Eliminate Seeding to 33: An Easy Step to Improving College Wrestling

Over the weekend, as the Southern Scuffle occurred, I went back and forth with some of the guys in one of my wrestling-related chats. As tends to happen during wrestling season, the topic turned to the current landscape of the sport. 11 years ago, the Scuffle featured the eventual top-three teams at the NCAA Championships and had two of the eventual NCAA finals bouts - in their championship matches. Suffice it to say, that won’t be the case in 2025. The topic then moved to match counts, avoiding good matchups, and the college wrestling product, as a whole. 

As grievances were aired, solutions were also thrown around to improve the product. A national dual tournament, a ranking series tournament, and assigning point values for wins were among those mentioned. I think each of those potential ideas is valid, but I’m not sure any of them would actually be implemented. 

What I do think is a viable solution to limit “ducking” and strategic load management is to re-evaluate the number of wrestlers that we seed at the NCAA Championships. 

The 2019 NCAA Tournament was the first one in which the NCAA seeded all 33 wrestlers in each bracket. From 2014-19, the NCAA seeded the top 16 wrestlers in a bracket. Before 2014, the number was 12. 

How does this help the product in the regular season? Excellent question, I thought you’d never ask!

With the NCAA seeding all 33 wrestlers, it encourages more of the gaming, ducking, and strategic resting that has been all too common in the sport at the collegiate level. 

Like every other sport, as time progresses we’ve been able to have more information and more ways to interpret data. In 2025, I think college wrestling coaches are as knowledgeable as they’ve ever been about the NCAA allocation process, at-large berths, and seeding. 

Coaches are aware that if your wrestler banks a couple of solid wins early in the season, they don’t have to risk it against better opponents and can maintain a particular ranking. 

Since the NCAA seeds all 33 wrestlers, this approach has been used for wrestlers all up and down the rankings. Instead of worrying about maintaining a #1 seed or avoiding the #1, they are also thinking about protecting a #20 ranking. 

If you only seed to 12 or 16, there would be less reason for a wrestler who is ranked #20 to protect that particular ranking. They are trying to break into that 12/16 threshold, not maintain what they have. 

And on the other half of the rankings, the wrestler who is right over that threshold isn’t safe. A huge upset from the #17 ranked wrestler could push him past that #16 wrestler. Do you want to just sit back and try to maintain that #12/#16 ranking, when it could lead to you going unseeded and drawing the #1 seed in the first round at NCAA’s? 

With fewer seeds, the seeds themselves become more of a valued commodity. 

In recent years, we’ve seen medically forfeiting out of a tournament become a frequent option. In response, the NCAA has hit those wrestlers hard in the seeding process. Last season, at the Big Ten Championships, Carter Starocci immediately injury defaulted in his first match and then forfeited. That sent him from being a sure-fire #1 seed to the #9. Not every wrestler is Starocci, so if you do something similar as the #7 ranked wrestler in the country, you may be looking at going into nationals without a seed!

In addition to limiting the seeds, perhaps a match minimum to earn a seed. Maybe 15 matches? That’s three or four at the conference tournament, plus three per month over a four-month regular season. That seems reasonable. Maybe more? 

Now is the time for the usual disclaimer. We understand that college wrestling is more grueling than any other sport. The season is long and injuries are almost inevitable. No one wants injured wrestlers to go out and perform like it’s the old gladiator days. 

The reason for this article is because I (and many others who love this sport) are concerned about the future of college wrestling. And college athletics in general. As entire athletic departments face official and unofficial audits, do we really want to tell administrators that none of it matters until March? We want new faces to embrace the sport, but when they come to a dual, they may not see the stars advertised on the social media graphics all week. 

As with a lot of things around the world, COVID changed a lot in college wrestling. With the abridged 2021 season, coaches saw that their wrestlers would perform fine even if they didn’t get 30 matches before the postseason. Even when we were in a more normal 2021-22 season, it seemed like they chose to scale the number of competitions back for their wrestlers. This has continued and increased as the years have progressed.  There has to be a happy medium of not running wrestlers into the ground and getting them to events so that the regular season isn't just a dress rehearsal for March. 

The NCAA Tournament is the best entertainment in sports (in my biased opinion). We don’t need to change that, but we can have other events that are “must-see” for the fanbase. For a long time, the Scuffle and Midlands were two of those events. Everyone knows the stories of the old Midlands with Olympians wrestling NCAA champions. 

As someone who monitors social media on a constant basis, I can tell when the fanbase is “all-in” on a particular event. It happens at the NCAA Championships, the World Championships, and the Olympics. The Scuffle used to be that event because it was on dates (January 1st and 2nd) when virtually nothing else was going on (in the wrestling world) and it had top, top teams. The Midlands was similar too. You could hang out on Twitter and everyone you followed was talking about the same matches. That didn’t happen this year (or maybe the past few years) as the fanbase wasn’t as locked into those events. 

A normal Friday with a handful of duals is great, but attention is spread amongst maybe 10 different matches. These were events that had everyone. 

Of course, this isn’t to disparage anyone competing at those two tournaments. Heck, Stanford and Army West Point, actually went and took virtually all of their normal starters. It’s not their fault that others chose not to go or bring more wrestlers. 

I don’t know whether cutting down on seeded wrestlers at NCAA’s is the answer to putting more juice into college wrestling. Honestly, it will also take a mentality shift, as well. At the same time, it’s a very easy fix that would bring positive reverberations to the wrestling community and the action on the mat. 

Maybe it isn’t the answer, but we need to look for answers. College sports are evolving before our own eyes and at a breakneck pace. I don’t want our sport to be left out in the cold. If I’ve learned anything from the last three years of conference alignment, it is that you have to be proactive. Those that aren’t get left in the dust and are scrambling for lifelines.