The Qualifier Question
by Kyle Klingman

Flawed might be the only word that accurately describes the qualifying procedures for the NCAA wrestling tournament.  The current arrangement is a bit like playing a high-stakes poker game amongst friends.  Each conference is playing against other conferences to get the most qualifiers possible with powerhouse conferences claiming the majority of the chips. 

There are currently 11 qualifying tournaments and each conference is given a certain amount of qualifiers based on performance at previous NCAA tournaments.  In order to get more chips to play with, the wrestlers from each conference must collectively perform well at the NCAA tournament to get a bigger share of the pot.  The current pot sits at meager 330 qualifiers. 

Conferences like the Big 10 and Big 12 have consistently proven that they deserve the high number of qualifiers they send to the NCAA tournament each year.  Since 2000, 83 percent of the schools represented in the top ten have come from these two conferences alone.  Still - because of the high level of competition - these two conferences often leave several high quality wrestlers at home.

"What some people lose sight of is that this is the national tournament," said Jack Spates.  "At the national tournament the best people are supposed to be competing.  I wouldn't argue against representation because in a lot of sports you do have representation like in your weaker conferences the champion will go.

"I think the (qualification) system we have right now is just out of hand.  We're the only sport with a cap regardless of the strength of the conference.  We've had kids consistently be ranked top-seven, top-eight in the nation and they may have four All-Americans ahead of them in the conference and they don't go.  There's no excuse for that.  I've had people ask me how many do you want.  My philosophical question is if all 50 wrestlers in the Big 12 are ranked in the top five, should not all 50 wrestlers go?  The answer is yes.  Or if it was in the Big 10, I don't care what conference.  In any other sport people at that level virtually never don't go."

But there is a mistaken notion that parity currently exists in college wrestling.  Only three different conferences have been represented in the top ten during five of the past six seasons and the other year there were four.  However, from 1986 through 1999 there were only two occasions where only three conferences were represented in the top ten, and on seven occasions there were five or more conferences amongst the top ten. 

Under the current qualification system there is little hope for a team - let alone multiple teams - from a conference like the CAA or ACC to place high at the NCAA tournament because they have so few qualifiers.  Part of this is due to recent lack performance at the NCAA tournament, but a larger part is the lack of opportunity they have been given.  How can the ACC be expected to dethrone the mighty Big 10 and Big 12 and move up the ladder with only 14 qualifiers? 

Presently, five of the six schools in the ACC are fully funded and coaches like Tom Brands at Virginia Tech and Pat Santoro at Maryland are unabashed in their desire to win an NCAA team title.  But the prospects of doing so from this conference are daunting.  Essentially, one of the six schools in the ACC has to make a clean sweep of nearly all of the available qualification spots to have a chance at a trophy. 

So the fundamental question regarding the current qualification procedures for wrestling is this: How do you provide the traditionally weaker conferences a better opportunity to earn more qualifiers and place high at the NCAA tournament while giving the Big 10 and Big 12 the additional qualifying spots they deserve?  Several ACC administrators feel they might have an equitable solution for everyone involved.

Their idea hinges on switching qualification procedures from a conference format to a regional one.  A rough outline of the plan entails splitting the 88 division I schools that carry wrestling into four separate regions.  Each region would be determined on a yearly basis so that top teams won't be lumped together.  This places an emphasis on how well a team performs during the year instead of what happened at previous NCAA tournaments. 

Each region might send the top six wrestlers from each weight class to the national tournament.  This accounts for 240 of the 330 available spots.  An additional 90 wildcards would be selected from all teams' wrestlers so that high quality participants who performed well throughout the year still have a chance to participate.  This allows every team an opportunity to earn their way to the NCAA while giving the Big 10 and Big 12 an enhanced opportunity to take more wrestlers to the NCAA tournament.

"One of the things we continue to discuss and would like to bring up at the national level is regional qualifying" said John Jaudon, associate athletic director at Virginia Tech.  "I think it would enhance the sport with some more notoriety and some public awareness if we went to four regional sites.  We're in the preliminary idea of this and all details would have to be worked out.  I feel like we need to find a way to give all the conferences and all the universities a way to impact their ability for their wrestlers to earn their way to the NCAA's.  I think four regional sites would be one way in which that could be accomplished. 

"You would certainly have to split up the top 20 schools in America, seed those in each regional if you will.  We have no desire to put the Big 10 versus the Big 12 in the regional.  We're trying to get the best 330 guys to the nationals.  I don't know that the current format that we currently possess is doing that.  My idea in this regional that I've expressed to the administration of the ACC is that every institution that sponsors wrestling would send their team to a regional site so every institution could recruit the fact that you're going to have a championship experience in this regional competition.  We don't think our conference average is going to be dramatically changed in a short period of time and therefore we're going to be handicapped and ultimately that's going to effect our recruiting - and that's not right."

Naturally, there are several major details that need to be worked out regarding a regional system.  The most obvious is what to do with conference tournaments.  Do you still keep them and use them extend the season by a week or eliminate them completely?  There is also a matter of funding and who gets to decide what teams go to what region.

"If you regionalize you're probably going to give more qualifiers to the Big 10 and Big 12 instead of helping the other conferences," said Minnesota head coach J Robinson.  "It would shut more people out than it would help.  In order to make things fair you're going to have to make the pot bigger.  What we need to do is add more qualifiers to help the sport grow.  Every other sport is getting bigger.  What is wrestling doing?  We're stagnating.  We're staying the same so in a sense we're getting smaller. Right now the problem is the growth of the sport.  We are one of the few sports that make money at the national tournament and we should be rewarded for that.

"You have to ask yourself where you want to go and then you need to come up with a plan of attack to get there. What are we trying to do?  We're trying to develop a fan base.  The turtle doesn't make any progress until he sticks his head out of his shell.  We need to try things.  All we do now is play the what-if game.  Let's change the season and see what happens.  Let's try some things and see if it makes things better.  Let's quit talking about it and putting some ideas into action."

Whether it's exploring a new qualification system, adding more qualifiers, or a well-balanced combination of both, some modifications to the current system are a must.  The inevitable question now becomes: Who will make these changes?