Tom Ryan says NCAA Wrestling needs Dual Meet Championships
Ohio State wrestling head coach Tom Ryan is emphatic about college wrestling creating a dual meet championship.
Right now, the NCAA only sanctions an individual championship, held over three days to determine national champions and All-Americans at each of the 10 weight classes. Based on the team scoring at the tournament, that’s how you determine the team national champion.
But the sport needs more according to Ryan.
“So I think that wrestling is the greatest sport on Earth,” Ryan told On3. “And I think that we need a plan which we don’t really have, in my opinion, we don’t have a plan. The focus of the season should be about what team wins their dual meet conference championship. That weekend should be the same for every conference. We have a build up. There should be an RPI for teams. And if you win your conference, you get an automatic bid into the National Dual Meet Championship.
“There are also wildcards. If you’re in the Big Ten and you’re ranked fourth in the country, but your third in your conference, you may get a wildcard into the National Dual Meet Championship. So there’s no question we need to dual the championship.”
For Tom Ryan’s exclusive conversation with On3, click HERE.
Something like this, to elevate the team aspect of wrestling, would put the sport in a great spot.
“I think if we had that, I think that maybe a sport wouldn’t be where it is,” Ryan said. “We’re very superstar focused. And we can prove this, we can show through numbers that the all-star meet is a tough sell. It hasn’t grown. It doesn’t have this overwhelming sense of people dying to come and see it because it’s not team oriented.”
At this point, college wrestling is hyper focused on just getting to the final three days of the season in March, the individual NCAA Wrestling Championships.
“I mean, the dual meet got me into the sport,” Ryan said. “The dual meet is about the guy that’s not the superstar, who’s really good and saves a team to win because he doesn’t get pinned. I mean, that’s the dual meet … We also have no buildup. There’s no buildup. The national tournament is three days. The world is watching it, it happens and then it ends and we go back into the ground until the following year, the next national championships.”
Heck, wrestling can take from pop culture, according to Ryan.
“I used a silly example of like a goofy show like The Bachelor, you know where some of these shows that have this wild following it because week to week, it’s like ‘who is she going to dump, who she’s gonna go on a date with,’” Ryan said, “So it has people talking about it. You have no time to talk on a Friday night, (with) the semis and Saturday’s (the finals and it’s) over and it’s like, you need some gossip. you need some opportunity to see. Oh man, these matchups are gonna be sick next week.
“Wow, this team’s wrestling this team? if this team loses, it’s going to knock them out of the top 16? Which means they won’t get into the Dual Meet Championship? There’s none of that … We just need a storyline, and you can’t have a storyline with the way we’re doing it.”