You're the Commissioner. Now Fix Wrestling!

[Mead For My Horses]

You've just been named the first commissioner of college wrestling. Your job is to fix it. What do you do?

Everything is on the table within the big picture structure of college athletics, so we're talking about on the mat rules changes, making duals relevant again, ducking, seeding, stalling, refereeing, etc.

Off the table is transfer rules since every sport is dealing with that.

I've got ideas but I want to hear yours. You have 6 months to fix it, so get thinking and get creative.

 

[clonedude]

Stalling. That’s it IMO.

I can see why people don’t want to watch two guys hand fight the entire match and do nothing.

Or have guys get hit for stalling when they are literally in the act of taking a guy down, but others can run away like scared babies and not get anything. It’s broken…. and frustrating as hell.

 

[JM4CY]

Install a "JSWLB" point that automatically gets rewarded to the opposing teams wrestler during matches. That way every time John Smith is a Whiney Little B*tch, our guy gets a point.

 

[HFCS]

I know trying to get non wrestling people into Carr’s match it was overly complex to describe riding time so they knew he actually had a slim lead. They could understand 3 takedown one escape as easy as basketball scoring. There are casual fans to be had who have college team loyalty and mma fan passion like there was not 25 years ago.

Its not an unfair rule, but wonder if it slightly hurts casual popularity.

 

[HFCS]

Stalling. That’s it IMO.

I can see why people don’t want to watch two guys hand fight the entire match and do nothing.

Or have guys get hit for stalling when they are literally in the act of taking a guy down, but others can run away like scared babies and not get anything. It’s broken…. and frustrating as hell.

Stand up position stalling needs to just be give the escape after set # of seconds, maybe 10 seconds. It’s not the same as stalling in neutral.

 

[JEFF420]

Don’t compete with march madness. Finals on regular tv with the women. Those ladies will grow the sport.

 

[BCClone]

Find the funds to raise the officiating pay. That way you can hold officials accountable when they fully crap the bed. Stalling issues addressed. If a coach leaves their lined off area for anything but an injury or going to the head table to ask a question of the official, it's a point for the other wrestler (some coaches are literally all over the place). Make headgear optional: I saw way too many wrestlers using their opponents headgear to their advantage. Small things like just a slight tug while they are head snapping to get it to work a little better.

If you stop the clock and review a take down and change the call, the clock and everything reverts to how it was before. Heck, you even try to place them kinda like they were before in the same general location on the mat.

There is too much subjectiveness for the refs in the sport.

 

[Urbandale2013]

Move the season back. Really frustrating to have to try and split time between 3 tournaments. Stop competing with basketball.

 

[brett108]

Stalling. That’s it IMO.

I can see why people don’t want to watch two guys hand fight the entire match and do nothing.

Or have guys get hit for stalling when they are literally in the act of taking a guy down, but others can run away like scared babies and not get anything. It’s broken…. and frustrating as hell.

I think you do what JB said. Make a push out worth a point. You do this and wrestling on the edge stops looking like a good option.

 

[Pope]

Don't want to be Debbie Downer, but I'm guessing it's not fixable. When universities have to start paying athletes (outside of NIL), some or most of the non revenue sports are gonna be dropped, and for most universities wrestling will be at the top of the cut list.

Just my opinion. Hope I'm wrong.

 

[crablegs]

1. Get rid of stalling. Stalling is too subjective and will never be called fairly. Add a push out. Push out from neutral would be a point. Push out from the referees position is no points, but results in restarting in the neutral position.

2. Fix the review process
- Officials do not get to initiate an “officials review”. Coach throws a brick or not.
- Lost challenges incur a penalty. 1 point to the opponent.

3. Duals season matters.
- There should be a formulaic ranking of dual teams. Similar to RPI from a team perspective. Prior to conferences, those rankings are used to determine NCAA points. I don’t know the exact formula, but 1st place in that ranking starts with 15 points at the NCAA tournament or something like that. Then there is a sliding scale for the top 8 teams. It could be the same as NCAA placement points. Ex: 1st place dual team starts NCAAs with 16 team points, 2nd is 12, 8th is 3.

Implementing a process like this would have given a team like Cornell incentive to wrestle their guys against ISU. With their loss to ISU and each team’s record, ISU probably would have covered the 4 point difference they ended up behind Cornell.

 

[BCClone]

I think you do what JB said. Make a push out worth a point. You do this and wrestling on the edge stops looking like a good option.

I am for this and against this. I don't want to have it turn into a Sumo match at times. Shoving someone out of bounds isn't really offensive wrestling, its more of an football blocking/tackling type of thing. They have the stalling for push outs, I think it just needs to be enforced better/consistent.

 

[cytor]

No knee wrestling. Stalling needs to be redefined.

 

[iastatefan1]

1. Get rid of stalling. Stalling is too subjective and will never be called fairly. Add a push out. Push out from neutral would be a point. Push out from the referees position is no points, but results in restarting in the neutral position.

2. Fix the review process
- Officials do not get to initiate an “officials review”. Coach throws a brick or not.
- Lost challenges incur a penalty. 1 point to the opponent.

3. Duals season matters.
- There should be a formulaic ranking of dual teams. Similar to RPI from a team perspective. Prior to conferences, those rankings are used to determine NCAA points. I don’t know the exact formula, but 1st place in that ranking starts with 15 points at the NCAA tournament or something like that. Then there is a sliding scale for the top 8 teams. It could be the same as NCAA placement points. Ex: 1st place dual team starts NCAAs with 16 team points, 2nd is 12, 8th is 3.

Implementing a process like this would have given a team like Cornell incentive to wrestle their guys against ISU. With their loss to ISU and each team’s record, ISU probably would have covered the 4 point difference they ended up behind Cornell.

Only one I'm not sold on is the pushout from referee position, top guy will just push out to avoid giving up an escape. In neutral if someone is pushing you it can help setup shots/throws. When you're bottom and they drop to a single and push you out it's tough. If you get rid of mat wrestling altogether why not just switch to freestyle?

 

[8bitnes]

Don't want to be Debbie Downer, but I'm guessing it's not fixable. When universities have to start paying athletes (outside of NIL), some or most of the non revenue sports are gonna be dropped, and for most universities wrestling will be at the top of the cut list.

Just my opinion. Hope I'm wrong.

For many universities, it can't be dropped. They must maintain at least 14 sports to be NCAA members (16 sports if FBS). ISU, for example is at that threshold already and cannot cut anything else

 

[wxman1]

As a newb I don't understand the two officials in wrestling but only one seemingly makes calls.

 

[BCClone]

For many universities, it can't be dropped. They must maintain at least 14 sports to be NCAA members (16 sports if FBS). ISU, for example is at that threshold already and cannot cut anything else

We are at 18.

 

[crablegs]

Only one I'm not sold on is the pushout from referee position, top guy will just push out to avoid giving up an escape. In neutral if someone is pushing you it can help setup shots/throws. When you're bottom and they drop to a single and push you out it's tough. If you get rid of mat wrestling altogether why not just switch to freestyle?

But they push out right now to avoid an escape. There is no penalty for it. It really drags on a match in an extremely boring way when there are 4 restarts from referees position in 30 seconds because they keep going out of bounds.

 

[iastatefan1]

This one is not all the way thought out, but seperate the senior level guys more from the college guys. I think part of the PSU problem is with this. They have stockpiled all the top guys. If I was a good high school wrestler and the pitch was, come wrestle with their senior level guys and get better, if you can hang you will be competitive at the world level. I am going to PSU even though I'm a huge isu fan. It's better for our country wrestling, but worse for college parity I think. I might be off base here since I was never close to good enough to wrestle in college, but its the impression I get.

 

[iastatefan1]

But they push out right now to avoid an escape. There is no penalty for it. It really drags on a match in an extremely boring way when there are 4 restarts from referees position in 30 seconds because they keep going out of bounds.

I get what you are trying to solve, but don't think that's the answer. Top guy pushes bottom guy out he chooses 1. Give up escape and start neutral or 2. he takes a stalling maybe. Can't eliminate stalling with mat wrestling because top guys will just ankle ride again if stalling is eliminated.