By Roger Moore

Ask wrestling coaches from Division I to the junior college ranks about moving their sport to a one-semester endeavor and one common theme always seems to come up: academics.

            It’s been discussed for a number of years and will continue to be brought up at National Wrestling Coaches Association meetings for summers to come.

            Would collegiate wrestling and its student-athletes benefit from a move to a one-semester sport?

            Plenty of wrestling coaches — and academic advisors — are on board with a change. They also know that it’s not something at the top of the list of priorities.

            “There are not a lot of negatives to a change,” said Jim Beichner, head coach at Buffalo and president of the NWCA for the next two years. “It would give student-athletes a chance to acclimate themselves before we throw them right into the frying pan.

            “Those first-semester freshmen in our sport generally struggle more than other student-athletes in the classroom and we are trying to figure out why that is happening. We aren’t giving them a chance to get their feet on the ground because we are throwing a bunch of stuff at them the first couple of months they are on campus.”

            “I think a change would have a positive impact, academically,” said Dr. Jeremy Cook, a member of the Oklahoma State athletics’ academic staff. “They are competing half of two semesters and we always see GPAs lower during the competition season. All athletes feel it, but especially that first semester, wrestlers usually struggle.”

            Some programs have the ability to redshirt all incoming freshmen. Figuring out how to be a college student before a collegiate wrestler, it would seem, would benefit all involved.

            Classes begin in August or September at most universities. Barely a month later practices begin, and by the time semester exams show up the season is underway.

            A new semester begins in January as collegiate wrestling hits the meat of its schedule. Any number of factors, including travel, makes academic success difficult for a young student-athlete over his first two semesters on campus.

            “It seems like you are always playing catch-up from the time you get to campus,” said one current Div. I wrestler.

            “We are traveling, we are competing, there is the pressure of all that and it makes it harder,” said Missouri head coach Brian Smith. “That’s at the end of a semester and then you are gone a bunch in the second semester as well.

            “(With a spring start) Guys could settle into school. We work really hard with that, but once you start with six days a week of practice it’s hard on the guys. They are focused and want to get better and the good ones want to go extra. Besides all the study halls and class, these guys have no lives. They can’t just be a student every once in awhile.”

            At Harvard, an Ivy League program, there are no redshirt years.

            “It’s already a huge jump academically from high school to that first year of college,” said Harvard head coach Jay Weiss. “A lot of kids are a big fish in a little pond, in the classroom and athletically. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done before you get to a place like Harvard, you become a small fish in a big pond immediately.

            “We really battle that.”

            Like the majority of coaches, Weiss feels a change would help student-athletes in their classroom performance. But, like those same coaches, knows there are other issues that would have to be tackled:

            • What happens to open tournaments held every November and December?

            • Do all levels of collegiate wrestling – Division I, II and III, NJCAA and NAIA – have to move or could Div. I make the transition alone?

            The NWCA, along with a push from the NCAA, changed the qualification system for the NCAA Tournament for the 2008-09 campaign. It’s a change in a sport that has always balked at modifications to its rules.

            “This issue is part of a larger strategic plan that our Board is currently tackling,” said NWCA Executive Director Mike Moyer.

            “Initially, maybe we should think about simply starting our season one month later and ending at the same time. We could possibly take baby steps toward the ultimate goal of a one-semester sport.”

Spread thin

            Smith, who is president-elect for the NWCA, is also one of many who feel the wrestling season is spread out too far from November to March.

            “The biggest thing to me, and we are seeing it, is the injuries,” Smith said. “The season is so long. You look at volleyball and football. They start a couple of weeks before school starts, and they have spring ball, but they are done in a semester.

            “I think it’s much easier on the student-athlete to have a semester each year where you are completely focused on academics and not worrying about competition.”

            Currently, tournament competition — most of them of the open variety — begins in early November and continues through the Christmas break.

            Very few duals are scheduled for December. The defending national champion Iowa Hawkeyes had just two duals — Dec. 6 and 11 — and compete in the Midlands Championship, Dec. 29-30.

            January and February are packed to the gills with duals with conference and national tournaments set for the first three weeks of March.

            Do the math and you see wrestling uses six months for 16 competition dates.

            Weiss also wouldn’t mind a shortened season.

            “I really do think something should be done,” he said. “I think we are seeing a lot more injuries throughout the season. Not that a one-semester change would fix that but you have to think it wouldn’t hurt.

            “Our sport has always been slow to change. Moving the season is not something that will happen anytime soon, but it’s something I think we need to keep looking at.”

More exposure?

            It doesn’t take long to see where wrestling ranks when it comes to media coverage.

            The Dec. 6 Iowa-Iowa State dual at Carver-Hawkeye Arena drew a dual-record crowd of 15,955. It was televised on a tape-delayed basis by the Big Ten Network and there obviously weren’t television highlights outside the state of Iowa.

            The next afternoon, Iowa and Iowa State’s women’s basketball teams played in the same arena in front of less than 6,000. It was shown live by the folks at the Big Ten.

            “One of the guiding principles is to look how we can maneuver our season so that we don’t compete head to head with (NCAA basketball’s) March Madness,” said Moyer before the 2008 National Duals. “One of the things that we are considering is having the National Duals before March Madness and the individual championships after the basketball tournament.”

            Media coverage of the first weekend of the college hoops tournament ranks somewhere between the arrival of the Beatles and man landing on the moon. In other words, every channel on TV and almost three quarters of the sports sections from Los Angeles to New York breaks down every opening-weekend game.

            College wrestling’s showcase event takes place that same weekend. Attendance does not suffer. The event could be held in Alaska and mat fans would find a way to get there.

            “We have a great TV contract now,” Smith said. “Sometimes you don’t want to break away from something that’s working. We’ve been fighting to get on TV for so long and now we have almost four rounds shown live.

            “If you move it you may get that 1 o’clock in the morning coverage again. It’s something to think about.”

Not for everybody

            Ron Mirikitani, head coach at St. Louis Community College at Meramec, was also assistant coach for the track team and has taught classes for a number of years. At the junior college, NAIA, Div. II and Div. III levels there are those who have to coach multiple sports.

            “It’s complicated no matter how you look at it,” Mirikitani said. “I don’t think changing the season is the cure-all but it would be good for the student-athletes. They could get a semester under their belt, figure out what it takes, before having to jump into the season. That first year is brutal on a lot of freshman. A bunch of them are just lost.

            “We don’t have the APR to deal with at the junior college level, but it’s the same situation as far as academics are concerned. Kids are already so far behind these days when they get on campus and we don’t make it any easier on them.”

The football effect

            More than a few multi-sport stars from high school might like the opportunity to play a little more football. At smaller schools, rosters might be easier to fill with football ending in December and wrestling starting in January. Division I might see a return to the mat of some 285-pounders who chose football over wrestling.

            At the end of the day, one semester or two semester, isn’t high on the priority list of college wrestling. In 2005, college basketball coaches in the Southeastern Conference proposed a December start with one of the major reasons being academics.

            The NCAA, and its annual television contracts with college basketball, didn’t care much for the change.

            The governing body for college athletics did initiate this season’s qualification system change. Perhaps with the “student” in student-athlete in mind and the realization that 16 competition dates do not take five to six months, maybe a change could happen sooner rather than later.

             (Roger Moore is a freelance journalist who lives in Stillwater, Okla.. He is part of the Oklahoma State radio broadcasts and was named WIN and the National Wrestling Media Association’s Journalist of the Year in 2005.)