Legendary OSU coach Ed Gallagher conferring with unidentified Cowboy wrestler (Photo/1939 Redskin yearbook)Perhaps college wrestling could steal this idea from the All-Star Classic weekend, and make it its own ... with a special dual meet, wrestled under the rules of, say, the 1920s or 30s, with grapplers wearing the gear their grandfathers would have worn decades ago.
For those who assume that Jacob wrestled the angel wearing a singlet and headgear -- and, therefore, so did wrestlers of 80 or 90 years ago -- let's set the record straight. There have been significant changes in terms of rules and gear over the years that would make an old-school-style college wrestling event an eye-opening experience for fans and participants alike. College matches lasted nine minutes, not today's seven. Rules were much simpler; many holds that are now restricted were perfectly legal. Up until the late 1930s, there was no actual point scoring system; matches were won by pin (which, by the way, required a wrestler to hold his opponent's shoulders to the mat for a full three seconds, not just one second, like today), or by who the referee thought was in control the greatest amount of time. As for uniforms ... no singlets. Wrestlers in the 1920s and 30s wore wool trunks, sometimes with tights ... often without a shirt, or headgear. And, perhaps the most mind-blowing aspect for today's wrestlers and fans: many college wrestling programs conducted their matches in a roped-off wrestling ring, much like we associate with boxing or pro wrestling.
As you can imagine, the old-school rules and gear had a direct impact on wrestlers and how they wrestled. Years ago, this writer wrote a story for InterMat titled "Old-School Stratagy" which sprang from a statement made by Jack Marchello, University of Michigan champ in the late 1950s, during an interview where I was gathering information for another article. In my "Old-School Strategy" story, I talked to other wrestlers of the late 1950s and into the 1960s, many who wrestled bare-chested, without headgear, in sneakers (not wrestling shoes), on cotton-canvas mats (not today's Resilite foam-core mats with a bonded vinyl surface). They echoed Marchello's comments that the rules and gear of that era had a direct impact on how matches were wrestled ... especially those who experienced the changes during their careers.
One by one, the old-school ways of doing things in college wrestling have vanished. The first point-scoring system was installed in the late 1930s. Wrestling rings were outlawed by the NCAA during World War II. Today's wrestling mats started appearing in the late 1950s. The NCAA required shirts by the mid-1960s; wool was replaced by cotton, then by synthetic fabrics. Singlets were OK'd by the NCAA about 45 years ago.
These changes certainly have made college wrestling safer than it once was. For instance, it's much rarer for a wrestler to deal with mat burns or skin rashes that were pretty common back in the days of wrestling without shirts on cotton-canvas mats.
One could argue that safety improvements regarding gear, mats and rules have made wrestling better, certainly for the participants. That said, having an old-fashioned wrestling match conducted under old-school rules using vintage-style gear and wrestling ring -- like that old-time, 1869-style baseball game as part of this year's All-Star Classic -- would give today's wrestlers, coaches and fans a new appreciation of just how rugged college wrestlers of decades past truly were. Until that happens, we'll have to be content with reading about the old ways of wrestling ... and watching old-time films, like the 1962 NCAA finals, available for viewing online.
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