There’s a path that could lead to a Division I national dual championship event as soon as 2025 without disrupting the current framework of the college season or altering the NCAA Championships.
Now it appears to be up to the D1 coaches to see if they can agree on whether it’s worth trying.
In April, the NCAA’s Division I Competition Oversight Committee approved a two-year pilot program that will allow men’s and women’s tennis to stage its individual championships in the fall of 2024 and 2025 while continuing to hold its team championships in the spring. The tennis news caught the attention of prominent wrestling leaders who see the NCAA’s pilot legislative process as an avenue to add a dual championship tournament on a multi-year trial basis.
“Our sport needs it,” Missouri coach Brian Smith said. “I think it will kick life into our sport.”
Dual meet proponents have been lobbying for a true national team championship event for more than a decade, and some, like Smith, had given up hope that it could happen in the near future. But there’s a renewed sense of momentum and optimism fueled by the NCAA pilot program, which could allow college wrestling to add a National Wrestling Coaches Association-sponsored dual championship event during a multi-week window following the NCAA Championships.
“I’m excited that they would try it on an interim basis just to see where things are without just making the shift,” Northern Iowa coach Doug Schwab said. “We’ve talked about it for how many years?”
There appeared to be some traction behind the dual push in 2012. College coaches gathered that summer in Chicago to discuss a series of proposals, including one that would’ve crowned the NCAA team champion in a dual format rather than the current individual tournament scoring system. Another proposal would’ve implemented a hybrid scoring model that enabled teams to accrue points through dual competition that would carry into the NCAA Championships.
Though there was support — National Wrestling Coaches Association executive director Mike Moyer said one concept fell one vote short of a two-thirds majority — there was also apprehension about taking a step that might diminish the sport’s crown jewel event.
At the time, the three-day national tournament was trending upward in popularity. Total attendance for the six-session NCAA Championships topped 100,000 for the first time in 2011 when the tournament drew 104,260 fans in Philadelphia. The tournament’s growth led to increased exposure and higher ratings on television.
In addition to the concerns about stemming the tide of the NCAA Championships, there were also obstacles with trying to shoehorn a dual tournament into the current confines of the college wrestling calendar.
“If I reflect back on where some of the pain points were, some of our coaches really don't want to mess with the traditional season and how it works,” Moyer said. “They have their schedules and have their home dual meets and count on the revenue from their home dual meets and they have their training cycles and how they work leading up to the NCAA Championships.
“If you really don't want to mess with any of that, then it makes sense to try to do something after the individual national championships. It would be the least disruptive and if you do it as a pilot just like tennis is doing, you try it for three or four years and see what happens. If it works, you keep doing it. If it doesn't, you try something else.”
'There Are Some Things We Need To Make Sure Are Lined Up'
One of college wrestling’s oddities is that dual meets occupy the majority of the real estate on the season calendar, yet those team outcomes are largely irrelevant once the postseason begins each March. In fact, three of the sport’s prominent conferences don’t even recognize a dual meet champion or list league dual standings on their websites.
It stands to reason that the regular-season stakes would be raised and the spotlight on duals would shine brighter if they counted toward qualifying and positioning for a national dual championship.
“I don’t know all the logistics to it, but I’m all for crowning a dual team,” North Carolina State coach Pat Popolizio said. “I think that’s extremely important to growing a fan base for a program. I watched it firsthand here in Raleigh. People jumped on the bandwagon to support our team because of the duals and it was much easier for new wrestling fans to follow our sport.
“You go to any intense dual — it doesn’t matter which teams are wrestling — if you have two top-10 teams that are competitive, it’s one of the greatest sporting atmospheres you can be in.”
For more than two decades, the NWCA’s National Duals served as the sport’s de facto dual championship. The event brought top teams together midway through the season for a two-day tournament on college campuses. The National Duals moved around the country before finding a home at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls, Iowa, where single-session crowds of upwards of 10,000 showed up to watch squads from every college division compete under the same roof.
But as time went on, it became increasingly difficult to get an annual commitment from each of the sport’s superpower programs, and that version of the event dissolved after 2011. Over the next six years, the NWCA tried to replicate the D1 dual championship with various concepts elsewhere, but there were too many scheduling obstacles to build something sustainable.
“For us, there’s been a lot of discussion about the merits of a National Duals for a long time,” Moyer said. “Even though a lot of people support the idea, their concept of what it should look like is different.”
The challenge Moyer and company face now is finding enough common ground amongst the Division I coaches to push forward on a pilot basis. The most important matter might be gaining the support from enough high-powered programs to get the event off the ground.
“If you have the right teams committed, it’s a great event,” Purdue coach Tony Ersland said. “I’m definitely a supporter. More things have to be right for that event, though, to work. You have to have the right people involved to create the environment and event you want that’s going to have mass appeal. So while I do agree that duals need to be a stronger part of what we do, I also think you’ve got to have the right people sign off to do this in the future. If we want to move forward, there are some things we need to make sure are lined up before we go forward.”
Many of the details still need to be ironed out, such as the tournament structure, qualification process, location and timing.
“You need a balance between a viable business model,” Moyer said, “and something that works for the coaches.”
'What Give Us The Best Chance To Package Our Sport?'
College wrestling is perhaps more open to change than ever before. In June, the NCAA’s playing rules oversight panel passed 13 proposals recommended by the wrestling rules committee, ushering in arguably the most transformative rule-change period in the history of the sport. The rule changes came on the heels of a continued decline in attendance at the NCAA Championships and a slide in television ratings for the finals.
In March, the six-session attendance total dipped to 95,295, the lowest figure for the tournament in nine years, with the exception of 2021 when attendance was capped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The empty seats in Tulsa were a red flag for some coaches and so, too, was a 28-percent year-over-year drop in TV viewership for the NCAA finals.
“We had a little bit of a drop in attendance and a drop in how many people were watching, and that scares me,” Smith said. “If we don’t make a change like other sports are doing, it may be too late. You don’t want to get to that point.”
While the tournament trends are concerning, the regular-season numbers are stronger than ever. The top 10 box office draws in college wrestling averaged 5,702 fans per meet last season. That’s a 17-percent increase from 2022 and a 62-percent jump from what the top 10 in attendance drew in 2013.
In January, Iowa wrestled at Penn State in a dual that smashed a Big Ten Network record with 388,000 viewers — roughly 66,000 fewer than the NCAA finals drew in March on ESPN.
“Everything’s based on TV now, and what gives us the best chance to package our sport?” Schwab said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt it’s duals. Everyone’s so concerned it’s going to change and it’s going to hurt the crown jewel of our sport. Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything they could do that’s going to hurt that tournament, personally.”
Said Popolizio: “I just think for where we’re at as a college sport, there’s a lot of revenue that we possibly could be leaving off the table and to become mainstream with certain TV networks or streaming networks, I feel there are a lot more resources and opportunities to showcase college wrestling. … Showcasing duals, to me, I feel would grow our sport at a much faster pace, which we kind of need right now.”
It’s no longer an either-or proposition.
College wrestling has an opportunity to keep its NCAA Championships and regular season intact while also taking a look under the hood to see how a national dual tournament would perform.
“The NCAA needs revenue-makers and this has the opportunity to be a revenue-maker,” Smith said. “I know they would want to take a look at it.”
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