Gable Steveson with the NWCA's Mike Moyer at the 2022 NCAA Championships (photo courtesy of Sam Janicki; SJanickiPhoto.com)Last week, ESPN hosted an awards show announcing all the awards for football and it got me thinking. As I sat down on Saturday afternoon, watching previews for the Army-Navy game today and the Heisman Trophy ceremony, I started to think about wrestling. Why doesn't wrestling tweak its model to better resemble this?
College football is obviously a different animal on the national landscape, but wrestling could make some shifts logistically regarding their awards that I believe would help the sport in certain ways. It could get writers, SIDs, podcasters, and fans to talk more about them and have them more engaged in following the process.
First, let's establish what the current awards are.
From the NCAA last year.
"The inaugural NCAA Wrestling Awards were presented at the 2012 wrestling championships. The three awards, given in each division, honor the Most Dominant Wrestler as well as the student-athletes that have accumulated the most falls and the most technical falls throughout the course of the regular and postseasons."
Not mentioned, but wrestling also has the Hodge Trophy and the Gorrarian Awards, with the Hodge being the most prominent and most talked about and the Gorrarian being for most falls in the least amount of time at the NCAA tournament.
Here are five things I would propose to improve the award system in college wrestling and get it to be a bigger and more talked about subject in the sport.
1) Don't change anything with the Hodge
The Hodge is already a great award. It's named for a legend in the sport, nearly everyone in wrestling knows what it's about, and it has a tremendous brand name. The Hodge is perfect. Keep it just like it is.
2) Add names to the other awards
I don't think wrestling needs to model everything after football or any other sport. It's just two very different worlds. But why not have the awards for the most falls or tech falls associated with someone. I don't know who holds the collegiate record for falls in a season, but why not name it after that guy? Same with tech falls. Why not call the National Coaches of the year the Gallagher or Gable award? Nearly all the college football awards have an individual tied to them. Why not get some legendary wrestling names tied to the wrestling award system?
3) Come up with a few new awards
In football, they have a lot of position-specific awards. Ex. The Rimington award goes to the best center, the Biletnikoff goes to the best wide receiver, etc… You can't directly copy that in wrestling because it's a 1-on-1 sport but there are some angles you could take from it.
Why not have three lower-tier awards under the Hodge that group weight classes? The best wrestler in the country from 125-141 gets an award called the "John Smith", the best from 149-174 gets the "Jordan Burroughs", best 184-HWT gets the "Cael Sanderson". Again, I think the Hodge is perfect. Don't mess with it, but this is one angle to add some.
The other angle to add a "position" award could be the best wrestler by the various positions in a wrestling. Award for best offensive wrestler from their feet, an award for the best counter wrestler from their feet, best scrambler, best from bottom, best from top. Those could all be associated with great wrestlers from those various positions.
4) Get wrestling media involved
Determining some of these hypothetical awards would be a difficult task. Some of it is numbers, some of it is competition, and some of it is perception. The solution? Do exactly what they do in football and have the media decide with a vote. Use the NWMA or a similar entity that as a baseline along with others to vote to determine the awards. You could even have a fan vote as a piece of it.
5) Get sponsorships
As annoying as some of the excessive sponsorships in sports can be, I actually think wrestling should do a lot more ideas like this to monetize itself as other sports have. Ex. The "Ed Gallagher Coach of the Year Award Presented by Intermat". InterMat wins by getting their name associated with an award, and their sponsorship pays for the trophy for the athlete.
There are more pieces to this but as a rough outline, this feels like an opportunity for the sport. I'm not a huge fan of some of the situations in wrestling that dilute some of the prestige of awards in wrestling as we've seen with the excess of tournaments at the youth levels calling all of their athletes "All-Americans". But these somewhat indiscriminate awards that stir debate in sports get fans talking, they get media talking, and they get schools and administrators talking when their athletes and coaches win the awards. And that's something wrestling always needs more of.
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