NCAA DI TOURNEY - WHY??

I love sports and been to many sporting events. One of my all-time favorite events to ever attend is the NCAA Division I National Wrestling Championships. But why have wrestling's greatest spectacle on the opening weekend of March Madness? Not only are young kids still wrestling all over the nation still, but you are competing for viewers, etc. on one of our countries most watched sporting events. This is dumb and bad for our sport. I know some will reply and just bad mouth basketball and that's fine, but if you are really into promoting our sport, the decision to have our sports' "Super Bowl" this weekend is ridiculous.

I agree. I would bet the best way to start a fight is to go into a sports bar and attempt to get the staff to tune one set to wrestling.

Agreed Coach Beims, very good point!

Surely this has been discussed numerous times within NCAA, makes me wonder what the reasons are for it not being changed.

If it would were to move one weekend up, it would conflict with conf b-ball tourneys. If it moved up two weekends, would it conflict with lot of HS state tourneys. Maybe this is the least of the evils as it is only the first round b-ball games. The next few weekends, the b-ball tourney games only become more and more watched as they mean more.

I think the whole season should be pushed later. If I were the czar of wrestling I'd start the college season later in November or even after Thanksgiving and have DI Nationals in April when everything has calmed down. Don't get it, never have, probably never will.

I like the odds in that fight though given the crowd

My son and I sat at Dave and Busters for 3 1/2 hours. Watched three b ball games AND I got em to change a tv to the best sport in the world. I kinda got tired of explaining the rules to everyone though!

Missouri's USA Wrestling did their districts, regional a week before Kansas. They skip this week (intentionally because of DI nationals) and their Kids State is the same weekend as ours now. Or the kids season starts and ends earlier. NCAA DI anything is a Big Beast/Monster and they will not schedule around youth events. Finishing the youth season earlier could allow hosts of the NAIA, Junior College, NCAA II, and NCAA III Wrestling Nationals to also draw potentially larger crowds at their sites. It would be tough any way you try to move kids and high school events around - the kids and HS wrestling events are the backbone/foundation of colleges.

I know if my son was not wrestling districts on Saturday and my daughter was not wrestling girls state on Sunday. We would be in OKC right now.

Josh Parker

USA WRESTLING MO does district & regionals takes the NCAA Wrestling weekend off (next year St. Louis). They might start a little earlier but not really and finish.folkstyle the same weekend. No SATELLITE weigh-ins for their State series tournaments.

Wish KS kids could follow their idea MO plan.

It has been proposed several times by some coaches to move the season start time back a month, and move Nationals back a month. No support from NCAA for some reason, and a lack of support from enough coaches to force the issue.

I first saw this topic on the high school forum and I posted an article from Cael Sanderson in 2008 on this subject and some other changes he would like to see in college wrestling. Here is specifically what he said on this:


#1- We need to change the season of college wrestling. Right now our conference and NCAA tournament compete with arguably the biggest sporting event of the year--March Madness Basketball. Actually, I wouldn't say we compete--we share the left over scraps. My suggestion is to start the season Jan. 1 and have the NCAA tourney in April. Maybe allow open tournaments in December. Right now our season covers all three of our school's student breaks--Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Spring Break. That is tough on the student-athletes academically. This isn't a new idea, it's been floating around for awhile but I believe it would be great for the sport.