NCAA Dual Team Championship

[Spencerlee]

Carl hates competing before March, so this will never happen.

[pokemonster]

1 hour ago, Spencerlee said:

Carl hates competing before March, so this will never happen.

This is unfortunately a fact. He is winning under the current formula, so any change means he's going to veto it. 

[VakAttack]

I am pro the side of making the team championship decided by a dual tournament.

[alex1fly]

44 minutes ago, pokemonster said:

This is unfortunately a fact. He is winning under the current formula, so any change means he's going to veto it. 

One person doesn’t/shouldn’t have ultimate authority over it. 

[BruceyB]

41 minutes ago, VakAttack said:

I am pro the side of making the team championship decided by a dual tournament.

They've done the argument a million times on FRL. I always agreed with JD and Ben that a dual format would be more accurate in representing how good a team is than a tournament format. 

Take CSB with Ferrari this year. IF Ferrari were to win, that's a guarantee of 20 points, and he might be their only NQ.

Take a fictional team that takes 10 guys to NCAAs and they all lose in the R12. Without any bonus, this team would score between 15-20 points depending on how the wrestler got there.

Which team is better?

The current tournament system is weighted too heavily in favor of champions and high AAs versus low-AAs and R12 guys. There is no way that a single individual should be able to outscore an entire roster of R12 guys. 

Last year Franek took 8th and scored 5.5 points for Iowa. Vito took first and scored 24 points. 1 champ outscoring 4 AAs just doesn't represent an accurate picture of how good teams are. 

[666]

16 hours ago, alex1fly said:

One person doesn’t/shouldn’t have ultimate authority over it. 

Cael isn't opposing other teams wrestling in a dual championship. He just doesn't care about it enough for PSU to participate. He's not the only one. Why aren't the Brands boys participating? David Taylor? It's just a matter of choice and those guys all see NCAAs as the ultimate goal. I think all of us here would love to see a national dual meet championship where all the best teams show up but the best teams don't want to participate and there's no way to force them to.  

[666]

On 1/16/2024 at 1:59 AM, blueandgold said:

If the NCAA Wrestling Championships were decided in a dual meet format, how would you go about having qualifiers and how would you adjust the individual championships or extend the season?

Obviously the conference dual champs would be the representatives at a national dual meet.  I don't know how many wrestling conferences there are in D1, but there'd be no need to invite the also rans, the just conference champions.  It could be resolved easily in a day. A week later they can do conference tourneys, and a couple weeks after that NCAAs. 

 

Easy peasy. 

 

[Pinnacle]

The issue I have always had with Duals settling who the best team is that it then becomes match up dependent. Look at Nebraska, they couldn't win 4 matches against UNI but theoretically could win 5 vs Penn State. They could get lucky and pin a guy, then stall the other 5 matches and this is how we are going to crown a championship squad? 

[ionel]

2 minutes ago, Pinnacle said:

The issue I have always had with Duals settling who the best team is that it then becomes match up dependent. Look at Nebraska, they couldn't win 4 matches against UNI but theoretically could win 5 vs Penn State. They could get lucky and pin a guy, then stall the other 5 matches and this is how we are going to crown a championship squad? 

But that becomes a coaching and prep issue which is part of what makes National Duals more exciting.  You know who you will likely to face in the qrts beyond and need to be ready.  When we had the National Duals it was a great event for fans getting to see some of the b team in early rounds or when the matchups made sense.  But then along came Carl. 

[Pinnacle]

5 minutes ago, ionel said:

But that becomes a coaching and prep issue which is part of what makes National Duals more exciting.  You know who you will likely to face in the qrts beyond and need to be ready.  When we had the National Duals it was a great event for fans getting to see some of the b team in early rounds or when the matchups made sense.  But then along came Carl. 

I blame the Duals proponents. If they had come up with better arguments then maybe they'd have convinced more votes to go their way. 

[Dogbone]

48 minutes ago, Pinnacle said:

The issue I have always had with Duals settling who the best team is that it then becomes match up dependent. Look at Nebraska, they couldn't win 4 matches against UNI but theoretically could win 5 vs Penn State. They could get lucky and pin a guy, then stall the other 5 matches and this is how we are going to crown a championship squad? 

I understand this argument but this luck/variance is also the case in other sports as well.  For example, NCAA basketball has buzzer beaters that determine who advances every year, a ball bounces a different way and a different team wins.    PSU had a cornerback fall down that lead to a big TD for ND in the semifinal game that swung momentum and possibly the game.    I think it is just rare for wresting fans since the double elimination individual tournament has some built in protections for variance/luck.  

[Jason Bryant]

1 hour ago, Pinnacle said:

The issue I have always had with Duals settling who the best team is that it then becomes match up dependent. Look at Nebraska, they couldn't win 4 matches against UNI but theoretically could win 5 vs Penn State. They could get lucky and pin a guy, then stall the other 5 matches and this is how we are going to crown a championship squad? 

That's sports. Got a killer defense that's adept at stopping a team's spread offense? But can't stop a triple-option? 

Your run and gun basketball team is great, but what if they can't sink a 3 and can't penetrate against a team with a pair of 7-footers? 

The best team doesn't always win a championship - and that's a good thing. 

[alex1fly]

52 minutes ago, Dogbone said:

I understand this argument but this luck/variance is also the case in other sports as well.  For example, NCAA basketball has buzzer beaters that determine who advances every year, a ball bounces a different way and a different team wins.    PSU had a cornerback fall down that lead to a big TD for ND in the semifinal game that swung momentum and possibly the game.    I think it is just rare for wresting fans since the double elimination individual tournament has some built in protections for variance/luck.  

100%

Every athletic competition has some variance based on stylistic matchups. That's part of the fun!

[Tyler]

On 1/16/2024 at 8:04 AM, forkemaz said:

I signed in to say this comment is gross. Cael is not the God of college wrestling who rules by word. Maybe if duels mattered penn state would duel interesting teams and not just try to throw soft balls till the end of the year.

Duels are better for everyone. They are better for fans because tournaments are chaos for watching your faves, nd they're better for programs because they foster rivalries and loyalty.

That’s where you’re wrong. Cael is the God of wrestling 

[Gene Mills Fan]

Can someone explain: How many teams are involved? How the teams are picked? How the seeds would be selected? How many days/weeks it takes?   And if November lineup limitations would be a negative. Is the later League dual important for anything but individual rankings? So not familiar with the format

[okokzach]

5 hours ago, Pinnacle said:

The issue I have always had with Duals settling who the best team is that it then becomes match up dependent. Look at Nebraska, they couldn't win 4 matches against UNI but theoretically could win 5 vs Penn State. They could get lucky and pin a guy, then stall the other 5 matches and this is how we are going to crown a championship squad? 

That's the nature of all tournaments, including the individual tournaments. There is variation and luck with styles and matchups and seeding. There's no perfect system. 

[davenowa]

could it be that some of those who oppose the dual format are fearful of a coin toss determining a national champion?  while other sports have worked to minimize the impact of a coin toss (ie college football OT rules), wrestling continues to place a tremendous impact on the outcome of a toss.  while this particular sub-topic has been discussed before, perhaps there would be greater acceptance by some if there were to be, just prior to the national anthem, after warm-ups, locked line-ups submitted to the scorer's table.  no, this does not remove the potential strategy of perhaps bumping someone up...but it does require a coach to accurately predict what the other might do, as opposed to relying on hoping to lose a coin toss.  

While I fear invoking the wrath of Bob, here is a link to the prior discussion about how a coin toss can determine the outcome when all other factors are unchanged.  

 

[Pinnacle]

On 1/16/2025 at 5:20 PM, BruceyB said:

They've done the argument a million times on FRL. I always agreed with JD and Ben that a dual format would be more accurate in representing how good a team is than a tournament format. 

Take CSB with Ferrari this year. IF Ferrari were to win, that's a guarantee of 20 points, and he might be their only NQ.

Take a fictional team that takes 10 guys to NCAAs and they all lose in the R12. Without any bonus, this team would score between 15-20 points depending on how the wrestler got there.

Which team is better?

 

Who cares if CSB at 20 points is better than Fictional Team A at 20 points when neither of them are top 20 teams? 

[BruceyB]

3 minutes ago, Pinnacle said:

 

Who cares if CSB at 20 points is better than Fictional Team A at 20 points when neither of them are top 20 teams? 

Can you not extrapolate the point from the post? That was just an extreme example to show how top heavy tournament scoring is and, how in turn, it is not an accurate reflection of how good a team really is. 

If the two teams faced in a dual, the team with ten R12'ers would likely win 9 out of the 10 matchups. They are a vastly superior team. 

As for "who cares when neither of them are top 20 teams?" Minnesota finished in 22nd at NCAAs last year but was ranked 11th as a dual team. Just because a team isn't in the top 20 in the tournament system doesn't mean they aren't a tough group that would easily qualify for a NCAA Dual Tournament.

Much like in March Madness you have teams that reach the sweet sixteen, elite eight, or final four for the first time in program history, you could have something similar where teams that might never have a chance to finish with a trophy at the tournament, you could have teams that qualify for the tournament for the first time, win a match at nationals for the first time, etc. It would give more milestones to team development than simply judging a teams success by how many points they score in March.