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Don't get comfy, wrestling fans. Wrestling is now the Olympic frontrunner, and while that should be cause for measured optimism, it means we'll have to be twice as smart about our messaging. The first 100 days of this movement were about shock and aww -- the final 100 need to be about outreach and growth.
To win the final stage of the contest for Olympic renewal, wrestling will need to adopt new messaging. The word "Save" will be stricken from the wrestling nomenclature, and replaced by a simple message of unity, tradition and change.
UFC interview specialist Ariel Helwani has already shown his growing agitation with the "Save" movement, when moments after the Olympics decision he tweeted "... hopefully if this happens we can cool it on the telethons et al." Annoying as he may be, Helwani is part of the core audience wrestling needs to retain (interested media figure) and though snarky, he makes a valid point. The strategy and focus of the Olympic wrestling movement needs to shift from "woe-is-wrestling" to something more proactive, interactive and intellectually stimulating.
There are some great ideas being floated around, but no matter the PR strategy, or media support, wrestling will not remain the preferred darling of voters and the media for the remainder of the next 14 weeks. The leaders of the baseball/softball bid are already putting our issues with gender equality into focus, while squash has started to aim at wrestling's current inability to utilize technology (live video feeds and playback).
The traditional wrestling mentality would be to take these affronts as a personal attack and fire back insults without regard for effect on the larger process. That cannot happen. Wrestling can't afford any missteps by high-ranking members of our community. We are the 180-pound Great Dane, the magnanimous and rightful leader of the sporting pack. We can't be seen trifling with the attacks of the smaller breeds. We need to keep our heads up and looking forward.
Wrestling interprets these criticisms as constructive critiques and do even more to become gender equitable, and to improve the rules, fan experience and the competitiveness of Greco-Roman. There will be more disparagement over the next 100 days -- some justified, some not -- and our job as fans will be to stay focused on positive messaging and discussing the attributes of wrestling, not the pettiness of our detractors or the perceived lesser value of their product.
Baseball/softball and squash are fearful because they know they are outmatched by something they can't buy, cajole or fake. Sure they can influence voters, but they can never duplicate our community's willpower to see this through or our willingness to volunteer. They know they will lose every poll, have fewer followers on social media sites, and lose out in discussion of historical merits or societal good. Their only hope in the public forum is to make us look provincial, to goad us into saying or doing something stupid.
Wrestling needs to stay focused. We need to make decisions that lead to the advancement of our sport. Our victory won't come in the form of a snide Twitter remark or Facebook confrontation, but in Buenos Aires when a majority of the 101 voting members of the International Olympic Committee, put their pen to paper and make a majority decision to the first sport of man to continue its competition inside its rightful home.
To your questions ...
Q: You really think baseball/softball has a chance? This seems like a two-horse race between wrestling and squash.
-- @GatorsWrestling
Foley: Softball and baseball were eliminated in 2005 by a single vote. That vote should have been in place, but an Olympic voter with ties to the financial side of the sport decided to abstain from the voting rather than show a conflict of interest. Without his decision to sit in the dugout, they'd still be on the field.
Wrestling is up against enormous organizations with sophisticated political actors and deep pocketbooks. To take them lightly, or disregard their ability to capture votes would be the death knell of our bid. Remember that it was baseball/softball that won the second bid, not squash. They certainly are facing a difficult set of obstacles, especially in the insistence by the MLB not to have their players participate, but given enough time, and with momentum, that could change.
Put simply, we might be the top seed at the NCAA tournament, but that in no way guarantees us a national title.
Q: The support people like Mike Novogratz have given to the Olympic Wrestling campaign has been phenomenal. Being a non-billionaire, how can the average wrestling fan help the cause? I have seen various petitions and the EB recommending wrestling as a finalist for the IOC vote in September is a great sign, but is there a centralized vehicle where we can let the IOC hear the collective voice of the wrestling world?
-- NGM
Foley: You don't have a billion dollars? Peasant.
Novogratz, Barth, Bardis and many others have been exceedingly generous in donating their resources to the challenge of reinstating Olympic wrestling. For the rest of us the job is to simply interact with the organizations leading our efforts. For example, on Tuesday I was prompted by a member of FILA's social media outreach campaign into igniting a charge to get the Twitter numbers of FILA past that of squash. The count could have been used as part of the IOC's decision-making process, and with only short time before the vote, the wrestling community responded by almost doubling up squash in adding 10k followers in less than 24 hours. An absolute success that showed how powerful our community can be when focused on a single, well-defined goal.
FILA and CPOW will set many more goals for the community over the next 100 days. From stuffing online ballot boxes to selling T-shirts and books, the guys in charge will let us know when it's time to act. Hell, I will let you know when it's time to act.
Being an active member in these will help lessen the expected backlash discussed in the opening. Mouthpieces like Helwani will lose their ammunition and we can keep our core audience excited, while also branching out into new communities.
Still a little socked you're not a billionaire. Pssh. Didn't you know to invest in Apple?
Q: How much money do you think is needed to start up a Division I program? I know a lot of things need to go into it like the sustainability of the program, academics, and a whole lot of red tape, but do you have an estimate of how much money it would take to relaunch a program at say Syracuse or Notre Dame? A lot of Notre Dame football rivals (UM, MSU, Purdue, Navy, etc.) all have DI wrestling programs and with Notre Dame and Syracuse both joining the ACC, I wonder what the likelihood is of either school bringing back varsity wrestling.
-- Justin W.
Foley: The money isn't the problem. Given the right conditions a program like Syracuse could raise the $6 million to endow a program, but what it needs is a female counterpart to offset the roster numbers of the male team and stay Title IX compliant. This is doable with women's wrestling, or possibly competitive cheer, but so far the NCAA and members of the female athletic administration have deemed women's wrestling too combative for inclusion and women's tumbling too stereotypical. That's a problem.
Wrestling leaders need to win over these administrators when re-launching a program, and to do that they need to think about this as a problem of marketing, rather than just money.
Don't think so? Look at what has gone down at Rutgers over the past two months. Crazy and abusive coach is fired along with a possibly negligent athletic director, who was more-or-less collateral damage. That was a big sting for the Rutgers brand. Instead of thinking of Rutgers as "that Jersey school that did really well in football a few years ago," consumers (and that means potential college students) are now thinking of them as a place to get their butts whipped. To make matters worse when the school finally rehired an athletic director, her past abuse of players became a three-day media story.
That type of misstep could cost Rutgers millions in tuition and donation dollars. As the money goes, the rankings drop, which causes fewer entrants with lower GPA's and test scores.
More than 95 percent of the time you see or hear the name Rutgers it's because of sports, or something related to sports. Their medals for winning poetry contests aren't widely reported. And it's there, in the marketability of all sports, where wrestling can capitalize. We can go into a program and explain to the AD the myriad of positive press his program will receive by adding a men's program and a companion women's team -- the FIRST at the Division I level.
Positive press means more money because students looking to enroll in school want to be associated with the positive.
It's not about our money, it's about our ability to sell wrestling as a positive PR move for schools who can then generate more of their own income. Of course we'll still need big cash to do anything, but with creative leadership and the right combination of timing and marketing wrestling can see an expansion in our opportunities at the Division I level.
Who knows, maybe the Olympic mess makes this the perfect time for a college to act in favor of wrestling? Imagine the press ...
Jordan Burroughs is riding a 54-match win streak (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)-- Jeff N.
Foley: The new rules do make him tougher to beat. However, that doesn't preclude him from simply having a bad day on the mats or getting caught in a tight leg lace. My point was although he's undefeated and on a large winning streak, the more important point is that he's dominant and will win the tournaments that matter for a world ranking.
I'd love to see Burroughs win three straight Olympic gold medals and never lose a match. What's the line on that happening given the current fight for reinstatement?
MULTIMEDIA HALFTIME
I'm announcing the Beta launch of my website WrestlingisEverywhere.com at the site WrestlingisEverywhere.wordpress.com.
What I need from you is your very best wrestling photos, preferably high-definition and that help tell the story of wrestling. I DO NOT WANT or NEED every high-amplitude throw from the past 100 years. I want cowboys wrestling Indians, your grandfather head-locking your son, and a photo of an Grecian bowl with wrestlers engraved on the side. I want tradition and storytelling, something that is instant in its connection and shareable over multimedia.
Please make sure that you OWN these photos, and that you describe the Who, What and When of the submission. Photos submitted to WrestlingisEverywhere@gmail.com will become mine to distribute across social media, and may be put into print. More details will be mailed to those who submit photographs, but those whose work is accepted can expect a very large distribution and credit for the submission.
Categories:
Though you can see all the examples you want on the website, and at my Instagram, @WrestlingisEverywhere, I thought I'd share my favorite of the project and one that matches well with my favorite-ever wrestling quote:
Day 106: Wrestling is Everywhere. Sketching of Vermont Scufflers "Irish Wrestling" in 1880. (Braintree, VT, USA)
"Almost certainly wrestling is the oldest sport of mankind ... It came to town with the Olympiads of Ancient Greece and went back to the country after the decline of Rome -- there to remain, at least in greatest part, for nearly two thousand years.
Preponderantly in and because of the country the sport has lived on in the general manner of pasture bluets, or field daisies, or other more or less global and substantially invincible wildflowers. Time and time again pasture bluets can be and have been burned away by the heavy hoofs or close-grazing herds. Yet with mystic stubbornness and effectiveness the pasture bluets somehow rise and bloom again.
Wrestling is like that. It thrives, meets apparent destruction or widespread abandonment only to rise again, taking resurrection from a good and folkish earth. This has come to pass in many nations and it keeps happening in our own."
-- Charles Morrow Wilson, The Magnificent Scufflers, 1959
Q: By all accounts, the new freestyle rules are a positive change and a step in the right direction. Freestylers were able to adapt to the changes in a matter of hours and make the LA event entertaining for spectators. Participants University Nationals & FILA Cadet Nationals were putting up HUGE points. But what is preventing the NCAA from taking note of this success, and making drastic changes to simplify college wrestling? Some recognize the need for rule changes and are creating a tournament with new rules called Tour ACW. I personally feel that we need rule changes that cater to non-wrestling junkies. If you look around at a college dual meet, you will not see members of a school's student body. The extremely well-attended Penn State, Iowa, Oklahoma State, and the like matches garner such tremendous attendance because they have storied programs with great alumni networks and tradition. Which preventive measures do you feel we should be taking to ensure that we preserve NCAA wrestling before it gets placed on the chopping block?
-- Jordan L.
Foley: American collegiate wrestling is the traditional form of the sport developed over generations from a combination of Irish collar-and-elbow wrestling and catch-as-catch-can. These traditions tell a story and it's meaningful. Over the course of the last 80 years every rule change, every outfit improvement, every legendary program happened for a reason. Following that path and investigating the influences helps Americans understand the values of the past. They act as a living and breathing history of our nation and culture as much as they do the sport that we both love.
American collegiate wrestling has never been healthier, and though excitement wanes, I will never accept the idea of abandoning it in the hopes of winning more Olympic medals. We are doing just fine on the international stage.
For more on the power of traditional wrestling be sure to check out the work of my non-profit, WrestlingRoots.org.
Good luck with Tour ACW!
Q: As a follow up to your recent mention of the Indian wrestling league, is this an opportunity for graduating American college wrestlers to have a professional sports outlet (other than MMA) after graduation? If so, would participation in this league affect their amateur status?
-- NGM
Foley: Absolutely, and if anyone is interested I can put them in touch with the organizers.
I'm waiting for someone to understand that I'm 100 percent serious about the idea of a takedown-only wrestling league. There are a million ways this thing could fail, but another million on how this could be the world's most popular new sporting event. Here are five ideas about how this would work. If anyone is interested in helping me finance this and learning more, I'm at the ready.
There are 100 more ideas, but I can't focus on creating this league at the moment. However, if interested, please feel free to shoot me an email.
Q: I am curious why international wrestling has not followed the model of all other adult sports. If we look at basketball, football, and baseball, the length of the contests increases as the age of the contestants increases. For example, college basketball is a forty-minute game and the NBA is a forty-eight minute game. Why then is the current match length for international wrestling a minute less than NCAA matches? I think the international matches should be at least eight minutes long thereby truly testing the conditioning of the adult athletes.
-- Ken S.
Foley: I like your thinking. College is longer than high school, but when it comes to international their rules aren't based off American traditional wrestling and therefore there is no substantial correlation.
Q: I know you continually push for the expansion of women's wrestling. I am a supporter as well. Can you explain what steps need to occur to expand this side of wrestling? Also, what can we do to convince states, like high school powerhouse Pennsylvania, to add women's wrestling as a high school sport? How do we grow it?
-- Beau E.
Foley: The online forums are filled with people willing to help, and then nameless others that never want to see a female wrestle. Promotion starts at the grassroots level. We need coaches willing to start women's wrestling programs and recruit the girls to come out and compete. We also need for the larger wrestling community to understand that our gender imbalance is what got us axed from 1972-2013, and yet we've been slow to see that correcting the imbalance will help save male opportunities.
Finally, if your kid loses to a girl, so freaking what?! Not wrestling them just shows that you're incapable of understanding they have the right to act how ever they want, when ever they want. No amount of patronizing is going to get them off the mat. Wrestle, and if you win, great. If you lose, shake her hand and go train harder.
Women benefit from wrestling, and wrestling needs women to survive. That simple.
Maybe the takedown-only league will help change minds?!
Q: I saw James Green wrestle at 66 kilos (145.5 pounds) this past week. Is wrestling 149 pounds something he might pursue next season?
-- Reed K.
Foley: Something needs to happen to accommodate for Destin McCauley. If James Green going to 149 allows a shuffle to occur that gets McCauley in, then I'm sure Nebraska will attempt it. Let's see where the rest of the fellas shake out in the early season tournaments.
Q: Your point on fight shorts and rash guards replacing the singlet is interesting. How would you propose implementing this idea? Does the NCAA have to be first? FILA?
-- NGM
Foley: On the international level it would start with FILA Cadets and then progress to FILA Juniors. After 3-5 years we could start seeing it at the senior level. Or FILA could just mandate it happen at the start of the 2014 season on January 1.
As for the United States, it's a no-brainer. Youth league coaches I've spoken to are already starting to eliminate it. We are standing at an obvious choice, and only our nostalgia is standing in the way. Wrestling will increase in popularity and profitability the MOMENT we allow for fight shorts and rash guards.
The singlet is dead.
RANT OF THE WEEK!
Q: Why is Greco still an Olympic Sport? I love the new freestyle rules, so much scoring. No forced par terre, but if you can't stop from being turned, the match is over quickly. Greco on the other had I think is incapable of being fixed. It is so hard to understand, the scoring is still non-existent, and worst of all it is boring. But most importantly against Greco is we are fighting for our Olympic life as a sport. Arguing for Greco and freestyle, having a mismatch of weights between men and woman is just stupid at this point. I love wrestling. I wish sambo and beach and every type of wrestling was in the Olympics, but the IOC is challenging the existence of our sport, why can't we put away our pride and find one style we all enjoy? One style, equal amount of weights woman and men, and let's go. That's it. Greco can still have their World Championships and people can compete in it, just not in the Olympics. Would a Greco guy rather have wrestling dropped completely or learn how to adapt his style to freestyle. Sam Hazewinkel made the transition. It is not impossible. I saw plenty of great throws this weekend too. Tyrell Fortune could be a great Greco guy.
Why don't we adapt the new freestyle rules to the NCAA rules? I understand waiting a year or two to see if the success is maintained. But it is so much better. The pushout is great as it keeps the guys wrestling the whole time, but with the takedown being worth two they are trying to finish most of the time. Then with no escape point the takedown is worth so much more. The shot clock needs some small adjustments, but as the refs get more used to the rules I think it will work itself out. The quicker techs are great too. Guys can't hang around anymore and steal matches. I don't know, maybe I got too excited with this weekend but I bet this will be the best World Team Trials in a long time. Slowly start a grassroots movement to change NCAA wrestling rules.
Let's go.
-- Rob H.
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