Takedown Report

D1 Coaches Weigh In On NCAA Wrestling Rule Change Proposals

To get a sense of how coaches feel about the proposed rule changes, we reached out to the leaders of more than a dozen Division I programs

The NCAA rules committee proposed a set of changes that could lead to perhaps the most transformative period in college wrestling history. 
With that has come one of the hottest periods of social media debate in the sport. 
Do the rules strike the right balance to inject more excitement and entertainment into the sport? Are the changes too drastic? Did they not go far enough? 
Opinions have landed all over the spectrum. 
To get a sense of how coaches feel, we reached out to the leaders of more than a dozen Division I programs. Below is a sampling of their responses. 

Overall Thoughts 

American coach Jason Borrelli 

“Overall, I’m happy we’re trying — you know, at least we have people in positions who are looking at the sport through the lens of trying to improve it and trying to increase action. I like that. Our sport, we’re hesitant to change a lot, so anytime we try to make changes we’re fought with some resistance. I think it’s good that we’ve got people in positions that can make change that are thinking about the long-term future of the sport. Trying to increase action and make things more exciting is a good thing. I was OK from that perspective. Now do I agree with every rule change or every proposal? No, but I certainly see where it’s coming from, so that’s good.” 

Appalachian State coach JohnMark Bentley 

“I’m not a huge fan of a lot of them, to be honest. I think the new rules obviously favor a better athlete for sure. You take mat wrestling out of the equation, you take a lot of the conditioning factor out of the equation, it’s not going to be advantageous for wrestlers who are less talented. I kind of like conditioning and things like that being a part of it, and with mat wrestling being limited, I don’t know how much conditioning is going to be a factor. I like how folkstyle wrestling makes you be well-rounded in all three positions and I’m not a huge fan of losing that. Personally, if those are the rules — and I’m not against all of them, there’s some things I can live with — I feel if you’re moving in that direction and that’s what you want to see and want to take mat wrestling out of the equation, then I would just be in favor of transitioning completely to freestyle.”

Iowa State coach Kevin Dresser 

“We’re kind of in digestion mode here and it’s all really new and just seeing whether this is going to help our sport. I know the traditional people don’t like it, but sometimes change is good.” 

Little Rock coach Neil Erisman

“I think all of these can be summed up with great intention, we’ll see if it lines out to good actions.” 

Missouri coach Brian Smith

“Are we focused on the ground level, or should we be focused on a 30,000-foot view? The bigger picture is why the decline in viewership and attendance and fans not liking the action or whatever the problem on the mat is? When you go out to 30,000 feet, what have other sports done? The last 3-5 years football, baseball, all these sports have found ways to shorten their events and they’re trying to get closer to a two-hour window. Some are longer than two hours, but the object is to reduce it so fans will stay attentive to the event. Wrestling right now, we wrestle one to two tournaments in the regular season as a team and the rest are all duals, which can be confusing to a fan. The tournaments are what’s going to matter, but duals don’t really have a big purpose in our sport, whereas in college football and basketball the regular season game has a purpose. We’re even seeing the purpose of these tournaments don’t matter now, where it’s getting a minimal amount of matches to compete in the tournaments that come at the end. Could this be the issue of why we’re losing fans? Duals on major broadcasts — ESPN, ACC, Big Ten Network, Flo — we’re seeing great excitement to watch some of these matchups.  … rest of story at Flowrestling.org/D1-coaches-weigh-in-on-ncaa-wrestling-rule-change-proposals

June 8, 2023 - Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized