I have been watching the US Olympic Swimming trials every night this week and it occurred to me while watching that I see a recurring theme.

Every swimmer in the pool has essentially the same swim caps on their heads. I don't mean Speedo or some manufacturer but instead I see the following schools represented over and over...

Georgia
Cal Berkeley
Texas
Florida
Louisville
UVA
Other SEC schools

So why is this?

To me this all comes down to money. We all know that Louisville and UVa have some of the most well-funded Olympic sports programs in the country and their performance is showing now on an international level.

The SEC schools are awash in cash and the fact that their swimmers are dominating the Olympic trials are a testament to how big bucks can fund high-quality Olympic sports programs.

Finally, we cannot forget Texas. The LHN may be a failure for ESPN but it is a tremendous success for the Longhorns. The fact that they dominated a freestyle race last night with the top-3 finishers all going to Texas spoke volumes.

This is why I bang the drum on an ACC Network and complain regularly over the weakness in our athletics budget compared to peer institutions. Just imagine with there was a swimmer that qualified for the Olympic team that was wearing a maroon VT cap in the pool? That's something I would really like to see someday.