Why A Point Earned Won’t Work

I feel I have to apologize. Up until now, I was absolutely convinced that coaches would see the benefits of A Point Earned, is a Point Scored and adopt the change, maybe not whole-heartedly, but at least begrudgingly.

I just thought the Rules Committee, and then the coaches would realize it would be the most important thing to happen in the sport since Isidor Niflot won America’s first Olympic Gold Medal in 1904.

It made too much sense, because it would incentivize coaches to ditch their current philosophy of focusing on leg attacks, getting off the bottom, and burning time off the clock.

If I may, I’d like to borrow a thought from Rich Lorenzo, an All-American wrestler when he competed, and the Head Coach at Penn State for over a decade in the 80’s. He’s a special person, and one of the sport’s most admired personalities.

I know that because he’ll tell you that’s not the case. And, with white hair and somewhat of a slumped over gait, you’ll know I’m right because he’s seen it all.

“In this environment, (meaning the NIL, and minimal revenue being produced by wrestling programs) I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of the marginal programs in the Big 10 didn’t drop wrestling in the future.”

Really, in the Big 10? I guess the next question would be; what does that mean for the second, third and fourth level D-I programs?

Yet, here we are, or, here I am, writing and making as many enemies as friends, spouting my mouth off about the Rules Committee sitting on their hands as Nero Fiddles.

I really don’t care at this point if they adopt a bunch of new rules as far away from anything I have suggested. As long as what they do is centered on marketing, branding, and promotional advancement.

Not how many seconds a wrestler can hang onto an ankle before being called for stalling.

Since the second half of the 20^th century, I would argue that the Rules Committee’s focus has been on things somewhere between La-La Land and Oz.

Forget the athletes and coaches for a minute, we need to start focusing on the fans we don’t have. Without them, the sport can’t continue to exist. There’s too much pressure on the Athletic Directors to fund their star athletes in the major sports.

We can complain all we want about the footballers and basketball players each earning up to a million dollars a year in salaries, but that doesn’t help us.

Where do you think that money is going to come from? Deficit spending works for the government, but not at universities, and certainly not at colleges.

But, whatever you do, the rules we don’t have, must incentivize the coaches to force their wrestlers to increase the action that we also don’t have. The sport needs to see 10 matches in each dual meet, wrestled by athletes that produce more excitement than Ben Askren and Gene Mills did. We need screaming rabid fans in the stands who buy tickets each week. I’m talking about the millions of fans we could have if the sport was exciting, which it’s not!

All the rules have done for the last several decades is appease the coaches. It’s all about penalizing the athletes for mundane nothings, and telling the coaches how they should think, act, and what to teach, based on the rules they pass.

How about incentivization? I’d start with the coaches. Light a fire under their butts.

And please, don’t tell me the wrestlers are so evenly matched these days that they are working overtime to score as many points as they can.

That’s hogwash with a capital H.

If you’d tell the wrestlers they were going to receive $500.00 for every point they scored in each match, what might you expect to see? Raise your hand if you think the matches will remain in the 3-1 and 7-4 category?

Bad things are coming and when they do, the Rules Committee is going to feign surprise. “This isn’t our fault, we did everything we could.”

No, you didn’t!

You have always believed marketing was going to more than one place to buy groceries. Promotionally is what one does to advance his career. And branding is something cattlemen do each spring.

Please . . . someone help. Our leadership is clueless.