After 70-plus countries over four years and more than half a million miles in the air, I'm still always eager to come home, share stories and keep my eyes on the next big story.
No matter what I've seen there are moments, usually once a year, where I have a mild awakening to the power and reach of our sport. Cuba was this year's moment. The Cuban culture, the wrestlers I met and the matters they discussed opened my eyes to how our sport connects to people and how much further we can take it.
From Cuban National Team training sessions to a 12-hour day with the family of Mijain Lopez, our team's experience in Cuba was unique, informative and potentially can have an impact on how we all see the sport in the future. The projects will roll out over the next several months (sorry to tease), but know that we left with thousands of photos, hours of original video and reams of notes. I look forward to sharing those with wrestling fans here, at United World Wrestling and in future long form projects.
As always, thanks for reading.
To your questions …
Action at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)Q: What's the deal with international wrestling mats? They look like a plastic tarp. Why are these used instead of the mats used in the United States? What type of cushioning is underneath? How is the covering kept in place? Are they harder to shoot on? Are they mandatory for international competition?
-- Rob G.
Foley: Yes, the mats are mandatory for international competitions.
The mats are actually really nice! The tarp and padding system allows for much easier transportation than the large Resilite mats you're used to seeing in American folkstyle wrestling. Those mats only work here because they are shipped in big trucks and stored at schools with plenty of extra room. Imagine trying to fly that into Romania? But the interlocking mat system with tarp can be boxed up and shipped anywhere in the world and stored with relative ease.
Overall the cushion and the surface in general are not much different than Resilite.
Q: Building off your opening in your last mailbag, what do we do to attract in-season wrestlers? The club guys aren't about to quit putting in more time and effort than the casual guys. If they have goals and aspirations, they know that the clubs will help them to attain them.
Also, it's not just kids, but coaches too. How do you get the great club coaches to coach a high school or middle school team? When they coach a club, they have a room full of dedicated kids; they don't have to deal with novices. They get less grief from parents and school boards. They basically have less of the responsibilities and can make just as much or more money doing it, especially if they don't have to rent a facility.
-- Anton K.
Foley: The American model for sporting success is directly tied to academics. Whether the wrestler must compete on the high school team to get noticed for college, or needs time in college to make themselves noticeable to national freestyle coaches, 99 percent of wrestlers must pass through academic institutions during their career.
What if there was a system in place at the college level which limited the amount of wrestling a high school athlete could compete in during the calendar year? Essentially a match cap (not unlike 16 scheduled dates in the NCAA season) could be instituted, which would ensure that no wrestler was getting more than X number of matches per style.
Additionally, non-wrestling events which have skills to help wrestlers develop could supplement athletic time. American Ninja Warrior-type races could replace Disney Duals. That's more active for more wrestlers, less head-to-head contact, less cutting weight and ... wait for it ... more fun. The wrestlers could increase their athleticism and potential while not burning out.
Money is great. I get that parents invest a ton of income into the children's future on the mat, but if we could limit the amount that they can spend, or MUST spend to get noticed, then it might be possible to create a more productive atmosphere for wrestlers to enter the sport, and STAY in the sport.
Q: RTC's and their impact on collegiate and international landscape. See a double-edged sword. Thoughts?
-- @adamtirapelle
Foley: I wrote about this a little bit in a previous mailbag, but discussed more about the dynasty effect rather than just the RTC. Overall, I think most college coaches see there is a disparity in equality of opportunity when some schools can afford and RTC and others can't. One top college coach told me that he had to adjust their expectations the past few years due to the powerhouse building that has been going on at places like Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan.
These schools are not to blame. The system is having a positive effect on the freestyle program and the quality of wrestling across America. I do think that there should be much more relaxed rules on allowing non-college athletes to come into the room and practice with the team. If coaches around the country saw the rule relaxed they could benefit on alumni knowledge and local talent to help build their program rather than the funding and international expertise of megawatt wrestlers and coaches. Of those, there are only a few and most have been gobbled up.
Joey McKenna wrestling at the Pac-12 Championships (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)Q: There are rumors of Joey McKenna transferring out of Stanford. Are you surprised? If he does transfer out, where do you think he ends up?
-- Mike C.
Foley: I hadn't heard that rumor and would only be speculating on where he ends up. The only place he might go is back to the Lehigh Valley where he could be coached by Jeff Buxton, but I'm suspect that he would give up the Stanford degree for what he thought was better coaching.
I guess we will see.
MULTIMEDIA HALFTIME
Jeff Marsh's role as "The Wresting Coach" is informative, entertaining and is taking our sport in the right direction!
Link: Facebook Page
The Road to Paris: Wrestling Action from May's Wrestling Month
Q: I know we are still a few months out from the World Championships in Paris, but do you have an early prediction on a potential meeting between Abdulrashid Sadulaev and Kyle Snyder?
-- Mike C.
Foley: I'm not 100 percent certain we will see Sadualev at the World Championships. However, if we do I think Snyder wins by at least four points. Conditioning always suffers when wrestlers change weight classes. It will take another year at 97 kilograms for Sadulaev's body to properly cope with the additional muscle. For now he'll be burning lactic acid quicker and suffering through muscle failure earlier than ever before. Add in that this is a 25-pound weight increase and the strength advantage he enjoyed at 86 kilograms becomes nullified.
I also think Snyder is just the better all-around wrestler.
Q: With Joe Russell leaving George Mason, I saw that assistant coach Mark Weader was named interim head coach. Will George Mason do a national search for a head coach? Or will Weader have his interim tag removed? Who do you see as a nice fit for a program like George Mason?
-- Mike C.
Foley: I imagine that Mark Weader would once again take over the program. He knows the challenges better than anyone else and is able to navigate the community to optimize results. A national search probably wouldn't turn up any of the bigger names since Mason faces funding issues.
Q: What about going back to allowing NAIA, D3, & D2 kids back into the March Matness? This would bring in more fans to the tournament and with programs recruiting better now than in the years past, it would create some great excitement.
-- Nick M.
Foley: I love the idea of these champions competing against the NCAA Division I champions, but think that the NCAA has, as an institution, moved past allowing these types of formats.
Hey, you could always host your own tournament and invite all the champs to compete!
Q: We hear and see about all of these enrollment-based schools adding wrestling and they are enjoying a nice addition to the enrollment numbers. Why hasn't an HBC school added wrestling? There are several of the HBCs that once had wrestling and were quite competitive as well.
-- Nick M.
Foley: The Historic Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) did have programs as recently as 20 years ago, but many were decimated by Title IX since their enrollments are largely female. There was simply no way to balance out a 65/35 enrollments advantage for women while also sponsoring football and basketball, which many of the schools chose to retain. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be a matter of building interest, but of increasing male enrollment at the individual HBCUs.
Q: Thoughts on Virginia hiring both Paulson twins?
-- Mike C.
Foley: Can't argue with that! Wahoowa!!
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
I read your comment about dynasties being good for college wrestling and I respectfully have a very different take. Dynasties are only a good thing when they aren't constant. The Yankees might be good for baseball but the reason why is that even the Yankees don't win it all every year. Other teams still have a reasonable chance at glory.
Gable's dynasty at Iowa was interesting for a time because it was a change in the status quo. Winning nine in a row had never been done before. But once Iowa wrestling became the status quo it ceased to be news to the public at large. Just because it is easy for (lazy) journalists to follow which team is the best at college wrestling, it doesn't logically follow that it results in wider mainstream acceptance of the sport. The number of D1 programs has been shrinking for decades for various reasons and there is no evidence I'm aware of that having serial dynasties among a tiny group of schools has mitigated this trend or increased the popularity of the sport overall.
Your assertion that a dynasty emerging challenges programs to cough up more money and resources to compete is belied by decades of evidence that it doesn't affect the outcome of the team race, at least for the title. The NCAA wrestling championships have been held 88 times and just five programs have won 79 of those national titles. Where is the "competition at the AD level" if the outcome almost never changes? To use the example you brought up, Iowa State hasn't won a NCAA wrestling team title since 1987. If it were simply a matter of support by the AD one would think they would have won more than a single team title in the last 40 years.
Programs are pumping substantial money into amazing wrestling facilities and other parts of their programs these days but to date it has had no discernible effect on which team takes home the tallest trophy in March. It's still the same few teams at the top of the heap. A rational sports business minded AD could be excused for looking at this state of affairs and wondering why they should bother worrying about wrestling if supplying extra resources never results in titles.
The NCAA tournament is a great event but the team title is almost always a foregone conclusion. This is a structural issue with the sport, not a lack of competitive spirit or big disparity in tangible resources. The tiny number of teams winning team titles happens because the rules of the sport are organized in such a way that such an outcome is near inevitable. I don't see any objective evidence that lack of parity is good for the sport of wrestling.
As always I enjoy the column and keep up the good work.
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