Digging into historical match counts across Division I champions - Mat Stats 29

The boys at MatStats study the trends in the number of matches the men’s NCAA qualifiers and champions have wrestled over the years. We also see if the best teams agree with Alan Jackson. Finally, we compare wrestling to other NCAA sports in the number of contests.

Full Slideshow: https://www.mattalkonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/slideshow_ep29.pdf About Mat Stats Welcome to the NWCA’s latest venture to help our favorite sport.

Glenn Gormley, Jason Bryant and Kevin Hazard outline their effort to bring statistical analysis to wrestling. Mat Stats is the NWCA’s attempt to bring wrestling up to speed with so many other sports by incorporating stats. It is the same sport, the wrestlers are just older and better.

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Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Statistics. They can mean many things. It can be a batting average,
a win percentage, correlations, andstandard deviation. But numbers aren't just for
nerds. In life, decisions needdata. In wrestling decisions, projections and
hypotheticals also need data. Here onmatt Stats we take historical data, theories

(00:28):
and statistics and apply it to theworld's oldest and greatest sport. Now to
your trio of numerical nerd balls,Glenn Gormley, Kevin Hazard, and Jason
Bryant, and welcome back again tothe Match stat Show. Along with Kevin
Hazard and Glenn Gormley, I'm JasonBryant, and as always, we like
to look in to the numbers inthe sport of wrestling today, focusing on

(00:51):
college wrestling, and one of thebig topics has been how many matches we're
wrestling? Because right now as themost sto Actually, the first coaches rankings
came out, there were a numberof rustlers from Penn State that weren't included
because they didn't hit the matches requiredto get a threshold for the coach's rank
and that made us think, well, wait a minute, how many matches
are these guys wrestling? And Glennlooked at the numbers, I dug them

(01:14):
up and the pooh Bah has gotsome interesting insights on this as well.
So today, Glenn, we're talkingabout matches wrestled as it relates to going
into the NCAA Championships. We gota lot of numbers from the champions over
the years, and I guess giveus an idea on your thoughts on where
the genesis of this episode came from. Okay, the genesis on this episode
actually came from some of the guyslike coaching. Will you Mary you know,

(01:38):
texted me or called me up,emailed me and said, it doesn't
seem like anybody's wrestling any matches rightnow compared to back in the good old
days when we were kids. Right, So that was the genesis of this.
All right, today we're going withAlan Jackson as your theme. As
Glenn's got. You've had the ramonesyou've had. I don't know what where
does your brain go when you comeup with this stuff, because know you,

(02:00):
I don't know you've had who dowe have? We had Gretchen Wilson,
We've had I he's just or MeredithBrooks. I don't even know who
you've had, you've you've you've spannedthe musical genres. I was expecting to
see like Tracy Chapman and Luke Combson here, like after the Grammy's performance
last night, which was well,as we record this on Monday, which
was freaking spectacular. But yeah,where do you get this Alan Jackson stuff

(02:21):
from? Man? Well, I'ma country music guy, so I like
Alan Jackson. And if you wantto know what's going on inside my head,
you got to talk to doctor MarkMcLaughlan, Mynors surgeon buddy. He
might be the only one that knows. Yeah, we're you know, you
know what, I'll just be contentwith knowing what I have here between the
two brains on my screen and theone in my own head. That's too

(02:43):
much to keep up with as itis, so too much of a good
thing is a good thing, accordingAlan Jackson. So Glenn take her away
on Matt Stats today. Okay,So, as Jason just did a great
introduction there, we're trying to findout how many matches to Russell, now,
how many matches were wrestling in thepast, what's the reason for this,
what's going on with this? Andlike Alan Jackson did say, too

(03:07):
much of a good thing is agood thing. But maybe in this case
less is more, okay. Soas always in this thing, I feel
like a number. Okay, it'skind of like our motto here with you
know, with the famous Bob Seegersong, because they're all about numbers and
then probably the most famous number ofall time eight six seven five three oh

(03:27):
nine Jenny, Jenny. Okay.I still think we need to get Danny's
Glass in Virginia as a sponsor forthis show, because it's not it's right
up the road from your friends atWilliam and Mary. I'm figuring, like,
you know what, if you're inthe Virginia Peninsular area, this is
this'd be a great plug for thembecause that's that's that's the number that's in
service for Danny's Glass down in Yorktown. So hint, hint, nudge nodge,
Glenn, I will talk to letme write that down Danny's. Well,

(03:51):
you don't need to write down thenumber, you know it. No,
No, it's the seven five seven. Of course, when you were
living in the area and Kevin therethere was an eight h four. It
was just one of them. Yeah, so yeah down there now. Yeah,
but I do know if Danny's glass, I'm living there. Okay.
As always, I'd like to startthe show with the experience. Opinions express

(04:14):
on this show do not necessarily reflectany policies or opinions of the NWCA,
nor do every opinion. Gormley says, I agreed, So we're disagreed to
necessarily by Kevin or Jason. Okay, Matt. Stats is based on number
stats and analyzing them. Okay,Okay, it starts with facts, not

(04:35):
opinions. Okay, Just so everybodyknows here we do have something to back
up what we're saying here. Okay. The reason why we have some balance
on this show, why we dohave some opinions mainly from Kevin and Jason
on this based on the stats.All right, Now, one thing we
like to do on the first slidewith numbers every episode. Now we started

(04:59):
doing this a few months ago.Has of two four twenty four, which
was yesterday, there are five hundredtwo men and women's wrestling teams in the
NCAA and n ai A. That'sgreat to see. Guys. We're all
about helping the growth of the sportand what it's doing. Okay, Now,
I got a little bit of funnything here on the next slide to

(05:20):
Jason, we'll show here is ifanybody has seen the movie The Shining,
Gorms are stuck on the mountain forseven days, couldn't get out via car,
had to run down the hill tomake sure I stayed working out.
So all work and no play makesGorms a dull boy. It was like
I was Jack from The Shining.That's I don't know, we're talking about

(05:44):
getting inside of your head. Leavethat one out next time. I don't
think it's like, yeah, you'regonna have to us. Yeah. Mark
mcloughlint Doctor McLoughlin explain cabin fever andits impact on wrestling statisticians. That should
be his next book. It willbe quite short. So we're talking about

(06:05):
The Shining and we're talking about theGood Doctor. What's the topic of this
show? Okay, this episode dealswith how many matches the men's NCAA Division
one and wrestling per year? Whatare the trends? Are the number of
matches correlated with the seeds of theweights and we will compare twenty twenty three

(06:26):
the most recent year the past years. All right, let's start with the
number of matches wrestled. Okay,perfect, Okay. The number of matches
wrestling from twenty twenty three to twentythirteen before the start of the Men's D
one is down two point five percent, and it's pretty much down throughout the

(06:47):
thing. A couple weight classes,there are some weights up, Okay.
There is no correlation between the weightclass and number of matches. It's just
a happenstance thing, Okay. Intwenty twenty three, the weight with the
most bouts was one seventy four.The one with the least was one fifty

(07:09):
seven in twenty thirteen, one thirtythree at the most, one twenty five
at the least. So you cansee where there's no correlation. It's just
all happenstance. Okay. Eight ofthe top twelve seeds have seen a decrease
in the number of bouts before theNCAA's from twenty thirteen to twenty twenty three.

(07:29):
Okay, So it's definitely something that'sgoing on here. This is a
moderate negative correlation between the seed andthe ranked number of teams, okay.
In other words, the higher theseed, the less matches you're getting,
basically, and this happens all theway from seed one. We did it
all the way to seed thirty three. But one must consider that in two

(07:54):
thousand and thirty team we did notseed all thirty three people. Now we
do, okay, So what wedid to do this is seeds one through
twelve have gone down three point sevenpercent and thirteen through thirty three is only
going down one point seven percent.So you can see here where the higher

(08:15):
seeds are getting less matches before theNA than low ones. Okay, we
are Penn State. It's the championin twenty thirteen and in twenty three.
Now are they different than the restof the schools compared to other schools in
the number of matches? Okay,yes, Kevin, that's a great question.

(08:37):
In twenty twenty three, Penn Statewrestled sixteen point sixty seven percent matches
below the average NCAA qualifier. Intwenty thirteen it was down but only eight
point three three percent. Okay,So Penn State's knowing something here. Maybe
less is more. Okay. Howdid Penn State perform compared to their seeds?

(09:00):
Okay? In twenty thirteen they werewhoever seeded this did an unbelievable job,
and Penn State just followed along andwon the tournament and did well.
In twenty twenty three. Penn Stateactually overperformed from their seeds, which is
hard to imagine since they tend tobe seated really high because they tend to
win all the time. Okay,so not only are they really good wrestlers,

(09:22):
but they come through in the mostimportant weekend. Okay, Now,
one thing we understand is from earlierin the show, the higher the seed,
the less matches you get. Isthat the reason Penn State has such
few matches. Well, if wecontrol for the seed and control for Penn

(09:46):
State, Penn State still had fivepoint three fewer bouts than the same seed
wrestlers in twenty thirteen. Now,Glenn, I'm gonna jump in here when
you say control, just for thenon statistical oriented, what are you doing
to come up with these numbers?Where are you putting Penn State? Where
are you putting the seeds? Sothose of us that don't have that statistical

(10:09):
analytical brain courtesy of you and doctorMcLoughlin, where are we doing. What
are we doing with the numbers?What do you mean by control in this
situation? For those who are unfamiliar? Okay, thank you for. That's
if you see on this slide,the first column, of course is Penn
State seeds. The second column isaverage matches without Penn State. That's what

(10:31):
I mean by controlling for Penn State. We're taking Penn State out of there.
Okay, gotcha, because there's onlythere's a finite amount of people.
Then the next slide, the onethe column in the middle average number of
matches with Penn State. So whatcontrolling for Penn State means is we're comparing
if somebody seated number one like stirRucci was last year and we'll be this

(10:52):
year, et cetera. Okay,we're taking him out, but we're comparing
to how many matches the number oneSeeds wrestled. So even with this,
in twenty thirteen they wrestled five percentless and in twenty twenty three they wrestled
twelve percent less matches than the comparableSeeds. Okay, So something is going

(11:16):
on here where somehow Cale Sanderson mustbe believing less is more. Nextlly,
Okay, so you're saying, asa coach, the Sanderson team wrestled less
matches than the average team. Howabout when he was winning his four NC
DOUBLEA titles that he wrestled less matchesthan the other NCAA champions. That's a

(11:39):
great question. Kevin and Kal actuallywrestled more than the other NCUBA champs.
Okay. Also, it's interesting tooon this glenn Is Cale was wrestling in
an era where matches against junior collegewrestlers did not count. Now we are
in a situation where the matches todaythey count, but for qualification purposes,

(12:01):
you're only seeing a D one record. So like next edition we'll be talking
about my preview guide, those areonly going to be the matches that are
hit for qualifying procedures. So itgets gets in the gray area of what
number is and what number isn't.But Cale I believe would have had not
anywhere from nine to eleven more wins. I have it somewhere if the matches
that counted today counted then so hehad a lot of junior college matches,

(12:24):
which at the time did not countas an official bout on your official record.
So he'd have been like one hundredand sixty nine and ZHO or something
like that had those matches counted inthat era. So it's funny because there's
even more that could have counted.But again, rules being what they are,
they changed by generations, and nowwe're talking about things twenty years ago,
and it's like, oh, well, guess what, the win over

(12:46):
Iowa Central didn't matter back then,It wouldn't matter today for qualification, but
it would still go on your overallwin loss records. So yeah, fun
things about wrestling in our numbers.Some things count, some things don't.
I'm just saying that Nilan Jackson voice. Yeah, thank you sounded real good.
You need the cowboy hat, really, thank you for that. Thank
you for that information, Jason.And even what Jason says is they didn't

(13:09):
count against Jucos, but nor didthe other nine champions. Each of his
four title years count. So he'sstill wrestling almost ten percent more as an
athlete, but yet as a coachhe doesn't do that. Okay, now
that there's two, the major rivalryin D one wrestling is Penn State and

(13:33):
iow It seems to be that wayevery year. Does IOWO wrestle more or
less matches than Penn State? Andhow does Iowa compare with all the other
D one schools? Thank you forasking that question, Kevin, I have
as I'm sure some of you guyshave heard too in the in the suite
and stuff like that in scuttle,But that Penn State wrestle's little matches,

(13:54):
Iowa w Russell's too many and theyburn out, That's not, in fact
the case. Since twenty seventeen,I was actually wrestled slightly less matches than
Penn State going into the NCAA tournament. They're very close, but I was
slightly less. I found that surprising, all right. That being said,

(14:16):
we know the trend for the numberof matches all of the NCAA champions wrestling
the season last fifty years. Okay, thank for this. Jason provided us
with a number of matches the championshave wrestled, and that of course counts
after they won the title. Okay. There's five years intervals on the screen

(14:39):
there, Okay, and easily thelowest one is two thousand and seven seen
to twenty twenty three. There wasno tournament in twenty twenty, and we
did not count twenty twenty one becauseof COVID Situation's there now. From twenty
twelve to twenty sixteen, the theywrestled the champions thirty three point six.

(15:03):
Last year it was down to twentyfour point two for the champions. So
something's going on here where people arewrestling less. One of the things that
I'd like you guys in put onthis here. There's some specific examples.
In twenty fifteen, Kyle Schneider wrestledthirty four bouts when he was in caa

(15:24):
runner up. The following year hewrestled eleven bouts the year he won a
gold medal. In twenty nineteen,only Spencer League had less than twenty nine
matches. From twenty one to twentythree, only Mason Powers had more than
twenty eight bouts. Well, Iknow, I know that. I remember

(15:48):
it was probably a decade because somewherearound a decade ago, Rob Cole at
Cornell said we don't need to wrestleall these matches, And maybe the other
coaches were thinking it, but hewas the first one I heard say it.
We can, we don't need tofor our season. We don't need

(16:08):
to have fifty matches or forty matches, And so I know he started trending
his team down. Yeah, andwe also we can look at Snyder and
Lee as also somewhat exceptions, becausethe thought was that Snyder was going to
red shirt, and then you know, have an international schedule and an abbreviated

(16:33):
college schedule, So that's kind ofan outlier situation. But then he did
it the next three years, youknow, so his his career win total
is way low considering I wonder whathis numbers would be if you added up
all the matches he actually wrestled thatyear, international and domestic, because that
would be interesting. And then takingthe miles flown to krasny Arsk, you
know, for things like the Eureganand such. Spencer Lee, we know

(16:55):
he had injury issues his entire collegecareer, but then that year, that
nineteen year, you know, Iowashot up the attemp. I mean,
they sold out the entire season withseason tickets, and a lot of that
was Spencer Lee being the draw.So part of it, he's going out
there, he's showing up. Peopleare showing up to watch him. So
you know, could he have beenon a pitch count before? Then?
That's another outlarer because the next year, you know, he was fully wrestling.

(17:18):
He didn't wrestle a whole lot lastyear comparatively speaking, So and then
Mason Parris Heavyweights. I'm sitting theregoing you know that's that's one of those
things where you say there's no correlationbetween matches, number wrestled and the weight
class, then you see a heavyweightwith the most bouts, whereas in comparison,
Gable Steveson did the Kyle Snyder typeof thing with the abbreviated schedule.
Then again, we're coming off COVID, so everybody was on an abbreviated schedule

(17:41):
in twenty one. So there's acouple outliers to consider. But you know,
I go back and look at JohnSmith, for example, I remember
looking him up when I was doinga lot of this wind Streak data,
and you know, he lost hisfirst match I think his junior year,
and then like one forty one ina row as a junior, and then
didn't lose as a senior. AndI'm like, you know, you're not
seeing the elite guys wrestle that anytimes anymore. You're also not seeing them

(18:02):
wrestle and opens. And also someof that too is now we've got the
rules changing where starters aren't going togo to opens and catch two matches and
forfeit out because that forfeit's now goingto count as at least one accountable loss.
So I think that's going to impactthe number of matches moving forward.
But you know, I'm I guessI'm part of like the wrestling fans,
a little bit selfish. I liketo see records, I like to see

(18:25):
wind totals. I'm tracking win streaksright now. We know Starachi's got over
sixty on the Division one side,Robbie Preestint at North Central is approaching eighty
on the Division three side of things, which is the current leader among NCAA
schools. Last year we had Batterdeanwith Doan had one hundred wins in a
row and then losing the semi finalsof the AI. So I love streaks,

(18:47):
I love matches wrestled, but I'malso thinking, you know, the
coach's mindset is changing. Like RobCole had points out to what Kevin was
saying, It's like, well,the athletes have better training regiments. Now,
they have more analytics, they havemore basically more science at their disposal.
They know what their VO two maxesare. They know it's not just

(19:07):
cutweight, grind down, grind down. And then you know, we're looking
at some of our your contemporaries inthis case, you know they're they're walking
wounded as a result of it afterthe wrestling careers are over. So I'm
curious what this is going to looklike twenty years from now, Glenn,
Well, maybe get again the GoodDoctor on the show to look at you
know, where are our wrestlers whoare wrestling less matches today with their bodies
twenty years from now? You knowthat's another byproduct of something where we're looking

(19:32):
at competitive situations now. But whatabout life, I don't want to say
life expectancy, but like for physicalwellness down the line, a less matches
impacting how they're feeling after their careersare older and they're down on the on
the floor with their kids or grandkidsas it may be. So I'm curious
on how that's going to be.But I like more matches. But again
you also see that D one teamsat the higher levels, you know,

(19:52):
your big tens, they're not wrestlingquad matches against each other. If there's
a quad, it's usually with somesome mid tier or lower tier teams and
then maybe one kind of tough matchor with scheduling. They don't want to
wrestle anybody tough before they get intothe meat of the Big ten schedule,
so we're seeing everybody lineup to wrestlethe sacred Hearts of the world, whereas
nobody wants the non conference duol withOklahoma State. So we're seeing a little

(20:17):
bit of it. It's gaming thematches. It's also like, well,
match counts, Well, if I'mgonna get matches, I'm gonna get them
to where I'm not beaten up,because when you get two bulls hitting each
other, the recovery is going tobe a little different. I'm guess I'm
spitballing that, but I'm thinking that'sthe mentality with you know, you hit
so many studs back to back toback, it's going to wear and tear
your body. So everybody's hurt comeMarch. And I think part of it

(20:37):
that we learned from COVID is well, you had twelve matches during the year,
and the quality of wrestling was betterat that COVID Championships, and then
the next year with a limited one. So maybe they're looking at it from
an analytical standpoint, be like,well, our guys wrestled better with less
matches, they were less banged upin Bruce. So that's where some people
think maybe Kaal's onto something. Butthen we're seeing our stars as much either.

(20:57):
So it's like, well, theopportunity to see these guys little less
and less, and it's like it'slike you want the better product over here?
Do you want the healthier wrestler ordo you want to see them more?
I mean, it is a realbig catch thirty three. I'm not
saying twenty two because there's three toworry about. It's catch thirty three A
thing I don't know, but that'sjust kind of where my head goes in
several directions when it comes to this. I did have one more thought on

(21:21):
it too. I mean, wetalked about Penn State and Iowa having less
matches, and I wonder I hadno backup to this, just you know,
spitball and they have more guys inthe room that can could be starting
on any other, you know,most other teams in the country. And
it proved out that we've got backupsthat are twelve and oh and fourteen and

(21:44):
oh. And I think maybe theythey have a tendency to rest their guys
because they need to get those otherguys in there, so or perhaps they're
getting the competition in the room comparedto all right, a duel meet against
a mid major. You know,where are they going to get pushed more
in? You know, is theis the weigh in more or less the

(22:07):
simulation than the actual battles in theroom. That could be something to consider.
Good point, Yeah, yeah,all right, glad. Moving forward,
guys, yeah, moving forward.Here. The next chart shows you
how many matches the champions. Averagenumber of matches for the NCAA champions each
year we did in ten year incrementsgoing back, you know, ten year

(22:30):
things going back. But back inthe old days, we didn't really know
how many matches some of the championshad. We don't have the research for
that. In twenty twenty two,the average number of matches was twenty one
point eight. That is the lowestnumber, not counting twenty twenty one,

(22:51):
since nineteen sixty five. Okay,so something's going on here. The highest
number in any single year was nineteeneighty five with forty four point six.
Okay, guys, that's easy mathto do. We were seeing twice the
amount of matches and eighty five aswe're seeing now, all right and everything,

(23:14):
every one of those wrestlers has haddouble knee replacements. In the pans
five years. Yeah, that's notstatistical. I made that up. Yeah,
exactly, And I always have tosay on the show. Remember,
correlation does not prove causation. Someof the things that were correlated here,
however, the numbers decreasing. Something'sgoing on here. And in case you

(23:38):
guys missed episode fourteen, if not, now when? If not you who?
Okay? You learn here and yousee it on the slide that the
NCAA champions might be wrestling a littlebit less matches because they tend to win
the tournaments in the regular season.For people that come in third and fourth
and all Russell more then the championswere the runner ups. Okay, all

(24:07):
right, so we know that thenumber of wrestlers of decrease, But is
this comparative to other sports? Inother words, men's D one wrestling.
Does it compare with men's basketball,football, and baseball? How do those
numbers work? Kevin? Thank youfor that. We went back fifty years
for basketball, football, and baseball, okay, and wrestling, of course,

(24:30):
and we did the champions okay,either the school champion or the ten
individual in wrestling, wrestlers were downtwenty five percent. Basketball and football were
both up over twenty five percent,and baseball was down four percent. Okay,
so I did a little bit ofresearch into this. In nineteen seventy

(24:51):
three, Ucla played thirty games.They'd have to play forty now to win.
Okay. North Carolina State they playedthirty two the following year when they
won, and back in seventy fouronly two conferences had a basketball tournament,
the ACC and the Southern And thenin recent years Kansas and Yukon won the

(25:12):
men's title. They played in fortyand thirty nine. Okay, so it's
down twenty seven percent. Okay,Now it's interesting what has changed in these
money making things football and basketball.Basketball. Back then you only had to
win four games in the NCAA tournamentto win. Now you have to win

(25:33):
six. Okay. Ucla and NorthCarolina State, the respective champions those years,
actually hosted the first two rounds ofthe playoffs in their school at their
gym. Okay, we talked aboutwear and tear. In nineteen seventy four
North Carolina State, the total milestraveled was a little bit less than seventy

(25:59):
three hundred. The Volves traveled almostnine thousand miles for one tournament in Oahu
this year. Okay, and justto get a plug in, the Valls
travel to two and a half hoursup the road and won at Rubberen in
Kentucky yesterday, So that was Saturday. Excuse me. That was good.
Back in the days when me andKevin were young and not getting into trouble

(26:25):
yet we might have been too young. Regionals were truly regional. UCLA won
ten titles in twelve years. Theyhappened to beat ten different schools in the
finals. All ten schools were eastof the Mississippi River. Now it's you
just go anywhere and play play allthe time. It's gotten out of hand

(26:48):
and football is adding playoffs. Youtalk about a sport where people are gonna
get beat up. I mean,those guys in football are gonna need to
call Bobby Powell for some hip replacementshere and they're all days. Kevin,
tell me what you think about thisshow. Wrap it up for the viewers,
all right. keV notes interestingly,average number of matches for NCUAA qualifies

(27:12):
before the NCAA's is down two anda half percent just in the last ten
years, and the higher seeds saweven more of a decrease. Number two.
You compare twenty thirteen to twenty threetwenty twenty three, the top twelve
seeds at the men's D one Championshipshave wrestled three point seven less matches,

(27:33):
and the unseeded have also dropped less, but it's still significant at one point
seven percent. Three and coaches listento this. Penn State the perennial number
one sixteen point sixty seven less matchesthan the average qualifier in twenty three,
eight point three to three less thantwenty thirteen. So it's when controlling for

(27:56):
the seeds, it's twelve point threeand five point three, and it's trending
down. They're trending much less.The Penn State coach Cale Sanderson, interestingly,
he averaged almost ten percent more matchesthan the other nine NCUBA champions in
his title run. So his thinking, well, actually he was wrestling for

(28:17):
you know, Hall of Fame coachBobby Douglas, but at that point they
wrestled a lot more matches, andhe wrestled more than everybody. And five
twenty seventeen to twenty three IOWA qualifiersfor the nc Double A's have wrestled slightly
less fewer matches than Penn State,but it's not really a significant difference twenty

(28:38):
four point sixty seven to twenty fourpoint eight five Number six looking back fifty
years in five year intervals, thenumber of matches the NCAA D one champions
wrestled peaked in the late eighties andhas been decreasing, and it's decreasing more
than it went up, so's it'sa really significant difference. Seven. The

(28:59):
max NCAA Champs matches was in nineteeneighty five forty four and a half matches
forty four points six percent matches perchampion, and since nineteen the minimum since
nineteen sixty five was twenty twenty two, and that was twenty one pointy less
than half eight. While NCAA championwrestlers have seen twenty five percent less matches

(29:22):
since the seventies, money sports footballand basketball have increased that number of games
by about twenty five percent. Littlethought going into that. I'm sure that's
partly due to revenue, at leastpartly. In nineteen seventy three, Ucilly
won the NCAA one men's basketball titleplaying thirty games. Twenty twenty three,

(29:45):
Yukon won while playing thirty nine games. That's a significant that's basically thirty percent
more thirty three percent ten. Makingbasketball even more difficult is how many more
miles the teams travel in twenty twentythree compared to the seventies. Thank you,

(30:06):
Kevin Jason, give you some ofyour input on this. Yeah,
so I want to touch back onagain. I think we're all preaching to
the choir here, those of usthat are wrestling people. We look at
again, we don't drive the busthe revenue sports, and as much as
I hate to say they drive thebus, we just fight over the scraps
with all the other Olympic sports andnon I hate the term non revenue sports,

(30:27):
because every sport can be a revenuesport if the department at it respective
school invests not just in the financialpart of it, but in the people
part of it. Because this mightbe a little bleeding heart type of you
know, out, you know,perfect world type of scenario. But if
you want to support your wrestling program, or you want to support your hockey

(30:48):
program, or you want to supportyour softball program, there's nothing holding you
back but your own self imposed limitations. So you can be a revenue sport
if you choose to make it arevenue sport. You just need to spend
the time and effort to do it. And the thing is the fact that
the masses like basketball and football becausethey don't have to think about it,
makes those easy things to say,Oh, they're revenue sports. When you're

(31:11):
spending forty million dollars to make thirtynine, or if you're spending forty one
million dollars and you know, onlybringing in thirty five, you know,
oh, yeah, we're making thirtyfive million dollars revenue. Yeah, you're
spending all that time and effort forthose other sports. Now, getting off
that soapbox and talking about the topichere as it relates to realignment. Okay,
we've added more games, more TVgames, we've added so con Saturday.

(31:33):
I think it's absolutely stupidly abhorrent thatthe SEC, the biggest well funded
college football programs in this country,have to play one double excuse me,
FCS teams like Wafford and the Citadelmidway through November to get that extra home
game to make that extra five hundredthousand dollars to support the weight room,

(31:56):
versus oh, I don't know,maybe you could add a sport, or
you could add men's and women's wrestling. Just you know, these schools don't
like to add anything because, ohthey can afford it, Yeah, they
absolutely can afford it. Now,they just don't want to spend the money
on anything they don't have to becausewithout the actual effort, they're not going
to make any money on it becausethey don't care enough about it. They
care about dollar signs, they don'tcare about people. So that is my

(32:20):
issue with where this is, wherewe're going. You know, Glenn,
you're you're guilty of it too withyour valls. You know, you're you're
pulling up basketball and football stuff.You love the balls, no matter,
you know, those are the you'rewrestling guy, but you love you know,
football and basketball. Everybody loves footballand basketball. Wrestling people, we
tend to hate those sports because wedon't get anything out of it. So
I don't know another soapbox. You'vegiven me one topic and three soapboxes.

(32:42):
I don't know where I'm at.I just know that I don't like where
college sports is going, and we'rejust along for the ride. It's hard
for us to be proactive when wedon't know where the bus is going to
begin with. So that's my micdrop for this episode for the time being.
Okay, Jason, I am guiltyas charged, and what did you
just accuse me of. There's noquestion it's ironic too, because I don't

(33:04):
know. I'm not in favor ofthe football playoffs and these expanded conferences and
more games. But you're damn right, I'm going to go to those games
more games. If they're here onSaturday, I'll go again. I love
college football, but I hate collegefootball. Like that's the thing. Like
I will watch college football, youknow, uninterrupted on Saturdays throughout the fall.

(33:25):
You know, I don't watch itas much as I used to because
of that school in Norfolk, Butat the same point, like I'm still
watching it. I love the gameof I love watching college football. It's
exciting. You know. It's kindof hard to speak our truth to a
sporting culture that doesn't want to seeanything other than their sports make all the
money and nobody cares about our sports. So that's the hardest thing I deal

(33:46):
with when when I say I lovecollege football and I hate college football because
college football, Yes, it canprop up an athletic department when you're successful,
but if you're losing and you're hemorrhagingmoney. You're causing every other team
around you to suffer because you're throwingmore resources at that money pit to try
to bring yourself up and break evenwhen you're not going to do it.
I'm preaching to reply here because yeah, I'm against the expansion of the college

(34:08):
football Playoff, but I'll be thefirst one in line if we host one
of the games. So anyway,again, but who won the division?
Who was the Division one National footballchampion this year? Me? Michigan,
that school up north South Dakota State. Oh okay, they have the NCAA
Trophy. They are the NCAA Divisionone Football National champions Hey, okay,

(34:31):
yeah, big yeah, Michigan didwin the win the college Football Playoff,
but that doesn't have an NCAA.I thought it was a shot at Michigan
beat one of my SEC schools.Okay, guys, now, thank you
for all this. The next thenext show, okay, which will come
out of course, the third Wednesdayof March, is a preview to the

(34:53):
twenty twenty four NCAA Division One Men'sChampionships. Okay, this is basically a
hour long preview teaser. Whatever youwant to call it to Jason Bryant.
It's the guy. Okay, youcan pre order. Go to Wrestling preview

(35:15):
guide dot com and type in thediscount code Matt Stats and you save ten
dollars. This is the best thingwritten every year. Okay, I'm a
numbers guy. I'm not a bigreader, but I have been telling all
the guys that were you Mary Sweetsfor years. I sent out an email
and tell them if they don't orderthis, they're idiots. So that's going
to be the next show. Andyou guys get a free teaser on Jason

(35:39):
Bryant's thing and can't wait to seeeverybody at Nationals. I hope you enjoyed
this show. And from my fellowhost Kevin Hazard and Jason Bryant, this
is Glenn Gormley signing off exposing platingthe line and seemingly below