9.9

[jackwebster]

Is the 9.9 scholarship limit meaningless now? 

[ionel]

10 minutes ago, jackwebster said:

Is the 9.9 scholarship limit meaningless now? 

Yes

[Wrestleknownothing]

13 minutes ago, jackwebster said:

Is the 9.9 scholarship limit meaningless now? 

Possibly. The proposed settlement replaces scholarship limits with roster limits. The sttlement is not final. It needs to be appoved by the courts. It can still get altered in that process.

[jackwebster]

41 minutes ago, ionel said:

Yes

If so, and ...

1. You are not among the handful schools that actually turn a profit off sports via football.

2. You have any purpose other than providing diversion for folks living in a cultural wasteland.

I would completely divorse the institution from sports and stop the academic charade. That seems to be the model everywhere else in the world. 

[ionel]

1 minute ago, jackwebster said:

If so, and ...

1. You are not among the handful schools that actually turn a profit off sports via football.

2. You have any purpose other than providing diversion for folks living in a cultural wasteland.

I would completely divorse the institution from sports and stop the academic charade. That seems to be the model everywhere else in the world. 

Of course we have been over 9.9 (for some programs) for quite some time.  Even before Cael we had some programs "bending" the rules, of course Cael took it to another level.

Let's say school H has already handed out 8.9 so 1.0 remaining.  They find a good kid X offer full ride, kid accepts.  Now coach B from school H finds another kid Y just as good.  B calls up X says hey we are going to cut your offer back to 0.5 but will make it up with "other" money when you get here.  B then calls up Y offers 0.5 and says will get you extra in "other" money when you get here.   Now how many times can you do that and thus whats the real scholarship limit.  We had parity before this stuff but then NCAA wouldn't enforce.

A new roster limit could help but only if NCAA will enforce.  

[Elevator]

20 hours ago, ionel said:

Of course we have been over 9.9 (for some programs) for quite some time.  Even before Cael we had some programs "bending" the rules, of course Cael took it to another level.

Let's say school H has already handed out 8.9 so 1.0 remaining.  They find a good kid X offer full ride, kid accepts.  Now coach B from school H finds another kid Y just as good.  B calls up X says hey we are going to cut your offer back to 0.5 but will make it up with "other" money when you get here.  B then calls up Y offers 0.5 and says will get you extra in "other" money when you get here.   Now how many times can you do that and thus whats the real scholarship limit.  We had parity before this stuff but then NCAA wouldn't enforce.

A new roster limit could help but only if NCAA will enforce.  

Not sure I see the parity you see.   What we had was wrestlers not getting paid! 

[ionel]

1 hour ago, Elevator said:

Not sure I see the parity you see.   What we had was wrestlers not getting paid! 

Nobody was getting "paid."  We had parity in that a half a dozen different teams could win it, talent was dispersed, nobody was likely to win it two years in a row. 

[fishbane]

37 minutes ago, ionel said:

Nobody was getting "paid."  We had parity in that a half a dozen different teams could win it, talent was dispersed, nobody was likely to win it two years in a row. 

That level of parity has never really existed in wrestling.   In past 36 years only 5 teams have won team titles.  One of those 5, Ohio State, won only a single title.  The championship team failed to repeat only 4 times (OSU 1994, Minnesota 2007, Ohio State 2015, and Iowa 2021) during that period. It could have been even fewer if not for probation for things that are no longer against the rules (OSU), eligibility loss due to transfer which is no longer a thing (2007), and COVID (2021).

Whilst a certain level of parity is both necessary and desirable, parity can also produce less compelling storylines. The year with perhaps the most parity, when the traditional power house programs were down, was 2015.  The title was up for grabs with traditional powers PSU, OSU, and Minnesota outside the top 5 and Edinboro was as much a title contender as Iowa.  It was cool, but was it as compelling as 2018 when two all time great teams battled it out for the title?

[CHROMEBIRD]

18 minutes ago, fishbane said:

That level of parity has never really existed in wrestling.   In past 36 years only 5 teams have won team titles.  One of those 5, Ohio State, won only a single title.  The championship team failed to repeat only 4 times (OSU 1994, Minnesota 2007, Ohio State 2015, and Iowa 2021) during that period. It could have been even fewer if not for probation for things that are no longer against the rules (OSU), eligibility loss due to transfer which is no longer a thing (2007), and COVID (2021).

Dang. I've been a frog in boiling water about this. There have only been 7 D1 team champions over the last 50 years, and it's not even close outside of Iowa and PSU: Okie State won 7, Minny 3, ISU 2, ASU & tOSU 1 apiece. I guess we focus so much on individual titles that there's an illusion of parity that isn't really there.

[poke1]

On 5/27/2024 at 1:46 PM, CHROMEBIRD said:

Dang. I've been a frog in boiling water about this. There have only been 7 D1 team champions over the last 50 years, and it's not even close outside of Iowa and PSU: Okie State won 7, Minny 3, ISU 2, ASU & tOSU 1 apiece. I guess we focus so much on individual titles that there's an illusion of parity that isn't really there.

7 Teams sound about par for College D1 wrestling.  There has only been 15 D1 College Football National Championship teams in 30 years. And thats with a lot more D1 schools having football than wrestling programs. Here are the last 30 years of D1 Football N. Champs.

Georgia, Alabama, LSU, Clemson, Ohio St., Florida St., Auburn, Florida, Texas, USC, Miami, OU, Tenn, Michigan and Nebraska.

[CHROMEBIRD]

44 minutes ago, poke1 said:

7 Teams sound about par for College D1 wrestling.  There has only been 15 D1 College Football National Championship teams in 30 years. And thats with a lot more D1 schools having football than wrestling programs. Here are the last 30 years of D1 Football N. Champs.

Georgia, Alabama, LSU, Clemson, Ohio St., Florida St., Auburn, Florida, Texas, USC, Miami, OU, Tenn, Michigan and Nebraska.

Probably similar optics in football where maybe all the bowl games make it feel like there's more parity than there really is.

[fishbane]

On 5/27/2024 at 2:46 PM, CHROMEBIRD said:

Dang. I've been a frog in boiling water about this. There have only been 7 D1 team champions over the last 50 years, and it's not even close outside of Iowa and PSU: Okie State won 7, Minny 3, ISU 2, ASU & tOSU 1 apiece. I guess we focus so much on individual titles that there's an illusion of parity that isn't really there.

A team outside the Big Ten has not won in nearly 20 years (OSU 2006).  A single title has been won by teams outside of the Big Ten and Big 12 since 1950.

[fishbane]

1 hour ago, poke1 said:

7 Teams sound about par for College D1 wrestling.  There has only been 15 D1 College Football National Championship teams in 30 years. And thats with a lot more D1 schools having football than wrestling programs. Here are the last 30 years of D1 Football N. Champs.

Georgia, Alabama, LSU, Clemson, Ohio St., Florida St., Auburn, Florida, Texas, USC, Miami, OU, Tenn, Michigan and Nebraska.

7 different team champs was over 50 years not 30.  Over the past 30 years only 5 teams have won team titles in wrestling. There are not 3x as many FBS football programs as there are D1 wrestling programs.

If you go back 50 years in FBS football I think it is 22 different champs vs 7 in wrestling over the same period.

Edited May 28 by fishbane

[NM1965]

On 5/28/2024 at 10:05 PM, CHROMEBIRD said:

Probably similar optics in football where maybe all the bowl games make it feel like there's more parity than there really is.

Geez. The bowl system. I have never seen such a reward for mediocrity in my life. I may be giving away my age a bit with this comment, but I remember when there were only about a dozen bowl games. If your team made it to a bowl they had to have a pretty good record. You'd see the occasional bowl team with 4 losses, but it was very rare to see one with 5 losses. Most of the games were pretty competitive. Now we have 43 bowl games. FORTY THREE. That means that 86 teams out of 128 make it to a bowl. That's ridiculous. It seems like half the games are between teams with 6-5 records, or worse. The kids love it, of course, because they get gifts from the bowl sponsors (and sometimes they are super cool), but I absolutely hate mediocre football. 

Shit, that was a bit of a rant, wasn't it? 

[ionel]

3 minutes ago, NM1965 said:

 That means that 86 teams out of 128 make it to a bowl. That's ridiculous.

Well it seems quite often we get 9 qualifiers out of the B10 make it in wrestling, 9 out of 10 crazy.  If not in the top half of your conference then why? 

[Wrestleknownothing]

12 minutes ago, NM1965 said:

Geez. The bowl system. I have never seen such a reward for mediocrity in my life. I may be giving away my age a bit with this comment, but I remember when there were only about a dozen bowl games. If your team made it to a bowl they had to have a pretty good record. You'd see the occasional bowl team with 4 losses, but it was very rare to see one with 5 losses. Most of the games were pretty competitive. Now we have 43 bowl games. FORTY THREE. That means that 86 teams out of 128 make it to a bowl. That's ridiculous. It seems like half the games are between teams with 6-5 records, or worse. The kids love it, of course, because they get gifts from the bowl sponsors (and sometimes they are super cool), but I absolutely hate mediocre football. 

Shit, that was a bit of a rant, wasn't it? 

A guy with 1965 in his username is worried about giving away his age?

[NM1965]

1 minute ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

A guy with 1965 in his username is worried about giving away his age?

I just assumed you guys thought that was my weight. 

[NM1965]

7 minutes ago, ionel said:

Well it seems quite often we get 9 qualifiers out of the B10 make it in wrestling, 9 out of 10 crazy.  If not in the top half of your conference then why? 

Exactly. But I've learned it doesn't do any good to argue about that in this forum. 

[MPhillips]

2 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

A guy with 1965 in his username is worried about giving away his age?

But he's also talking about remembering twelve bowl games. He's way overshot his number of bowl games compared to that 1965 year he's throwing around. Maybe that's his Dad's birth year...

[Camel Wrestling Fan]

5 hours ago, ionel said:

Well it seems quite often we get 9 qualifiers out of the B10 make it in wrestling, 9 out of 10 crazy.  If not in the top half of your conference then why? 

14 B1G teams have wrestling and they usually have 10 or more make the NCAA tourney. We could borrow from football and declare .500 or better conference record to qualify for the NCAA tourney. Would it get the best 33 wrestlers? No. But it may be best for the sport. We want more viewership and that may be a way. You would have more teams and their fans interested in watching. We all know a dual team championship would be smash hit, but that is not allowed by the traditionalist. So maybe a .500 conference minimum to qualify for a wildcard will help. Sure we can stay with what we have and MAYBE our dwindling viewership numbers will miraculously change course. Maybe. I think we are still ahead of the "watching paint dry" viewership.

[ionel]

3 hours ago, MPhillips said:

But he's also talking about remembering twelve bowl games. He's way overshot his number of bowl games compared to that 1965 year he's throwing around. Maybe that's his Dad's birth year...

Pretty sure thats when he graduated high school in New Mexico, Mosquero?   

[fishbane]

9 minutes ago, Camel Wrestling Fan said:

14 B1G teams have wrestling and they usually have 10 or more make the NCAA tourney. We could borrow from football and declare .500 or better conference record to qualify for the NCAA tourney. Would it get the best 33 wrestlers? No. But it may be best for the sport.  We want more viewership and that may be a way. You would have more teams and their fans interested in watching.

The Big Ten is far and away the dominant conference in NCAA.  It's been nearly 20 years since a team from another conference has won NCAAs.  I think the changes to the qualifier system has only helped the richer conferences and the changes agreed in the settlement (removal of scholarship limits and ability to pay players) will only make it worse.  Adding some inefficiency back into the system could help parity.

The problem with using a 0.500 conference record is that you'd expect half the wrestlers to get into the tournament.  This would be more than 33 wrestlers per weight.  I think it would be interesting is if wrestlers had to qualify for the conference tournament based on their conference dual results.  It would make the regular season duals more meaningful and reduce dodging, but it would take away from the team aspect of the conference tournament.

Adding inefficiencies is one way to help parity.  In profession sports this is often done with reverse draft order, a salary cap/luxury tax/financial fair play rules, roster limits, and revenue sharing.  Most of these would be unworkable at the NCAA level. A draft is impossible.  You can't send an athlete to a college he doesn't want to goo to because that school is bad at the sport he wants to play.  A salary cap is essentially meaningless since NIL collective spending can't be effectively regulated.  Roster limits are possibly but adding them at the same time as removing scholarship limits only will be a net negative for parity since the richer teams can add award more than 9.9 scholarship per year.

Perhaps the only thing that can really be done to help parity would be to take a page out of the Olympic handbook.  Limit the number of qualifiers. The fact that the US and Russia only get one entry at the Olympics and world championship has resulted with wrestlers going elsewhere and raising the level of other teams.  

Issue the 33 qualifiers to conferences based on the number of teams in the conference.  There are 77 schools with D1 wrestling teams.  The Big Ten only has 14 of those or 18%, so they only get 18% of the qualifiers.  That would be 60 or 6 per weight, which is 1 fewer than expected by the 0.500 record criteria.  Parity should be improved, since wrestlers will go to less rich conferences to get a spot at NCAAs.

11 minutes ago, Camel Wrestling Fan said:

We all know a dual team championship would be smash hit, but that is not allowed by the traditionalist. 

I'm very much in favor of a dual team championship, but I think it won't be as successful financially as the individual tournament.  One thing that makes NCAAs a money maker is that it sells out. You have fan interest from 60 teams or so in the event.  Fans know where it is ahead of time and are pretty much assured their team will be involved to some degree.

With a dual meet title it would be more challenging to sell out.  If this is a neutral site it would be extremely difficult.  If it's hosted in Tulsa, OK are 16,000 people going to show up and watch PSU wrestle Iowa?  This would presumably be the result of some bracket, so maybe a week before PSU and Iowa fans would learn their teams would be involved.  Would that many fans make travel plans on a week's notice like that?  The FBS bowl schedule has the conference championships 4 weeks before the major bowls. I doubt that would happen in wrestling.