Takedown Report

NCAA Division I, II, III: Dynasties, defined

How would you define a dynasty in college wrestling? In terms of sports, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a dynasty as “a sports franchise which has a prolonged run of successful seasons.” Wikipedia offers this definition of a sports dynasty: “In sports, a dynasty is a team or individual that dominates their sport or league for an extended length of time … This can result in a frequent topic of debate among sports fans due to lack of the consensus and agreement in the many different variables and criteria that fans may use to define a sports dynasty.”

Why bring up the issue of college wrestling dynasties now? In the first month of 2019, I came across two articles that addressed the topic of dynasties in college wrestling. The first — written before the 2019 College Football Playoff National Championship — declared the football program at University of Alabama as a leading sports dynasty … and included the Iowa Hawkeye wrestling program under coach Dan Gable among the handful of other collegiate dynasties. More recently, NCAA.com had a feature article listing NCAA Division II wrestling dynasties, based on the number of NCAA championship team titles. Seeing how other writers took on the topic of dynasties in college wrestling in a limited way, it seemed like a good time to offer an expanded view of some of the elements which might be considered in determining which college mat programs might be worthy of dynasty status. For starters, it made sense to me to expand the presentation beyond NCAA Division II to also incorporate possible mat dynasties in NCAA Division I and Division III. And, while we’re at it, why not go beyond the number of team titles won at Nationals to include tallies of individual champs and NCAA All-Americans for each college program which has earned a minimum of five national titles. Rest of the story at http://intermatwrestle.com/articles/21307?mc_cid=9dd679a0fb&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

February 5, 2019 - Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized