Early-round action from the 2016 NCAAs at Madison Square Garden in NYC (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)What's the current health of NCAA Division I wrestling?
A Blue Ribbon Task Force has conducted an examination of the sport and presented its recommendations at the National Wrestling Coaches Association annual convention Saturday. At the top of the list: possibly shift the D1 schedule to start and finish one month later than now.
According to a tentative schedule that was part of the presentation to NWCA convention participants, practice sessions would begin around Thanksgiving and conclude in mid-December, with tournament competition taking place from that date into the first week of January. The dual-meet season would run from that date through mid-March, with what is labeled "championship season," presumably incorporating traditional conference and individual NCAA championships -- along with the addition of a new, separate dual-meet championships -- on weekends lasting into mid-April. This proposal would place wrestling competition within a single semester.
There is precedence for this single-semester schedule. Years ago, the college wrestling season was much more compact. College schedules from the 1930s or 50s basically started with dual meets in early January, concluding with the NCAAs taking place the last week of March. There were far fewer tournaments; a typical team wrestled 7-10 duals.
One of the principal reasons to propose a January-to-mid-April schedule: to get the conference and NCAA wrestling championships out from under the shadow of NCAA Final Four basketball championships which consume a large percentage of general sports fan interest and media coverage to the detriment of college wrestling.
To illustrate that point, Jim Fallis, the facilitator for the Blue Ribbon Task Force and former Northern Arizona athletic director, shared the following story with Trackwrestling.
"One of the most frustrating things to me: We were at the national championships in Oklahoma City two years ago and USA Today's sports section -- the day before the tournament started -- had a little blurb that talked about how much beer they expected to be consumed in Oklahoma City for the NCAA wrestling championship," said Fallis. "And the next three days you didn't see a thing about the wrestling tournament. But obviously you saw tons of things about basketball."
"If you were to move the (wrestling) tournament into, let's say, mid-April or later in April, obviously you get away from the NCAA basketball tournament. Now you can't just do that and not do something on the front end because what you're doing is effectively extending the season. The concept of a one-semester sport now has a lot more merit."
Moving the NCAA wrestling championships out from under the shadow of the Final Four could also eliminate what is an annual rite of wrestling writers and fans: complaints about lack of coverage of the Nationals in two national publications: USA Today, and Sports Illustrated.
The idea of reconfiguring the college wrestling schedule has been discussed for years; one of this writer's early wrestling articles covering the 2003 NCAAs included quotes from various coaches about the merits of having a later wrestling season which concluded after the end of March Madness.
Fallis sees a host of benefits for a single-semester college wrestling schedule which go beyond generating greater fan interest and more media coverage, to include the potential for enhanced academics, reduced time demands on the student-athlete, and helping to enhance student-athlete mental health.
In fact, the Blue Ribbon Task Force presentation to the NWCA titled "Aligning Wrestling Goals with NCAA Guiding Principles" addressed a number of these issues Fallis mentioned, along with health and safety, competitive equity and fiscal responsibility, and marketing challenges.
"There's a group of administrators that felt now's a good time and a critical time for wrestling to really take a look at itself and do a 360 evaluation and figure out where do we want to be in five, 10, 15 years and how is the best way to get there?" said Fallis.
It's not the first time the NCAA has taken a critical look at college wrestling. In May 2015, InterMat wrote about the results of a survey taken among fans who attended the 2014 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships in Oklahoma City that pointed out that while attendance remained high, there were concerns about the "graying of the NCAAs" as attendees grow older and may be tempted to forego the expense and hassle of travel and instead opt to enjoy the expanded "every mat, every match" coverage on various platforms from the comfort of their homes.
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