Several reasons:
I think a big part of it's popularity is due to there being very little cost to participate. No pads or balls...
All you need is one other person to wrestle with so I think it takes hold in small towns that do not have loads of kids to field an 8 team football league.
Small schools sometimes dont have enough kids who ar ebig enough to truly compete in football. But if they have a few guys for each weight class and a mat to practice on, they can have a wrestling team.
There are a LOT of small towns in Iowa and the Midwest. Even in Pennsylvania, outside of the Pitt and Philly, there are a lot of rural areas in that state.
You can wrestle at almost any size. It is a great sport for kids who are considered "too small" for other sports. There are some might tough 112 lb kids out there and they all have a chance to participate against kids of their own size.
I never thought about it, but being an indoor sport inthe winter is deffinitely a plus. In the south and other warm weather areas they play football and baseball year round. We can't do that in Iowa and most of the midwest.
It is the ultimate individual sport. Your team and coach can be important for preparing you, but once you are out on the mat it is just you and your opponent. Let the toughest person win.
As far as the state tournament, it is grat because it doesn't matter what school you go to or how good your team is. You can be a champion all by yourself. In football or baseball, no one guy can win the championship by himself. In wrestling you can and that is awesome. Your only limits are how hard you want to work yourself.
I personally have a special love for the sport of wrestling. It very much made me the person I am today, and I wasn't even very good at it. I was well on my way to being an obese teen with self confidence issues and a poor outlook on life. I took a chance and joined the wrestling team, lost 45 lbs my first season and reinvented myself. The toughness and comraderie I learned just from surviing grueling wrestling practices gave me so much more than I imagined. I was never great at it. My team was horrible. But I owe a lot to the sport.
For those that don't get it, I understand. Unless you have put in the hard work and gone through it, it just looks like a couple dudes rolling around. I initially had my qualms about putting on a singlet and grapling out there. My advice is to keep an open mind. It is really the ultimate contact sport. One where you can really show how tough and strong you are.
Great post. I will disagree with the cost side of it though. Wrestling is really as expensive as any other sports when you factor in all aspects. Tournament fees, shoes, headgear, singlet, travel to tournament, food for a full day at a Saturday meet, etc. It really is no different than sports like, basketball, baseball, football, etc. My wife called me out on this when our kids started wrestling. I told her it was an inexpensive sport. Two months into it, she pointed out that I was full of crap and she was right. When it came down to it, we spent as much if not more on wrestling than the other sports.
You make a lot of other great points. The biggest being the mental toughness required to wrestle. Almost every other sport requires a full team effort in order to be successful. When the game is over a kid can blame his teammates or coach for the loss. Not so much in wrestling. There is no one to blame but yourself. Your success is reliant on your ability and your willingness to work harder than the next guy. There are not a lot of kids that have that mental toughness. I think the "midwest work ethic" fits right in with wrestling and that is why it is more popular in areas like the Midwest and Pennsylvania. To me it is intersting that you see the selfish attitude rear its head in a sport like basketball which requires "team effort." Yet, in wrestling, you do not see a selfish attitude even though it is more of a individual sport
Also agree with "Unless you have put in the hard work and gone through it, it just looks like a couple dudes rolling around." I got in a few debates over the girls wrestling at state. Most of these debates were with people that were absolutely cluelesss about the sport. They have no idea what it entails. No idea what goes on during a match, have no interest in the sport, but they feel the need to interject their opinion. Frustrating. My parents had never been associated with wrestling until I got interested. They didn't understand it nor did they care for it. Luckily for me they saw that I enjoyed it and they embraced it and grew to love the sport. Fortunately for me they weren't as close minded as some people like the OP.