BLUF: We will have to agree to disagree. Personally I don't think it is as black and white as a right or wrong answer. The fact is that high school and college wrestling in its current format is a mixture of an individual participant sport with a team aspect.

I don't think you can use the Olympics as a comparison. Better comparison's are looking at swim teams, golf teams, track teams, etc. Do coaches move kids around in those different events in order to help the team.....absolutely. No different than wrestling.

I think we have to be really careful promoting this as an individual sport. With the cutbacks we are getting ready to see (or already seeing) in the budgets for schools, we are setting ourselves up for failure. It is very easy to cut sports that are individual sports and do not promote a team aspect or the school. Just my observation.

As far as the Real Pro Wrestling.....you prove my point exactly! Real Pro Wrestling failed because it didn't promote the team aspect. It focused on individuals wrestling at their weights and the programming had the weights wrestling at one showing. I think if they would have used a dual format they would have been more successful. Why??? Because learning about wrestling and all of its intricacies takes time and quite frankly given the level of competition RPW had, it can be boring. Having said that, if it was a dual format then the new fan can understand the scoring easier and they can get excited about their team. Trust me, we still have the poster of the team that Erik Akin was on. We really wanted to see this succeed.

Shawn Budke