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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Dan Ransick added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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This move came swiftly.
Here is InterMat's article:
http://InterMat.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/the-asu-situation-digging-away/
Sad Day in Tempe: ASU wrestling dropped
Jump to Comments
A lot has happened over the last 18 hours regarding the news about the alleged dropping of wrestling at Arizona State University. A lot of rumors, message board posts, e-mails, IM’s, text messages and phone calls have been circulating.
The one thing I have been informed by Arizona State Sports Information Director Alex Ryan is “The rumblings are true.”
Update: 12:53 p.m. (Eastern)
The pending announcement from Arizona State’s sports information office is expected to come “shortly,” according to Ryan.
Sadly, this comes the same day Thom Ortiz had confirmed three additional signees to the Sun Devil program, including two talented Junior College transfers Joe Cornejo and Erik Nye along with High School All-American Jeff Meredith of Temecula Valley, Calif.
One member of the Arizona State wrestling team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said, “The athletes feel shut out by the administration.”
Earlier this morning, e-mail correspondence between Ortiz and InterMat seemed to indicate these rumors were unjustified.
At 8:14 a.m. Eastern, Ortiz confirmed he had five signed letters of intent, including two from prior verbal commitments Te Edwards of Virginia and Eric Starks of Washington.
Update 1:02 p.m.
It’s officially been released by the school: Arizona State University Cites Economics in Reducing Number of Varsity Sports .
School citing finanical woes, despite the fact three teams are announced as being cut, men’s wrestling, men’s tennis and men’s swimming. The school is “financially” cutting two teams where the same facilities are used for women’s athletics, too.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Norm Young added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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Are there any ASU wrestlers that OSU would want? Maybe Gene Smith could help.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Mike Taylor added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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Makes you wonder if there won't come a time when the NCAA wrestling tournament will be a 16 person bracket simply because that is all that will be left. Oh, and they will all be from the midwest. Very sad day indeed.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Mark Niemann added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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I blame the Detroit steel workers for not caring enough to save ASU wrestling!
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Joe Boardwine added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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When a sport like ASU drops wrestling..... It makes you wonder who is really safe in D I - if anyone. The list is short. Iowa, OK State... ?
IMO: The future of NCAA D I sports does not include men's sports like wrestling, swimming, etc. - not the way they currently exist. They are operating like large corporations and do not see the need for these sports. The future for them includes football and basketball and keeping them fully funded with all the bells and whistles - best scoreboards, facilities - etc... for that big televised game. It also includes women's sports - because they serve a distinct ideological purpose.
There's no room for the non-revenue, men's sports. The schools give "athletic opportunity" lip-service, but in reality - it is business and they would rather put their money elsewhere.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Dan Cosimi added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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I can't wait for the Michael Moore movie titled: "Title 9: Ruining the Dreams of Millions of Athletes, One School at a Time"
How our sport is treated by the powers-that-be is absolutely ridiculous. There is a lot behind that, on the wrestling organizations' side as well, but the bottom-line is that it is just a terrible situation.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Hank Kornblut added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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I'm also shocked by this news. ASU won a national title under Bobby Douglas less than 20 years ago and has been coached by the likes of Leroy Smith. More often than not, they've been the top team in the PAC 10. Sadly, the whole PAC 10 conference could fall. I honestly thought the worst had passed as far as colleges dropping wrestling but it was my error in judgement.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Ken Ramsey Sr. added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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This is a team that won an NCAA Team Title just 20 years ago. This is big enough that it might ignite a rash of more teams being dropped soon. The first one in mind would be Stanford, even with former Iowa AD Bob Bowlsby being the Stanford AD. They may see the writing on the wall for Western wrestling and see this as a good time to drop the program.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Brady Hiatt added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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Title IX -- I think I read it once than used it to clean my rear when I was finished on the crapper.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Josh Lowe added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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With Arizona State on the outs, only Oregon State and Stanford are left with wrestling among official Pac-10 (all sports) members - and Stanford just lost their coach. Portland State, Cal Poly, Cal Fullerton, and Cal Bakersfield make up the rest of the P10 for wrestling (I might be missing one other Cal something). Oregon just finished their last year with wrestling, and Fresno State has canned wrestling within the last two years.
While the way wrestling is going collegiately is unfortunate, the economics of college sports - when combined with the politics associated with Title IX compliance (85 'ships for football, women having no equal sport; womens sports being "financial drains"; etc) - somewhat dictates this.
College football - especially - and college basketball, to a lesser extent, are basically arms races at the Division I-A level. To compete - especially in the power conferences, and even in the non-BCS conferences - schools have to spend wads of money just to sustain. Whether they are making it back or not.
To "compete" with what can be called a full compliment of sports, schools must have an ECONOMICALLY SUCCESSFUL football or basketball program - ideally both, football most importantly. Why do you think schools begged for that 12th football game? The big schools want to use that game to host some pud little school. The big schools get a mega-gate, and the team they play - while a sacrifce - gets a payday out of it.
As unfortunate as it is, we can "-" all we want, but at some point, we must seek a new paradigm for wrestling at the post-high school level. What that is? I don't know, but someone creative needs to give us something ASAP.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Hank Kornblut added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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Josh: Very good post. Probably the most sensible thing I've read.
I think D1 wrestling has to look very seriously at what it can do to strengthen what's left. That could mean switching to spring--which should put more fans in the stands as these programs wouldn't be competing with high school. Also, some serious thought has to be put into inculcating freestyle and greco into what we're doing at the collegiate level. I hate to eliminate folkstyle wrestling--it's a piece of Americana. But we'd probably do better to start producing wrestlers that can win Olympic medals. That would impress the public and capture more media attention. Our best college wrestlers are rarely capable of winning world medals. In the world's best wrestling countries, the medalists are often college age. We're not competing with them.
These are just a few thoughts. I do think ASU dropping wrestling has to be "tipping point" as far as a need to take action. I never thought a program that had won a national title and produced a few recent olympic medalists would take this action. The NWCA cannot allow this to occur without fighting as hard as possible to prevent it. Whatever it takes, I hope all of us will support the effort.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Dan Cosimi added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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My thoughts:
- Under no circumstances should we eliminate Folkstyle and switch to wrestling Freestyle and Greco-Roman just because the bureaucrats didn't want to support wrestling financially.
- USA Wrestling markets our sport totally wrong, and since they are our sport's governing body, a big portion of our lack of success in keeping our sport prospering is directly their fault.
- Real Pro Wrestling's failure was a huge loss of one of the best opportunities our sport has had to promote itself, but I commend the people who led that organization for taking a huge risk with their money and doing all the work to try to get it to succeed.
- We need a successful professional folkstyle wrestling league.
- We need successful wrestling clubs for all ages. Starting with youth, of course, is the best idea, but the clubs need to continue through the ages.
- We need wrestling "dojos" to be opening around the country, much like karate, Jiu-Jitsu, and other MMA avenues.
- We need to market our sport like MMA does because they gave us a perfect model for how to do it.
- We lost our "golden opportunity" to be the first major American MMA sport, mainly because USA Wrestling was not willing to do what the powers-that-be in the MMA organizations were. That doesn't mean we can't still rise to the top. It does mean it will be harder, though.
- It's time for the wrestling community to face the fact that the NCAA cares about only one thing: Money. The sport of wrestling has no future in the NCAA except to finish dying.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Mark Niemann added to this discussion on May 13, 2008
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Quote from Dan Cosimi's post:
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"My thoughts:...
- It's time for the wrestling community to face the fact that the NCAA cares about only one thing: Money.
The sport of wrestling has no future in the NCAA except to finish dying
."
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Ouch!!! Harsh words, brother. I can only hope that you are not a prophet!
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Tony Bradberry added to this discussion on May 14, 2008
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I'm sorry Dan but I have to disagree with you on almost every point.
I have said it before and will say it again wrestling will die untill we go to freestyle. Maybe not freestyle to the T as put by FILA, but maybe with some variations to make it a little more interesting. The big throws are what people want to see and will fill the stands. No one goes to a NASCAR race to watch a bunch of cars go in circles they go for the crashes which throws would be our equivalent.
You CAN'T put the blame on USA wrestling because they are not our governing body in america they govern freestyle and Greco as a "branch" of FILA. The only True governing body of folkstyle is the NCAA, which could really care less about wrestling they want the big name sports.
No way can wrestling even try to touch what mma has done over the past couple years, not under folkstyle atleast. Folkstyle wrestling at the higher levels is more comparative to chess than mma. It is thought out calculated movements. When the same thing happens in mma the crowd boos and you don't see those guys on a pay per view again.
I have said it for a couple years and will say it one more time if you want to save wrestling we need to ditch folkstyle and go for freestyle like the rest of the world. The only reason we don't is because people think we are "special" because we wrestle folkstyle. If it is such a good style why doesn't the rest of the world do it? We need to put our egos aside and go with what is working and that is freestyle.
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Discussion Topic: Arizona State Drops Wrestling
Vince DiSabato added to this discussion on May 14, 2008
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Dan, I agree with much of what you write but first off.... Real Pro Wrestling was/is not a failure. In fact I spent some two hours recently with Toby Willis in Nashville TN and he is planning on bringing the format back in the very near future. As a matter of fact they were very close to signing with Spike TV prior to MMA.
I agree with your assertion that MMA has breathed some life back into Wrestling. Wrestling/Jui-Jitsu/Tae Kwon Do and Karate Combined Dojos is the way to go. Because it allows the proprietor of the Dojo to offer more disciplines and protects the Dojo. Sell Wrestling as the Martial Art that it is.
Willis wants to combine the two olympic sports of Greco and Freestyle. I don't care for the idea. But Folkstyle is holding us all back.
USA Wrestling is the major drawback! They do not wish to build the sport. They wish to protect their $200,000 a year jobs and compensate a few Olympic/World Class hopefulls with under $20,000 a year stipends. Even FILA doesn't want them in charge!
Screw the NCAA and their adherence to Title IX Proportionality. Wrestling, Baseball, Swimming and Track and Field will all disappear under their "guidance" and siphoning of disappearing Federal funds.
You do not beat Title IX and the lobbyist by fighting them. You beat them by going a different way.
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