Should NCAA wrestling adopt all or some freestyle rules?

[peanut]

[MJD]

I think college and high school should transition to freestyle. Most college sports feed fairly seemlessly into their international or professional equivalents (baseball, basketball, football, etc). Folkstyle wrestling is a dead-end after college. It goes nowhere. Think about it: It's not until most US wrestlers are 23 or 24 that they can finally work full-time on freestyle. That's too late. After all that hard work, if their bodies are even still healthy, they have to make a risky switch of styles to keep competing. That's ridiculous. 

[PortaJohn]

Either go full Free or no Free

[ionel]

This is a new idea but why not just transition to Breaking?   

[PortaJohn]

5 minutes ago, ionel said:

This is a new idea but why not just transition to Breaking?   

Only 2nd to Beach Volleyball.  For different reasons of course

[WrestleFan12]

Folkstyle has been the basis for USA wrestling for more than a century, and Americans have enjoyed international success during that time. The 'blame-it-on-folkstyle' sentiment seems more like a handy excuse when the USA has a poor tournament.

[ionel]

Did Dake ever use that wonderful chest wrap in folkstyle?  

[PortaJohn]

4 minutes ago, ionel said:

Did Dake ever use that wonderful chest wrap in folkstyle?  

Dake was a lot older in college.  Didn't have the strength like he does now that he is younger.  But do you not miss the Dake claw?

Edited Saturday at 09:15 PM by PortaJohn

[MJD]

3 minutes ago, WrestleFan12 said:

Folkstyle has been the basis for USA wrestling for more than a century, and Americans have enjoyed international success during that time. The 'blame-it-on-folkstyle' sentiment seems more like a handy excuse when the USA has a poor tournament.

I think the US freestyle team did fairly well, and has historically done well. The problem with folkstyle is that it's a school sport, and doesn't exist in any substantial way outside of that context. So wrestlers spend most of their energy on a sport that abruptly ends after high school or college. There's literally no way to grow such a sport. At least with freestyle there's an international stage, and perhaps more colleges would be interested in programs if they thought it actually could lead to something greater.

[ionel]

13 minutes ago, PortaJohn said:

Dake was a lot older in college.  Didn't have the strength like he does now that he is younger.  But do you not miss the Dake claw?

Yes

I feel that when Dake reverses back to aging he will win an Olympic gold.  He needs that old guy wisdom.  

[billyhoyle]

We are failing our athletes by not doing this. Yes, some manage to succeed despite this huge disadvantage. But I think about how much better off guys like Metcalf, Askren, and Herbert would have been if they didn’t look like fish out of water wrestling freestyle.
 

I don’t want to post anything negative about the guys who just competed because they all wrestled their asses off, but it is tough to be fluid in freestyle  when most of your time is spent wrestling a style that doesn’t disincentive neutral exposure. 
 

I guess at least with NIL some of these guys can make money from folkstyle, but they would be way better off if we optimized how we prepare them to compete at the Olympic stage, where they have the most potential financial opportunity. 

[peanut]

43 minutes ago, WrestleFan12 said:

Folkstyle has been the basis for USA wrestling for more than a century, and Americans have enjoyed international success during that time. The 'blame-it-on-folkstyle' sentiment seems more like a handy excuse when the USA has a poor tournament.

Folkstyle and freestyle both developed from catch wrestling. The difference is that different governing bodies were in charge of regulating the sport.

Catch wrestling was popular at American carnivals in the late 1800s and early 1900s. That's why the US won five of seven freestyle gold medals in the 1904 Olympics.

[Scouts Honor]

im against a move to free.

for many reasons.

here is some logic.

we have a ref shortage.

now you are telling me we need 3 on each mat? 

[Scouts Honor]

and 3 who have a clue about the rules

[scribers]

Just a few more old weirdos who cling to folk style will be dieing soon. This is inevitable. Women are focusing on freestyle and the results show. 

[LIV4GOD]

If anything, please adopt the step out rule for college.

[forkemaz]

Freestyle is a trash ruleset transition and kill the  american wrestling fan base. 

[MJD]

5 hours ago, forkemaz said:

Freestyle is a trash ruleset transition and kill the  american wrestling fan base. 

What American fan base? Outside of a couple of high profile matches in a few states and the NCAA tournament, college wrestling match attendance is dismal. I wrestled in Cali in the 80s, and the sport is loved there. But it's getting to be a hard sell now to parents in a era of hyper-capitalism and the turbo-charged desire for quick fame (social media) and money. Kids simply don't have the same opportunities anymore, and will likely be worse off than their parents. How can kids be expected to dedicate so much time to a sport that's over after college? Universities in Cali don't put much into wrestling because they don't see future opportunities with it. Everything's about capitalism now, how you can get by, get health insurance, pay the rent.

The big names in folkstyle don't want to face this. The reason is that the 2 or 3 states that are fairly competitive at college wrestling, that have all the money, still see fairly decent crowds and therefore aren't getting the picture, or at least not wanting to look at the bigger picture. Time to switch to freestyle. At least there's international prestige that can lead to bigger sponsorships, and wrestling outside of schools.

[ironmonkey]

The same opportunities exist after college wether Freestyle is embraced or not.  A very select few will continue competing in freestyle and the rest retire.   Some will go to mma.  I don't see tons of people continuing to wrestle after college other than the most successful, who already do.  

[peanut]

1 hour ago, ironmonkey said:

The same opportunities exist after college wether Freestyle is embraced or not.  A very select few will continue competing in freestyle and the rest retire.   Some will go to mma.  I don't see tons of people continuing to wrestle after college other than the most successful, who already do.  

Preparing athletes for international success is only one reason for switching to freestyle. Other reasons include:

• freestyle is a better product
• freestyle opens up recruiting to the rest of the world (which would elevate everything here & give US fans more athletes to cheer for). Imagine how much more interesting the college season could be if a school lands a bunch of English-speaking Cubans or Indians or Russians.
• freestyle open up coaching positions to the rest of the world (which would elevate everything here)
• freestyle opens competitions with Canadian colleges

Edited Sunday at 02:09 PM by peanut

[Wrestleknownothing]

12 hours ago, Scouts Honor said:

im against a move to free.

for many reasons.

here is some logic.

we have a ref shortage.

now you are telling me we need 3 on each mat? 

Good question. How do the women handle this in college? Do they go three with video review or just one, or something in between?

[forkemaz]

3 hours ago, MJD said:

What American fan base? Outside of a couple of high profile matches in a few states and the NCAA tournament, college wrestling match attendance is dismal. I wrestled in Cali in the 80s, and the sport is loved there. But it's getting to be a hard sell now to parents in a era of hyper-capitalism and the turbo-charged desire for quick fame (social media) and money. Kids simply don't have the same opportunities anymore, and will likely be worse off than their parents. How can kids be expected to dedicate so much time to a sport that's over after college? Universities in Cali don't put much into wrestling because they don't see future opportunities with it. Everything's about capitalism now, how you can get by, get health insurance, pay the rent.

The big names in folkstyle don't want to face this. The reason is that the 2 or 3 states that are fairly competitive at college wrestling, that have all the money, still see fairly decent crowds and therefore aren't getting the picture, or at least not wanting to look at the bigger picture. Time to switch to freestyle. At least there's international prestige that can lead to bigger sponsorships, and wrestling outside of schools.

What fanbase for freestyle? Are the tournaments selling out? Are the matches getting comparable views to the top folkstyle matches? The answer is no. Its wild to attack folkstyles popularity when freestyle is even less popular with an even smaller fan base.

And trying to straight up steal the folkstyle fanbase and popularity by forcing freestyle isnt going to make things better, youll just kill viewership and the fan base. Freestyle is non intiuitive, overly reffed by design, overly gamed because the rules are dumb, has much more controversial scoring, and criteria is not satisfying for a typical sports fan.

[alex1fly]

I worry a bit about the throws and kids health. 
 

Disagree that freestyle is a better product. Different.
 

Would be an interesting switch though for sure. Curious what athletes think about it, they’re the ones actually doing it. 

[forkemaz]

40 minutes ago, peanut said:

Preparing athletes for international success is only one reason for switching to freestyle. Other reasons include:

• freestyle is a better product
• freestyle opens up recruiting to the rest of the world (which would elevate everything here & give US fans more athletes to cheer for). Imagine how much more interesting the college season could be if a school lands a bunch of English-speaking Cubans or Indians or Russians.
• freestyle open up coaching positions to the rest of the world (which would elevate everything here)
• freestyle opens competitions with Canadian colleges

Freestyle is a better product by what metric?

We alread have this and have had it, Yonger, Abdurakmonov, Ganabayar, the other ISU kid and much more. 

Last two points are interesting.

[Wrestleknownothing]

2 minutes ago, forkemaz said:

What fanbase for freestyle? Are the tournaments selling out? Are the matches getting comparable views to the top folkstyle matches? The answer is no. Its wild to attack folkstyles popularity when freestyle is even less popular with an even smaller fan base.

And trying to straight up steal the folkstyle fanbase and popularity by forcing freestyle isnt going to make things better, youll just kill viewership and the fan base. Freestyle is non intiuitive, overly reffed by design, overly gamed because the rules are dumb, has much more controversial scoring, and criteria is not satisfying for a typical sports fan.

I am not convinced that has anything to do wirh the style, but with the tribalism. PSU fans tune in to see PSU. Hawkeye fans tune in to see Hawkeyes. And so on. Swap free for folk and you still have tribes. If you still have tribes, you still have fans.