Dean Heil edged George DiCamillo in the Southern Scuffle semifinals (Photo/Mark Lundy, Lutte-Lens.com)The Southern Scuffle ended last week with Penn State true freshman Mark Hall capturing the 174-pound championship with a combination of dazzling offense and upperclassman composure.
While Hall's performance has State College interested in pulling his redshirt, there was another moment -- perhaps less glorious and somewhat controversial -- which also sparked discussion: The 141-pound semifinal match between George DiCamillo (Virginia) and Dean Heil (Oklahoma State).
The match was 3-1 in favor of Heil with about 30 seconds remaining in the third period when a scramble caught fire sending the pair into the ever-familiar exchange of funk rolls. Heil ended the match on his back, but somehow remained in neutral, winning the match and leaving some scratching their heads.
As an alumnus I have an inherent bias towards the University of Virginia, but this entry is to discuss what to do about the recent proliferation of stop, drop, and roll. To help carry us along, I'm going to start with a brief historical guide to scholastic wrestling rules, then discuss why we are in our current rule set, and finally analysis on some possible changes that could improve the situation while also moving the sport forward.
History and inspiring principles for scholastic wrestling
Modern collegiate wrestling is a direct descendent of the "Collar and Elbow" style of wrestling brought over and popularized by Irish farmers in the 1850s. Those most-hardy of recent immigrants would pass time at harvest meetings with wrestling matchups between competitive families and farms. The gatherings were popular throughout the northeast and, coincidentally, held each March. The rules varied, but wrestlers began with their hands gripping their opponent's collar and elbow (today's collar tie -- this stuff doesn't come from nowhere!) with the aim of winning via pin, submission from a painful lock or an opponent conceding due to exhaustion.
Matches would sometimes last days, but despite these growing time slots were soon drawing interest from non-farmers. For many years, there was no way to win a wrestling match but to deliver one of the simple outcomes. Over time that, and much more, would change.
(Note: Volumes have been written on this topic. This is a simplified, 10k-foot view of the wrestling landscape. For more information check out Wikipedia entries on the classic styles.)
As these competitions grew nationwide two things began to happen: money began to play a primary a role in promotion/matchmaking, and wrestlers began to improve. Money and skill improvement would end up creating a significant impact on wrestling at the turn of the century.
On March 21, 1903, Columbia and Yale became the first intercollegiate schools to host a dual meet where two pins were necessary per weight to prove a winner.
From Bill Stienman, longtime Columbia SID, "Intercollegiate wrestling began quietly, with a challenge delivered in February 1903 from Columbia's students to Yale, published in the Yale News. The men from New Haven accepted and agreed to two matches, the first at Columbia, the second at Yale, to take place the following month. Rules were agreed upon, four weight classes with two falls required to win, and a gold medal was donated by Columbia to go to the winning team."
As the college kids kicked around pride, fans of barnstorming saw a massive professionalization in their operation. Throughout the first two decades of the 20th century professional wrestling was the most popular sport in America, but with attention came more money and a need to deliver entertainment. This growth would prompt larger-than-life personas, costumes, and eventually pre-determined outcomes. (There were also those still interested in traditional barnyard wrestling, known today as catch-as-catch-can whose ruleset also briefly appeared in the Olympics.)
OK, so what does this all have to do with NCAA wrestling in 2017?
In 1906 several schools got together and formed the NCAA. This brought the sport of wrestling into the realm of education, and presumably, fair play. The institutions were now in charge of directing the sport of wrestling. The sport was also in the Olympics and a unified rule set within collegiate wrestling was sought.
It was evident to many that the pin-only format for wrestling needed some changes towards a "sport" model popularized in other sports. Simply put a sport model would create a point system for a variety of maneuvers which resembled the control, namely takedowns. (Jiu-jitsu is currently going through this growing pain, with submissions harder to find, rule sets have been developed. Currently there are more than a half dozen popular competition rule sets.)
For the next 50 years wrestling rules at the collegiate level would be tweaked and refined. Many of the changes were a variety of point allocations given to incentivize the aggression of wrestlers. Positional advantages were given at the start of each period, back points were added, stalling points, and riding time were all brought into the sport to help spur action.
Some ideas worked well, but as athletes and coaches began to game the system many of these were tweaked, replaced or removed.
The perfect storm
Sometime in the mid-1990's Fresno State (and others) began to negotiate the variety of risks coming from exposing one's back to defend takedowns and possibly score a takedown in the resulting scramble.
There is no question that these series of moves, known colloquially as "funk" were innovative and exciting. Throughout the next two decades wrestlers nationwide began to work with this "funk" series and develop new ways to score points from countering offense. Perhaps the most successful of the funk practitioners was Missouri's Ben Askren, who won two NCAA titles largely from the confusion he created for opponents during these risky exchanges. Still, there were hundreds more (myself included) who were also effective at using this counter-based approach to build successful wrestling careers.
As it happens the funk, once an outlier during technique sessions, became the must-have stuff. Soon, the prevention and defense to funky wrestling also became required technique. This of course spawned a new counter-offense, and subsequently the layers upon layers of technical minutia that now goes into defending and attacking during these exchanges.
In a vacuum this type of spaghetti wrestling can be entertaining, often resembling a highly active jiu-jitsu match sans the consequence of such leg entanglements (toe holds, knee bars and heel hooks). However, recently the result has more often been a whole lot of nothing with stalemates, out-of-bounds, and dangerous holds replacing back points, falls, takedowns and other forms of match progression.
Not insignificant is the fact that many of these exchanges become complex, almost theoretical exercises in what "control" means and how to award for such positions. Fans, wrestlers, coaches and wrestlers are in constant disagreement about where control occurs within these exchanges.
The primary theoretical difference between Olympic-style wrestling and collegiate wrestling is that the former awards points based on technique while the latter is based on control. This difference is best seen in analyzing points awarded for throws from the feet. Olympic style wrestling awards the act of throwing and exposing a back to the mat, while collegiate style awards holding the position for takedown control (2 points) and back points (2-4 points). The way you travel to the mat is inconsequential.
So how does this history inform us about actions to take regarding wrestlers who self-expose their backs during a match?
Possible solutions
There are a multitude of possible solutions, here are the top three:
1. Award back points even if the position is not definitely controlled.
2. Award takedown and back points if two swipes are started. No takedown needed to start swipes.
3. Re-write the rules of a takedown to include these situations directly.
4. Leave it alone and educate the referees on existing rule set.
The first solution would create the most havoc, but likely also help wrestlers find even more creative solutions for fighting out of single and double leg attempts (or sprawl).
By curtailing the number of inconsequential exchanges, you change the risk-reward evaluation of the wrestler. You also start creating more consequential action -- fewer 30-second scrambles ending with panting wrestlers and zero points. The wrestlers would be incentivized to look for "next level" techniques with their defense (sprawl) and if necessary to funk, which could progress into finding moments of control and subsequently, points.
Awarding takedowns would be the right answer since you are then taking a scramble situation and handing out 4 or 6 points for a mistake. Two seems like a number that gets wrestlers to re-think strategy both from the offensive and defensive side.
Final thoughts
Scrambling is not the only thing amiss with the rule set in 2017.
If we all agree that TO PIN IS TO WIN, then we also need refigure the incentives for riding versus looking for a fall. If you want to stay inspired by the sport's roots then it's obvious there is far too much tilting, and not enough pinning combinations. Ask yourself if a four-second hold from a cheap tilt be valued at four points, but a 37-second scramble with multiple back exposures be a scoreless void?
We are kidding ourselves if we think the motivation for a cheap tilt is the same as one for a wrist-and-half, one is for points and one is for pinning.
I'm interested to see if the NCAA rules committee addresses these issues. There is certainly an abundance of ideas on how to improve the rules, but with many also supporting a firm out-of-bounds and the elimination of ride time it'll come down to how they all intersect and what that will mean for the gamesmanship of the next generation of wrestlers and coaches.
Oh, and as currently defined, no takedown should have been awarded to DiCamillo ... and that's a rub.
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