College swimming has never lacked intensity — only attention.
As the sport continues to search for a consistent national spotlight, swim influencer Kyle Sockwell is working to showcase collegiate swimming one pool deck at a time.
Known online as the “CEO of Swimming Twitter” and the “CEO of Fun,” Sockwell is traveling across the country on his college swim meet tour, highlighting the culture, atmosphere and accessibility of the sport.
One of those stops brought him to Provo for the BYU–Utah rivalry — a matchup he believes offers a blueprint for how swimming can better connect with fans.
Last night, coaches and staff teamed up with @kylesockwell to set the pool record in the 800 Free Relay (never before set in the RB pool) 🙌 pic.twitter.com/fdi2pTjmgG
— BYU Swim and Dive (@BYUSwim_Dive) February 7, 2026
Sockwell said his approach to growing the sport through social media came from observing how more mainstream sports engage their audiences.
“Mostly watching other sports,” Sockwell said. “A lot of what we’re doing right now is taking small things that football, basketball or volleyball do really well and figuring out how to implement them properly into our sport.”
Rather than attempting to market swimming as a long, four-month season, Sockwell focuses on individual meets with built-in storylines. Rivalries such as BYU–Utah, he said, provide a clear and approachable entry point for fans who may not yet be familiar with the sport.
“For a long time, I thought you had to attack the whole thing,” Sockwell said. “But what I’ve realized over the last couple of years is you should really attack one meet and build from there.”
That shift, he said, turns a swim meet into an actionable event for the surrounding community. Asking fans to attend a specific rivalry is far more accessible than asking them to follow an entire season.
“It’s much easier to say, ‘We’re swimming Utah at home — show up,’” Sockwell said.
However, getting fans through the doors is only the first step. Sockwell believes the in-meet experience often determines whether casual spectators return. One of the biggest barriers, he said, is the difficulty of following team scoring in real time — even for former collegiate swimmers.
“It’s one of the only sports where you kind of have to wait for updates,” Sockwell said. “For a fan, it’s hard to watch an event end and immediately know what just happened.”
As a result, swimming often asks too much of its audience, Sockwell said, expecting casual viewers to behave like experts.
“A lot of times we make our fans be super fans,” he said. “We make it really hard for them to just be entry-level fans.”
Sockwell believes improving meet presentation — such as clearer score displays and a stronger emphasis on atmosphere — could help programs like the BYU Cougars convert first-time spectators into repeat attendees.
“Once people are there,” Sockwell said, “it’s your job to make them want to come back next year — and maybe even convince them to go to another meet.”
Through his national tour, Sockwell is betting that localized intensity, such as the BYU–Utah rivalry, can help push college swimming into a broader national conversation.
For BYU, hosting the tour positioned the program as one stop in a growing effort to rethink how the sport is presented, promoted and experienced — one meet at a time.