Why NCAA Wrestling needs a Dual Meet Championship
NCAA Wrestling needs a dual meet championship to add to a great sport and to bring to the forefront of winter. So what’s the hold up?
So here I am, breaking the fourth wall. Why are coaches hesitant? Or is it the NCAA? For an individual sport to institute a team aspect and not do anything with that team aspect is … interesting to say the least.
Is it too much to add to the schedule? Maybe it is in the end, but it doesn’t hurt to try. Go back and look at the NWCA’s attempt to have matches right before the postseason that were basically wrestling’s versions of bowl games.
Were they good? Yeah those duals were good, but who truly remembers them? Some fans do, but there was nothing on the line other than bragging rights.
Do wrestling fans want that same March Madness feeling? They get it for the individual tournament and it’s great.
But what about the team itself?
Top NCAA Wrestling coaches want an NCAA Dual Meet Championship
This is not to take anything away from those “three days in March.” That is one of the best atmospheres in collegiate athletics.
Rutgers head coach Scott Goodale, who speaks and tweets about this idea at length, told me in depth last summer about why the sport needs this. He might be the biggest proponent of an NCAA Wrestling Dual Meet Championship. At least the most vocal.
“I can’t believe in 2023, we still don’t have a legit dual meet championship,” Goodale told On3 last summer. “It just makes no sense to me. And obviously, I’m a huge dual meet guy, but it keeps everybody involved … A regular fan can relate to a good high school dual meet. They probably watched it when they were in high school. They probably watched it as a parent just going to the local high school gym, a really good dual meet, there’s nothing like it.
“I can’t believe at this stage in the game we don’t have that. When you should have it, you know, that’s for discussion. There’s been talking about doing it after the individual national tournament No way. This thing should be done, I believe, in the beginning of February and you can run it in two weeks at two different sites.”
Wisconsin head coach Chris Bono echoed those comments as well. Again, this is not about changing the individual tournament.
Perhaps the only thing is to change or eliminate the team scoring at the national tournament and leave it to the individuals. Or heck, have a dual meet champion and a tournament champion. There are rankings for both according to most outlets anyway.
“You know, first off our NCAA championship right now, I don’t think we need to touch it,” Bono told On3. “It’s the best thing we’ve got going for us, the individual NCAA championship in March. But, I’m a guy that likes change. I like that. If there was an NCAA dual meet championship, I would want to be in it. Even if it’s not sanctioned, I’d like to be in those dual meets. The dual meet matters. We’ve got to figure out how to make it matter a little bit more.”
Ohio State head coach Tom Ryan is in that group too. When you have some of the biggest names in the sport, that could spark change.
“I think if we had that, I think that maybe the 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 told me in the summer. “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.”
What do wrestling media members think?
Intermat’s Earl Smith knows viewership is down across the board. Sure, networks like the Big Ten Network saw viewership rise for particular dual meets.
But these numbers aren’t consistent and the NCAA Wrestling Tournament is falling each season, despite sell out crowds regardless of location. Take a page from a different sport maybe?
“Yeah I’ve been concerned seeing those numbers trending down and then seeing, and I’m not trying to knock them, but volleyball had created great numbers,” Smith said. “I don’t follow volleyball at all but you know, I can tell from social media it seems like it’s gotten a bigger following, bigger exposure … The numbers for the NCAA (wrestling) tournament, that was kind of always just rising. So, but the Big 10 network, they seem to, I haven’t crunched the numbers, but it feels like they have more live events year by year wrestling wise so yeah, I would see that that’s a way that we need to go and something we need to expand more.
“You said these big brand names … The athletic departments tend to support themselves where you know, if the wrestling team would be in a national semifinal again, it’s easier for the volleyball team to follow along. You know, and watch that more so than getting, I don’t know, onto eight screens on ESPN to follow them.”
ESPN and ACC Network’s Rock Harrison said it’s more of want rather than a need right now. But he did mention if wrestling wants to enhance itself as a collegiate sport, a dual meet championship is the way to go.
“Do we need it? I don’t know. Do we want it? Yes, we absolutely want it to happen,” Harrison said. “The need is going to be driven by the wrestlers as well as the fan base. And I think it’s gonna be challenging for us to change the dynamics of saying we’ve been individual for so long, now we’re just going to stop? It’s going to be very hard to win that but I will tell you from a media standpoint, it’’l be only so much easier to follow.
“It’s a concise, time, concise period. We know what’s going on. We can elaborate on strategies that are going on within the match. It is so much better to follow and then you can follow the tournament, this team, where they go, through quarters, semis, so forth and so on. So I say do we need it? If we are trying to enhance the sport and everybody wants to talk about growing the sport, that’s the catchphrase, let’s grow to sport. Then yes, it makes perfect sense.”
So where is the NCAA Wrestling Dual Meet Championship?
One thing that could give some coaches pause is crowning the national champion. While individuals do the work for themselves in March, they score points for the team. In the end, the individual tournament goes through its math and crowns the top four, well now apparently three, teams in the country.
Penn State’s been the dominant force under Cael Sanderson.
The only time the Nittany Lions didn’t claim a title was in 2010 (his first season), 2015 (finishing 6th to champion Ohio State), 2020 (a canceled tournament) and 2021 (2nd place to Iowa).
So basically, it’s been the boys in blue winning a wrestling national championship every year sans three tournaments, over the last decade-plus.
Would that change in a true team format? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s worth exploring. You can count on the best individuals to advance in their brackets.
But when more match strategy comes into play in duals, you’re only as strong as your weakest link. Hence, team sports. Why do you think basketball’s March Madness is so great?
Let’s just break it down into simplistic terms: NCAA wrestling is more than just those three glorious days in March.