So, What’s Consuming My Thoughts?

With the wrestling season completed, there’s way too much to cover in one writing, Or three.

So, I’ll just focus on a few topics and keep doing that each week until I exhaust my list; or myself.

To brick or not to brick, that is the question?

This perceived model of fairness (throwing a protest brick) has gotten way out of hand. The Rules Committee needs to put all the ones they have in a box, and mail them back to USAWrestling.

Nice try guys; but did you really have to borrow the idea from international wrestling? Are you aware of their spectator numbers? When it comes to the international styles, and anything they do, for the sake of our survival, it’s best to run the other direction.

And embarrassingly, you couldn’t figure out how to handle questionable calls on your own?

Maybe you should refer back to what was acceptable and working for the first 80 years of collegiate wrestling? All you need is a three-man referee model, and bam, you have more than enough eyes to decide calls, and handle protests.

Should I also mention that you screwed the pooch, again, when you allowed Colorado Springs to talk you into the women wrestling freestyle during the collegiate season.

What were you thinking?

That you wanted to help them with what it is they do? I don’t recall helping USAW being part of your job description.

If you need a reminder . . . the international styles are so unpopular with fans that at last year’s USAW National Championships the wrestlers almost outnumbered the ticket holders. And the IOC (International Olympic Committee) dropped the sport for a period of time, about 10 years ago, because politically and financially, wrestling wasn’t worth the hassle.

Now, let me see, how many paying customers were there in Kansas City last month? Of the two, collegiate wrestling is by far and away the most popular. But that only matters when we begin to remember what red ink means to anyone’s bottom-line.

Collegiate programming is already holding Colorado Springs’ hands, legs and several other body parts as it is with the creation of the RTC’s. That’s why America is doing well internationally, it has nothing to do with the training or leadership our athletes receive in Colorado Springs.

Whether anyone has noticed it or not, the Rules Committee has with their foresight, opened our back door again to USAWrestling. Do we really need to have folkstyle at all?

If you believe I’m wrong, have you ever heard anyone from Colorado Springs say, “no, the women should be wrestling folkstyle?”

We just need to remember, and then remind the Rules Committee, Colorado Springs loves freestyle, are so-so about Greco and are in opposition to folkstyle. They may say otherwise but the proof in the freestyle pudding with their behind-the-scenes movement to combine the words freestyle and college wrestling.

Enough of that; let’s get back to the protest bricks.

For any match, especially one in the finals, to take over 22 minutes to complete, someone’s logic has lost a few wheels.

Can you imagine an NFL game taking 6 hours to complete? That’s almost three times the length of a regular game, just as those 22 minutes are almost three times an 8-minute match.

I understand wanting to be fair, but to be able to protest, and then try and protest the protest? Congress doesn’t even allow that. And to use what appeared to be a woke room, I mean war room, full of computer screens dedicated to protests; what genius came up with that idea?

And we wonder why Sports Illustrated washed their hands of us decades ago and Sporting News doesn’t even know we exist. And then, why none of the major news or entertainment outlets want anything to do with us either. Nor any of the Fortune 500 companies. Or, consumer brands like Rolex, Gucci, Peloton, Nike, Nintendo, and Red Bull who advertise regularity at sporting events? No one wants to be seen with us. And what’s sad, the Rules Committee hasn’t even noticed that, or if they have, feel it’s a problem.

What was wrong with having three referees on the mat prior to the protest brick years? The main official called the match while the other two walked the outer perimeter, always maintaining their positions 180 degrees away from one another.

That had all positions, all technicalities, all control situations, line calls, and timing issues seen by at least one, if not two sets of eyes.

Taking more time to decide a questionable call than it takes to complete the match should remind us what we already know; leadership is clueless. They try and sell us on the notion that our sport has so many nuances and complexities that extraordinary measures need to be taken.

Hell guys, what we do is little more than controlled pugilism. Do we really have to make everything so convoluted as to appear brilliant, while having the few customers we do have rolling their eyes?