Two common sense changes for the future

[Bertrand]

While we wait for the BIG championship:

1) Align the 10 NCAA weight classes with the Freestyle weight classes. Why have separate weight classes? This would make training much easier and safer for wrestlers that participate in both.

2) Eliminate the Olympic Red Shirt year. Gable and Kyle Snyder proved that a redshirt year is unnecessary to win Gold. And with the training centers in place a red shirt year seems silly. Let’s get back to having 5 years to use 4 years of eligibility. This also helps coaches manage their scholarships especially with the transfer portal challenges.

 

[Bernard Shakey]

While we wait for the BIG championship:

1) Align the 10 NCAA weight classes with the Freestyle weight classes. Why have separate weight classes? This would make training much easier and safer for wrestlers that participate in both.

2) Eliminate the Olympic Red Shirt year. Gable and Kyle Snyder proved that a redshirt year is unnecessary to win Gold. And with the training centers in place a red shirt year seems silly. Let’s get back to having 5 years to use 4 years of eligibility. This also helps coaches manage their scholarships especially with the transfer portal challenges.

Just playing devils advocate:

1) I could see some push back for it being in Kg. Yeah people who follow freestyle know the conversions pretty easily, but the general wrestling fandom doesn't and is used to weight classes in lbs. If we converted to lbs you'd end up with a 163.14 weight class...which is just weird. Now I don't love this as a 215 pounder in HS, but a common complaint with international weights is there are too many upper weights and not enough lower weights. I can see the point. If you plotted all the wrestlers on a graph I'd imagine the majority are between 130 and 170. Really athletic guys over 200lbs are probably playing football.

2) the oly redshirt goes beyond just wrestling. A not insignificant amount our best Olympic sport athletes are still college students. I don't think you can take it away from just wrestling. Also, doesn't this kind of contradict your first change? You want to completely redo the college weight classes to benefit freestyle, but don't want to allow guys a year off to train freestyle for the Olympics? Also Kyle and Gable I would count as exceptions, not the rules. In normal times 60% of wrestlers would only have 1 Olympic games fall during their time in college, and you have to have some pretty impressive accomplishments to be able to take an Olympic redshirt. If someone meets the criteria for that and thinks a year off to focus on freestyle is beneficial, who are we to say no?

I know it's a weird time with kids being able to stay in school seemingly forever, but hopefully this will all pass by soon and we can return to normalcy. We don't want to make any wholesale changes due to abnormal circumstances. Also, if coaches want kids to stay longer, they've always had ways. Grey shirting is still a thing and it doesn't seem to hard to get a medical waiver if a coach goes into the year with that in mind.

 

[Tryingtodoitright]

While we wait for the BIG championship:

1) Align the 10 NCAA weight classes with the Freestyle weight classes. Why have separate weight classes? This would make training much easier and safer for wrestlers that participate in both.

2) Eliminate the Olympic Red Shirt year. Gable and Kyle Snyder proved that a redshirt year is unnecessary to win Gold. And with the training centers in place a red shirt year seems silly. Let’s get back to having 5 years to use 4 years of eligibility. This also helps coaches manage their scholarships especially with the transfer portal challenges.

“…Let’s get back to having 5 years to use 4 years of eligibility. This also helps coaches manage their scholarships especially with the transfer portal challenges.”
Could not have stated this any better. We’ll put - thank you

 

[SonnyAbeFan]

Just playing devils advocate:

1) I could see some push back for it being in Kg. Yeah people who follow freestyle know the conversions pretty easily, but the general wrestling fandom doesn't and is used to weight classes in lbs. If we converted to lbs you'd end up with a 163.14 weight class...which is just weird. Now I don't love this as a 215 pounder in HS, but a common complaint with international weights is there are too many upper weights and not enough lower weights. I can see the point. If you plotted all the wrestlers on a graph I'd imagine the majority are between 130 and 170. Really athletic guys over 200lbs are probably playing football.

2) the oly redshirt goes beyond just wrestling. A not insignificant amount our best Olympic sport athletes are still college students. I don't think you can take it away from just wrestling. Also, doesn't this kind of contradict your first change? You want to completely redo the college weight classes to benefit freestyle, but don't want to allow guys a year off to train freestyle for the Olympics? Also Kyle and Gable I would count as exceptions, not the rules. In normal times 60% of wrestlers would only have 1 Olympic games fall during their time in college, and you have to have some pretty impressive accomplishments to be able to take an Olympic redshirt. If someone meets the criteria for that and thinks a year off to focus on freestyle is beneficial, who are we to say no?

I know it's a weird time with kids being able to stay in school seemingly forever, but hopefully this will all pass by soon and we can return to normalcy. We don't want to make any wholesale changes due to abnormal circumstances. Also, if coaches want kids to stay longer, they've always had ways. Grey shirting is still a thing and it doesn't seem to hard to get a medical waiver if a coach goes into the year with that in mind.

A well-stated devil’s advocate and good debate…

 

[El_Jefe]

While we wait for the BIG championship:

1) Align the 10 NCAA weight classes with the Freestyle weight classes. Why have separate weight classes? This would make training much easier and safer for wrestlers that participate in both.

2) Eliminate the Olympic Red Shirt year. Gable and Kyle Snyder proved that a redshirt year is unnecessary to win Gold. And with the training centers in place a red shirt year seems silly. Let’s get back to having 5 years to use 4 years of eligibility. This also helps coaches manage their scholarships especially with the transfer portal challenges.

Agreed on 1.

Could not disagree more on 2. Just because those 2 freaks did it ...

The Olympic shirt allows these guys to become better wrestlers. This is what they want, and we should want better wrestlers too.

Besides, Snyder is a great argument FOR the Olympic shirt. He wrestled 3 regular season matches in 2016 -- do we want that to become more prevalent?

 

[Bertrand]

With only 6 weight classes only freaks need to apply for the Olympics! If you do keep that redshirt in place, than set some minimum standard to qualify. Managing scholarships is tough enough without 6 and 7 year athletes roaming the campus. Doesn’t happen in any other NCAA sport.

 

[El_Jefe]

With only 6 weight classes only freaks need to apply for the Olympics! If you do keep that redshirt in place, than set some minimum standard to qualify. Managing scholarships is tough enough without 6 and 7 year athletes roaming the campus. Doesn’t happen in any other NCAA sport.

Perhaps you could look up the qualifications for Olympic Shirts.

 

[Antaeus]

Perhaps you could look up the qualifications for Olympic Shirts.

While you're at it, it would be fascinating to know how many took Olympic shirts per year since that option became available. Also which US wrestlers that competed in Olympics took Olympic shirts to help them get there.

 

[Michnit]

With only 6 weight classes only freaks need to apply for the Olympics! If you do keep that redshirt in place, than set some minimum standard to qualify. Managing scholarships is tough enough without 6 and 7 year athletes roaming the campus. Doesn’t happen in any other NCAA sport.

If 6 & 7 year athlete weren’t able to roam about campus how would Iowa have a chance to win a national title.

 

[Bernard Shakey]

With only 6 weight classes only freaks need to apply for the Olympics! If you do keep that redshirt in place, than set some minimum standard to qualify. Managing scholarships is tough enough without 6 and 7 year athletes roaming the campus. Doesn’t happen in any other NCAA sport.

This isn't because of Olympic red shirts, it's because of the free covid year that didn't count against eligibility. I don't think anyone from Iowa took an olympic red shirt and they're the ones with the most 6th and 7th years.