The NCAA News - News and Features

November 17, 1997

Wrestling with the numbers game

Coaches say they are dissatisfied with current system for allocating qualifiers

BY MARTY BENSON
STAFF WRITER

The old saying that death and taxes are the only sure things in life needs to be amended if you're talking about Division I wrestling.

Dissatisfaction among coaches with the qualifier allocation system is virtually universal.

"I don't know what the criteria should be, but we need to do something more fair," said Dennis DeLiddo of California State University, Fresno, a member of the Western Athletic Conference, in which five teams will get 17 qualifiers this year. "Right now it's just a numbers game. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer."

Even those conferences that get a relatively high number of qualifiers may want more.

Under the allocation formula, which is based primarily upon the number of a team's competitors finishing in the top 12 at the championships during the previous five years, the Big Ten Conference justifies more qualifiers than its current total of 71 (there are 330 overall national qualifiers). The reason the Big Ten does not get those qualifiers is that the NCAA Wrestling Committee allows for flexibility, since having just a few conferences represented would not be good for the sport.

"We've never gotten what we deserved, but we understand that," said Tim Cysewski, coach at Northwestern University. "If we got more, that would hurt the diversity of the tournament."

Bobby Douglas, coach at Iowa State University, is adamant that the Big 12 Conference, which placed three of its five teams in the top seven at the championships last year, should have more qualifiers than its 36.

"Look at the number of all-Americans (the conference) produces," he said, "then take a look at the top-ranked recruiting classes we have had the last few years. Based on that alone, some good people are going to be left home if the numbers don't change."

For the record, the numbers Douglas referred to were these: 16 all-Americans from four different teams last year. His Cyclones were ranked by Amateur Wrestling News as having the top recruiting class in the country this year, while three other conference members were in the top eight.

Coaches from the emerging conferences do not share Douglas' concerns. They say they are caught in a Catch-22: Without more qualifiers, they cannot improve performance, and without improving performance, they cannot get more qualifiers.

Performance deceptive?

Some of the emerging conferences charge that the power conferences' high numbers are driven by only one or two teams. They do not begrudge those teams their qualifiers, but they feel equal -- and sometimes superior -- to the mid- to bottom-level members of those conferences.

Tom Borelli, coach at Central Michigan University of the Mid-American Athletic Conference -- a league that has added two new institutions in the last two years and recently lifted self-imposed scholarship restraints -- pointed to the Big Ten's University of Iowa, which has won the last three team titles by runaway scores. A similar argument might be made about the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the Atlantic Coast Conference or Oklahoma State University in the Big 12.

With his school's location, Borelli's team has competed head-to-head with some Big Ten teams.

"We beat Purdue last year in a dual meet in which we won seven of 10 matches, yet they took six qualifiers and we took three," Borelli said. "We were fourth in our conference; they were last."

While Borelli points to dual-meet results, the power conferences point to tournament results.

Nine Big Ten teams finished in the top 25 last year. The conference had 25 all-Americans representing nine teams. All 11 league members had top-12 finishers.

Borelli said that qualification numbers tilt the scales to the power conferences' side in a nearly permanent way, and that safeguards are needed for the smaller conferences.

Gary Taylor, coach at Rider University, which qualifies through the East Coast Wrestling Association, said that the larger conferences should be limited from scoring qualifying "points" from each of their competitors. The smaller conferences, he contended, should be able to do so.

"The same rules should not apply to a conference that qualifies 10 and one that qualifies 40," Taylor said.

DeLiddo said he would like to see every conference get at least 20 qualifiers as a starting point. This would eliminate much of the political jockeying he said takes place during post-conference tournament wild-card allocation meetings, since all 10 runners-up could qualify.

Taylor illustrated what he sees as the irony of the current situation.

"It is almost the opposite of the parity they try to have in professional sports," he said. "The Chicago Bulls don't get the first pick in the NBA draft every year, they get the last."

More considerations

Many factors combine to maximize the importance of representation in the championships.

The event has become a perennial sellout, so everyone wants to be there. Many conferences have realigned, while other conferences have increased their commitment to the sport. All crave recognition.

Fallout from two NCAA infractions cases also muddies the water. Big 12 member Oklahoma State, a 30-time champion, did not compete in the 1993 championships as a result of an infractions case. The committee reduced the Big 12's qualifiers for the year as a result. Douglas said that the Big 12 was told those qualifiers would be replaced, but he contends they have not been.

Seven members of the Big Ten also were sanctioned by the NCAA Committee on Infractions for financial aid violations during the academic years 1979-80 to 1990-91. The penalty reduced the number of grants-in-aid for the next four years; however, results from those four years still figure in determining allocations.

"If you have more scholarships than anyone else, you are going to benefit from that formula," Douglas said.

Looking for ways to improve

The manner in which qualifiers are allocated has changed many times over the years.

Until 1993, the allocations were based primarily on the number of points scored in the championships. Because that gave too much weight to too few teams, the criteria were expanded to include the number of competitors who finished in the top 12. Much of the work was done by then-chair Robert A. Bowlsby, Iowa's director of athletics, and then-committee member Leo Kocher, wrestling coach at the University of Chicago.

Under the direction of first-year Wrestling Committee chair Michael W. Moyer, director of the Patriot Club at George Mason University and former wrestling coach there, the committee has formed a qualifier allocation task force of six athletics administrators who have wrestling backgrounds. The task force members are Curtis W. Blake, Rider; Rondo Fehlberg, Brigham Young University; Ken Kraft, Northwestern; Rich Lorenzo, Pennsylvania State University; Dave Martin, Oklahoma State; and Chris Ritrievi, University of Northern Iowa.

This group will work with each conference, then formulate a recommendation, which will be reviewed by Bowlsby and Kocher before it is presented to the committee. The committee may in turn make a proposal to the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet.

"There are no coaches on the task force because we wanted people who could examine this issue from a distance," Moyer said. "There is more than a combined 100 years of wrestling experience among these people, and they have dealt with similar issues in many other sports."

Moyer said that the goal of the task force is to educate the coaches about the current formula and to see if some adjustments need to be made to ensure the vitality of the sport. He said that while it is healthy to re-examine the formula periodically, he does not expect wholesale changes because the current formula has many positives.

One positive that the committee wants to retain is that last year's field, which competed in front of record crowds, included 79 of 96 sponsoring schools. That is 82 percent representation, the highest such mark in any NCAA individual/team sport, men's or women's. Men's gymnastics, which had 28 sponsoring institutions, was second at 68 percent. The next-closest was men's indoor track (95 of 240, 40 percent).

The task force's work will start with a mailing of a questionnaire from the NCAA to all coaches. The questionnaire will ask how the formula benefits and hurts a conference, then ask the respondents to rank and prioritize a list of criteria.

Blake, director of athletics at Rider and commissioner of the ECWA, who said he has been "beating the drum on this for some time saying something may be amiss," believes just considering change is progress.

"If, in the final analysis, the formula is fine, let's say so and move on," he said, "but it needs to be assessed just like anything else and it hasn't been for years."

Allocations for 1998 championships -- Qualifiers

Atlantic Coast Conference -- 23

Big 12 Conference -- 36

Big Ten Conference -- 71

Colonial Athletic Association -- 13

East Coast Wrestling Association -- 17

East Regional -- 18

Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association -- 26

Eastern Wrestling League -- 38

Mid-American Athletic Conference -- 15

Pacific-10 Conference -- 43

Southern Conference -- 13

Western Athletic Conference -- 17

TOTAL QUALIFIERS -- 330