Future of college wrestling

[FanOfPurdueWrestling]

Everyone is telling me that football is eventually going to break off from the NCAA. How would that affect our sport? What would the college sport landscape look like if that were the case? 
 

Will every sport besides football and basketball downgrade to club and form their own collegiate leagues?

[Rassling]

6 hours ago, FanOfPurdueWrestling said:

Everyone is telling me that football is eventually going to break off from the NCAA. How would that affect our sport? What would the college sport landscape look like if that were the case? 
 

Will every sport besides football and basketball downgrade to club and form their own collegiate leagues?

I'd like to hear what others here have to say about the potential impact on our sport.

[npope]

Sports fans are generally all about the won-lost column, and this especially describes wrestling and its fans, where after a handful of minutes of competition a winner - and a loser - is declared. The success and/or failure of an athlete is very black-and-white in our sport. With the arrival of NIL and the ability of a mere handful of teams to compete for the raw talent in that market, the pools of premiere talent will congregate in a very few schools (we already are seeing it). This concentration of talent will lead to a competitive imbalance, i.e., the strong teams will increase the distance between themselves and the weaker teams (whose numbers will far out-number the teams with money and talent) will fall away and fan-interest will wither and dissipate. In time, you will literally only have a handful of powerful, sustainable teams who will only have each other to compete against - a small cluster of maybe five to ten teams who nobody else other than their own respective fan-bases care about. There won't be enough teams against which to compete in order to have a "season." I can't think of any other sports model where this is sustainable. This concentration of money and talent will surely kill our sport as part of the collegiate experience; it will be lucky to continue even as a club sport because it is such a grueling experience for the wrestlers themselves. The club version used by the rest of the world may be the only sustainable version, but that is a significantly foreign model for Americans to swallow as much of our sporting system has been integrally tied to our educational system.

Sadly, I think we are in the midst of the end of our folk style sport as we have known it for the past century.

[FanOfPurdueWrestling]

4 hours ago, npope said:

Sports fans are generally all about the won-lost column, and this especially describes wrestling and its fans, where after a handful of minutes of competition a winner - and a loser - is declared. The success and/or failure of an athlete is very black-and-white in our sport. With the arrival of NIL and the ability of a mere handful of teams to compete for the raw talent in that market, the pools of premiere talent will congregate in a very few schools (we already are seeing it). This concentration of talent will lead to a competitive imbalance, i.e., the strong teams will increase the distance between themselves and the weaker teams (whose numbers will far out-number the teams with money and talent) will fall away and fan-interest will wither and dissipate. In time, you will literally only have a handful of powerful, sustainable teams who will only have each other to compete against - a small cluster of maybe five to ten teams who nobody else other than their own respective fan-bases care about. There won't be enough teams against which to compete in order to have a "season." I can't think of any other sports model where this is sustainable. This concentration of money and talent will surely kill our sport as part of the collegiate experience; it will be lucky to continue even as a club sport because it is such a grueling experience for the wrestlers themselves. The club version used by the rest of the world may be the only sustainable version, but that is a significantly foreign model for Americans to swallow as much of our sporting system has been integrally tied to our educational system.

Sadly, I think we are in the midst of the end of our folk style sport as we have known it for the past century.

I feel this may be a bit dramatic, I can can this eventually leading to the end of the NCAA but this affects 30+ sports that are sponsored across various schools and each will need a backup plan if football no longer subsidizes them and the NCAA no longer exists.

 

This is about the powers that be squeezing every penny out of college football and no considering anything or anybody else.

 

 

[1032004]

Same tweet discussed here

Unfortunately, I’d guess @billyhoyle is mostly right.  At minimum, this likely will not be not good for any team that doesn’t join the SEC or Big 10, although more probably will.