College wrestling should make more of an emphasis on hosting home wrestling meets.
There is no doubt college sports are becoming incredibly more popular across the board with advances in television during the past few decades.
There is also little doubt that some sports are far more popular among fans than others, specifically football and men’s basketball.
Take this past weekend, for example. I’m sure most sports fans spent their weekends watching college basketball, because the regular season is coming to an end and Selection Sunday is right around the corner.
It was the last chance prior to conference tournaments for a team to earn a quality win and prove they are worthy of a bid to the 2015 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship.
Those who spent their weekends watching basketball are probably unaware that last weekend was a huge weekend for college wrestling. This past weekend was the Mid-American Conference Championships for all of Division I wrestling.
I realize college wrestling will never gain the same popularity or notoriety that both college football and college basketball enjoy. But college wrestling could be far more popular than it is today if teams wrestled at home more often.
In this day and age, the collegiate wrestling season largely consists of opens, tournaments and duals with few individual meets in front of the home fans. In my opinion, this is killing the sport.
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Take the 2014-15 Bobcats schedule for example: Over a span of almost five months, Ohio wrestled at home just five times. One of those matches was an intersquad scrimmage. Two of the other four took place while the university was on winter break. This means that the Bobcats wrestling just two times at The Convo when school was in session. The rest was spent on the road.
Ohio is one of dozens of schools that saw limited action in front of the home fans this season. This is a problem that has become commonplace over the years as wrestling schedules have become increasingly filled with opens, tournaments and duals.
My question is: How can we expect fans to follow and support their teams when they have only a handful of home matches each year?
The answer is simple, you can’t. Fellow students and fans cannot travel each weekend to support these wrestlers.
I would like to see the NCAA start relying more on individual team matches to fill schedules as opposed to opens, tournaments and duals.
I say this not only as a Bobcats wrestling fan who would like to see his team wrestle at The Convo more often, but also as a college wrestling fan in general who doesn’t want college wrestling to continually become less popular every year because people don’t have the same ample opportunities to watch and support wrestling as they do other sports in their home venues.
Christopher Miller is a junior studying broadcast journalism and sports management. Do you think these athletes will transfer? Let him know at cm001111@ohio.edu or @MLLRC93.
