Friday With Coach Green (10/30/2026)

In the coming months, you are going to hear a lot of conversations about ducking, dodging and the relative lack of importance placed on the regular season.  Many will be whiny fans, which we need.  Others will have good points.

Is it time to rethink the regular season for NCAA DI wrestling?  Can we make it more important?  Do events like the National Duals and Mid Major Duals help the cause?

What if we did something a little more out of the box?

Here is an article I wrote two years ago on the subject

So, the first inaugural "Mid Major" Duals is in the books and it got me thinking. How do we make this event important? How do we incentivize teams to attend?

In fact- I have the same thoughts about other events. How do we make the regular season matter, period. To me there are two solutions.

1 - Prize money. It is getting more "legalish" to do this. Bowl games pay schools. Why not?

The simple reason is there just isn't as much $$ to go around in our sport and most if it is being spent by wealthy donors with a strong stake in making their pet program better. And that's great. But is there a donor or two out there that could put up $ for winning an event like this? Or the weight classes in Vegas, or Scuffle? 

Perhaps. But let's assume we aren't there yet.

So the other solution is...

2 - Allocate NCAA tourney bids at in season events. Imagine if UNI got a bid at every weight for winning the mid major duals? Changes things, doesn't it? Heck, I'd go a step further and give a bid to the individual champs at Vegas, Midlands and Scuffle too. That's 4 bids out of 33 at each weight that are determined through the year. Get the rest settled at conferences. Sounds crazy?

A - other sports do things like this

B - international wrestling does things like this as well.

I think it is two-fold positive.  

It's good for the fans, as more teams would wrestle their best guys hoping to get "qualification" out of the way early.

It's good for programs and athletes to have the chance to lock in bids.

I'd actually allow each conference dual champ to send their whole team, all 10 weights as well, but that's probably a bit too extreme for the current thought process. But man, it would make duals matter.

Are we ready for something like this? Probably not.  

Do we need to do something different if we want in season events to matter.

We do.