics meet has become an increasingly difficult story to tell. When producers are asked what can be done to improve our chances of growing and improving the coverage we receive, their immediate response is to go to a 10.00 scoring system. In fact, nothing gets a gymnastics crowd, and the media that covers it, more excited than a gymnast scoring a perfect 10.00.

Simplicity

Earlier attempts to use a 10.00 system in the wake of the F.I.G. open-ended system created a divide between athletes who were on the cutting edge of international competition and those simply competing on an NCAA team. The 10.00 system at that time simply didn’t measure up. It handicapped those who were capable of more. As a result, some prospects opted out of the NCAA. Under the recently proposed 10.00/F.I.G. hybrid system, a graduating senior prospect can compete for his college team and still pursue the highest levels of international competition without compromising his efforts at both.

So just how does this new 10.00/F.I.G. hybid system work? How can you create a system that makes sure that 10.00’s are possible, but rare, and still have scores on the lower-end of the spectrum that are not too low in relation to the rest of the field? Through the use of a simple conversion chart. After reviewing the NCAA Championships and regular season results, it became clear that a final F.I.G. score of 15.00 was very rare yet achievable. One gymnast at the 2019 NCAA Championships achieved this level. Additionally, many scores at the championships, as well as throughout the regular season, hovered around the 13.50 level. Finally, there were some cases of missed routines that earned an 11.00 or slightly lower. What would the conversion look like in each of these cases? Here are the results with a 15.00 being the starting point for the scale: