Wrestling Blogs - Martin Floreani

Im on a plane from Memphis to Austin. I just was in Milwaukee and from there I was at Kaukauna High School. I got to drive for about 2 hours or so with Lee Meyerhofer from Kaukauna to Milwaukee. I liked Lee alot and he is a pretty smart cat. He is the president of Kaukauna city. He got me thinking more about wrestling, how we have to market it. He reminded me why I started flowrestling....to get people to know, like and learn the wrestlers and coaches of our sport.

Fast forward to me right now.

So here I am typing in literally the last seat in the back left of a 13 row plane. I got a huge 270 lb dude next to me (he has the aisle). The seat in front of me hitting my knees is really testing to see if I have any claustrophobia. If the guy in front of me leans back, Im going to explode like a grape and my laptop is going to get ruined. But I dont have clastophobia and even if I did it wouldnt matter because Im in another world. Even here I cant stop thinking about wrestling and the infrastructure that we need in the sport to really begin to grow it.

Lee talked a lot about infrastructure. He is big on making sure that Kaukauna has infrastructure for its growth. That means Water lines, Sewege plants, an ability to clean the streets and Im sure a bunch of other stuff. If you dont than your growth can sputter out or have huge cost consequences that will come back to bite you maybe in a couple of years or maybe in 10 or 15 years. So when Kaukauna grows Lee tries to make sure they are smart about it.

We talked about how Nascar got to have more income than the NFL and how they market that sport. How they did it and any parallels to wrestling. I ask you do you think Nascar is more exciting than wrestling? Cars going around the track for 4 hours where the race may not even be close. Is that really more exciting than a heavy weight match between two stalling heavy weights? Seriously?

We talked about corruption and how much corruption can cost a culture. How much conflict of interests can cost a culture. And how you have to fight those things every day.

Wrestling has a long way to go but the key is to get on the path and make things as transparent as possible.

Building Infrastructure:

For wrestling to be able to grow people need stats. Stats are crucial to the long-term success of wrestling. The stats need to be free and readily available, and should be available through the NCAA. Look at the typical list of sports that have stats available through the NCAA: Football Lacrosse, Basketball (Mens and Womens), Baseball, Volleyball (Womens). The typical ones that dont: skiing, rifle and wrestling. What category do you want to be in?

Marketing a Sport:

Stats are a way people understand a sport. For Example in Nascar they know that Gordan needs to come in third in this race for him to remain in 2nd place overall within striking distance of first in the overall standings. It makes everything more exciting when people can see the big picture with each wrestling match.

Conflict of Interest:

The largest wrestling lobbying group NWCA claims to represent the coaches of the college level to go to the NCAA with the best interest of the sport in mind. However they also own intermat a media organization. Currently all schools are mandated to enter results in the NWCA and that is mandated by the NCAA because the NWCA lobbied for it. Intermat is the only media body with comprehensive results done through Jason Bryant. Although I would be hard pressed to find someone who didnt want to have results go through the NCAA I ask: Is it in the interest of the NWCA to have all results made available through the NCAA? I dont see any reason why it would be in their interest? They get income from intermat and most importantly it is there loudspeaker to wrestling.

In 2005 the NWCA took in an income of close to a million dollars: 963,272. In that year they had a total of 828,714 dollars in assets. ( get here ) Currently there are 6 people that are full time with a couple of part time people. Since then they have grown substantially in areas like weight certification management to 38 states on the high school level and all the NCAA colleges. (This deserves a whole other blog.) Part of their income and sounding board on key issues is through intermat which right now has a monopoly on results.

So why would the NWCA work in a genuine fashion to make results available through the NCAA? There is a huge conflict in interest in the organization that claims to represent wrestling colleges coaches interest and wrestlings interest to the NCAA. The conflict of interest arises out of there organization controlling a media company. It is in short term financial interest to not find a solution.

One of the first steps in building an infrastructure for wrestling is comprehensive stats available to the whole country. Comprehensive stats allows us to better market the sport so that it can grow. Wrestling is an amazing product it just needs to be marketed. So far the current way of marketing our amazing product has failed: SEE University of Oregon. We need a better way to market the sport. So far it has been in no ones short term best interest to make them readily available to all media outlets and individuals throughout the nation in a comprehensive fashion. We need to find a way to get this done with or without the NWCA.