Posted By: Cokeley
Reinvent Olympic Wrestling - 04/30/13 01:05 PM
Since our board voted to give $3,000 to the USA Wrestling group assigned to "save Olympic wrestling" I have been considerable thought to this topic. I did not support this donation as this group does NOT have a plan. I feel our $3000 will basically buy appetizers and drinks for their first meeting. Although I respect what each of these men have accomplished in their lives, I do not think they can succeed without some outside of wrestling help. BIG HELP. The IOC hates FILA and it may be time to blow up that organization if we want wrestling to be resurrected in the Olympics.
Let us get to the core of the problem... WRESTLING is not a popular spectator sport and is NOT fan friendly. Why is this? The NCAA D1 Folkstyle nationals are on prime time tv now but only a few highlights from the Olympics make it to our living rooms. WHY? There are (roughly) 275,000 HS wrestlers and nearly 3,000 D1 wrestlers but MAYBE only 200 true Olympic hopefuls. 275,000 wrestlers, parents, families, coaches, and fans understand, at least at a basic level, the rules and scoring of a Folkstyle match. Although there is judgement involved, FS/GR have become nearly 100% subjective. Let me describe a match to you, pretend you have only watched folkstyle before:
Saturday afternoon you stumble onto the World Team Trials on ESPN 2. You liked wrestling in HS so it catches your attention. You see some action and the official on the mat raises two fingers for red. You are thinking 2-0 red. But wait, they show one gentleman sitting at a table flash a paddle scoring 2 for blue and another gentleman flashed his paddle 3 for red. The action stops and the officials convene at one of the tables and begin to argue. Then additional officials arrive to watch the match on a video replay. It has been five minutes since any wrestling has taken place when finally the official returns to the center to award 2 blue and then two red. They finish the period with the score 2-2 and the wrestlers go to their corners. When they return to the center the score is 0-0. How did that happen? They wrestled for two minutes and no one scored. The official gets a little black bag from one of the officials at the table. Another smaller bag is pulled out and inside of it was a blue ball. What does this have to do with wrestling? Is someone in a blue chair going to win a door prize?!? The red wrestler presents the leg the blue wrestler pointed at. The official talks and points suddenly the blue wrestler grabs the red wrestler's leg and grabs the blue wrestler and they go to the mat. No one has control but somehow the blue wrestler is given 1 point. The wrestlers go to their corner. At this point I have NO CLUE what is going on but they return for a third period. I am thinking this is the dumbest wrestling I have ever seen but I am curious and I want to see someone's hand raised even if I have NO IDEA what is going on. They wrestle on their feet, pushing, shoving, but no shots. Finally the red wrestler shoots and drives blue to the edge of the mat and out of the circle. Red gets 1 point. I don't know why because he didn't take him down? They return to the center where red dances and runs until time expires. They raise his hand. He won? I guess he did but it didn't look like wrestling to me... Ok, back to soccer, at least I know what is going on there.
What is crazy about that story is that is it COMMON! In fact, it is very possible for one wrestler to score more points than the other in the three periods but still lose. Three ego, I mean three man mechanics, the clinch, the push out, no stalling (passivity), the "ball grab", all of these recently installed rules are NOT SIMPLE to understand and are not fan friendly to the average U.S. wrestling fan. UFC and MMA are huge and very popular now because there is NO CONFUSION who is winning those bouts. We have to reinvent international wrestling and get away from subjectivity. Do NOT involve officials in developing the rules for this new objective sport. Guess what, if the officials are the only ones that understand the scoring NO ONE will want to watch.
A failure to plan is a plan to fail. That is where we are on saving Olympic wrestling. Instead of saving it I think it needs to be reinvented.
Let us get to the core of the problem... WRESTLING is not a popular spectator sport and is NOT fan friendly. Why is this? The NCAA D1 Folkstyle nationals are on prime time tv now but only a few highlights from the Olympics make it to our living rooms. WHY? There are (roughly) 275,000 HS wrestlers and nearly 3,000 D1 wrestlers but MAYBE only 200 true Olympic hopefuls. 275,000 wrestlers, parents, families, coaches, and fans understand, at least at a basic level, the rules and scoring of a Folkstyle match. Although there is judgement involved, FS/GR have become nearly 100% subjective. Let me describe a match to you, pretend you have only watched folkstyle before:
Saturday afternoon you stumble onto the World Team Trials on ESPN 2. You liked wrestling in HS so it catches your attention. You see some action and the official on the mat raises two fingers for red. You are thinking 2-0 red. But wait, they show one gentleman sitting at a table flash a paddle scoring 2 for blue and another gentleman flashed his paddle 3 for red. The action stops and the officials convene at one of the tables and begin to argue. Then additional officials arrive to watch the match on a video replay. It has been five minutes since any wrestling has taken place when finally the official returns to the center to award 2 blue and then two red. They finish the period with the score 2-2 and the wrestlers go to their corners. When they return to the center the score is 0-0. How did that happen? They wrestled for two minutes and no one scored. The official gets a little black bag from one of the officials at the table. Another smaller bag is pulled out and inside of it was a blue ball. What does this have to do with wrestling? Is someone in a blue chair going to win a door prize?!? The red wrestler presents the leg the blue wrestler pointed at. The official talks and points suddenly the blue wrestler grabs the red wrestler's leg and grabs the blue wrestler and they go to the mat. No one has control but somehow the blue wrestler is given 1 point. The wrestlers go to their corner. At this point I have NO CLUE what is going on but they return for a third period. I am thinking this is the dumbest wrestling I have ever seen but I am curious and I want to see someone's hand raised even if I have NO IDEA what is going on. They wrestle on their feet, pushing, shoving, but no shots. Finally the red wrestler shoots and drives blue to the edge of the mat and out of the circle. Red gets 1 point. I don't know why because he didn't take him down? They return to the center where red dances and runs until time expires. They raise his hand. He won? I guess he did but it didn't look like wrestling to me... Ok, back to soccer, at least I know what is going on there.
What is crazy about that story is that is it COMMON! In fact, it is very possible for one wrestler to score more points than the other in the three periods but still lose. Three ego, I mean three man mechanics, the clinch, the push out, no stalling (passivity), the "ball grab", all of these recently installed rules are NOT SIMPLE to understand and are not fan friendly to the average U.S. wrestling fan. UFC and MMA are huge and very popular now because there is NO CONFUSION who is winning those bouts. We have to reinvent international wrestling and get away from subjectivity. Do NOT involve officials in developing the rules for this new objective sport. Guess what, if the officials are the only ones that understand the scoring NO ONE will want to watch.
A failure to plan is a plan to fail. That is where we are on saving Olympic wrestling. Instead of saving it I think it needs to be reinvented.