Where college wrestling stands amid conference realignment

College athletics realignment took center stage this week, mostly due to football and of course a little bit of basketball. But where does college wrestling fit into the equation?

Football drives the bus a majority of the time, then you throw in some basketball into the equation. Heck, the Big 12 is going to be bonkers when it comes to basketball season, such as Kansas and Arizona playing every year.

But college wrestling, one of the premier, if not the top, olympic sport in the Big Ten might grow or might stay the same.

It remains to be seen if the four new Big Ten schools: USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington will add programs in 2024 or later.

In fact, Oregon and Washington had programs in the past. Oregon was known for an MMA superstar named Chael Sonnen this century while Washington had a man named Larry Owings, the only wrestler to defeat Iowa’s Dan Gable back at the 1970 NCAA Wrestling Championships. 

Washington cut its program in 1980 while Oregon did away with the grapplers back in 2007.

As it stands, the Big Ten’s 14 current institutions have wrestling programs and are the dominant conference in the sport. Will there be a bigger west coast presence? Will the Big Ten welcome in four new teams to increase options for California and Pacific Northwest wrestlers?

Well that all depends on funding and Title IX. Money is likely no object though.

Pac-12 wrestling in doubt?

What the expansion does though is decimate the Pac-12. The conference was limited to Arizona State, Cal Poly, CSU Bakersfield, Little Rock (Ark.), Oregon State and Stanford. ASU is off to the Big 12, more on that in a moment.

The Pac-12 could absorb or just merge with the Mountain West as speculated, maybe even just from a wrestling perspective as InterMat’s Seth Duckworth pointed out.

Stanford and Cal were potential options after Oregon and Washington for the Big Ten. Stanford is an obvious fit due to its academic and athletic standards. The Cardinal only recently saved its wrestling program thanks to national champion Shane Griffith, who’s spending his final graduate year at Michigan, ironically in the Big Ten.

It feels as if the Big Ten’s resources could trickle down to really bring West Coast wrestling to the forefront, but that requires a lot of startup programs or resurrected programs. Still a lot of hoops to jump through from an Olympic sport perspective.

Don’t even get us started on the travel and the scheduling.

Future of Big 12 Wrestling

The Big 12 is where it gets interesting. For one, Oklahoma is expected to still wrestle in the conference, despite the Sooners’ and Texas’ move to the SEC next year.

Storied program Oklahoma State is fine keeping its in-state rival and will surely love facing a high quality Arizona State team regularly, as well as at the Big 12 Tournament. Air Force, Cal Baptist, Iowa State, Missouri (despite being in the SEC), North Dakota State, Northern Colorado, South Dakota State, Northern Iowa, West Virginia, Utah Valley and Wyoming all reside here.

Travel is not as big of an issue in the future Big 12. Plus, all of these schools have wrestling programs as it stands. The way we see it, the Big 12 only got better adding the Sun Devils. We just don’t expect Arizona and Utah to suddenly add D1 programs in the near future.

Ideal scenario moving forward

Regardless of what the remainder of the Pac-12 does with its programs, merge with the Mountain West or see Stanford and Cal move to the Big Ten, the Big Ten has an opportunity. 

What stinks is Oregon State has a rising program under Chris Pendleton, but the Beavers aren’t Big Ten bound.

To increase the west coast presence, ultimately helping the sport nationwide, the four new Big Ten schools would be wise to add D1 programs and not just house NCWA club programs that are primarily student run and funded.

The Big Ten’s wrestling prowess is the most attended and most talked about throughout the country. College wrestling shouldn’t be reduced to just one conference that is now 18, maybe even 20, schools. But since it goes coast to coast, it’s a good place to start increasing interest.

We’ll choose to look on the brighter side of things in the future of college wrestling.