Wrestling Blogs - Martin Floreani

The last two programs that have been dropped in Division I wrestling had nothing to do with Title IX. Hmmm. What is the wrestling community going to blame this one on? Let us think hard on this one. Who or what can we blame? The damn evil feminists had nothing to do with it, so who is at fault?

The problem is the wrestling community has been pointing the finger at Title IX for way to long. Really their own faults are to blame for the demise of wrestling. God hasnt cursed wrestling, our country hasnt cursed wrestling, wrestlers have failed to adapt and adjust to American laws and media. While women's basketball was introduced into society what seems like a generation ago only now do I see a girl or two at wrestling camps. At Missouri there was 1 out of 800 or so campers. At J Robinson camp, (he is much more liberal than Brian Smith), there is about 5 or 6 out of 330 or so campers.

But I digress, remember we cant blame those very evil feminists who want women's wrestling on University of Oregon dropping their wrestling program. Darn IT! It would be easier to sleep at night if we could blame them. So this one falls under the fact that wrestler's have failed to adapt to American Media.

For example in the past instead of opening up results and sending them to newspaper publications and media outlets across the country, the NWCA (the rule making body for NCAA wrestling) has decided the only site good enough for the results was intermatwrestle.com. I think it is a huge conflict of interest for our governing representative at the NCAA level to control the results. They help pass rules that mandate NCAA wrestling programs to enter their results it into their system and then conveniently only share those results with intermat.

Jason Bryant does a great job with Intermat (NWCA owns intermat) and spends hundreds of hours on those results, but he should work directly for the NWCA not intermat. Those results should be available for every website and newspaper in the country and hopefully Mike Moyer can open up that process this year.

Look for example at the program that is replacing wrestling at Oregon...Baseball. Do they have open results for media publications to use..absolutely! Go to http://ncaasports.com/baseball/mens/stats . You can see who is the hardest to strike out, batting averages, wins, losses and everything in between. And remember how much more difficult it is to keep track of baseball than wrestling. There is an infrastructure and a culture that is friendly to the media.

Let me give you another example. I fly around the country sometimes in a plane and sometimes in the white pearl (our conversion van) on my own ticket. No one pays Flowrestling. I went and filmed University Nationals put on by USA wrestling. It was a great event and we got hundreds of emails from people in response. People were able to actually watch the event. (I still get people thanking me for it like John Peterson Olympic Gold Medalist last week)

How does Flowrestling get paid for such great coverage? Does USA Wrestling say Thank You and please do World Trials (the part that is not on ESPU -which nobody sees anyway), or how bout National duals or Fargo. No they say and I quote "we will not be able to allow you or anyone to film matches at any USA Wrestling in the future." Kinda harsh and final don't you think? How about in 3 years? or 10 years?

According to Larry Nugent, USA wrestling has a contract with Live Sports Video (LSV) that reserves them the right to essentially all but 3 USA wrestling events. The problem is that Live Sports Video doesnt film anything and when they do it the quality is hit or miss and it is pay per view. Can wrestling afford to be pay per view at this point? We need to get wrestling out in every imaginable way.

You might be saying "well get used to the game this is how it is played." I disagree. We, by chance have another site called Flotrack. So we can compare wrestling to Track and Field. Flotrack is about 6x the size of Flowrestling due to the participants (remember track has integrated women a while back thus increasing their numbers and influence). Track and Field is well sponsored by the likes of AT&T and Nike and everything in between. The track community has been great at allowing Flotrack shoot races at their events where NBC, ESPN and ESPNU are at. For Example we did just about every race at Track and Field's Trials and Nationals (they are the same). Remember Track is 20x as big as wrestling at the pro level. The sponsors like AT&T, Nike, Reebok, Adidas and Asics love us. Why? Because we promote their athletes by just filming the races and doing interviews!

High School kids can see Allan Webb and now the millions of dollars Nike is paying him is worth it. How much does the best college wrestler get coming out of college? $3,000 is a typical contract.....per year. Add that to the $7500 you can get if you make the world team and you can make a whopping $10,500. Tell me how much more exciting and fan friendly is track compared to wrestling? Did anyone go to the NCAA tournament last year? Wrestling is the most exciting sport on the planet, but there is a reason why there is not much compensation in it.

Well what is the contract for LSV cost? Well I get conflicting reports, some say that USAwrestling actually pays LSV!, while USAwrestling eluded that it was the other way around. They wouldn't tell me because, well I dont know. Everyone knows how much Fox pays for the Superbowl or NBC pays for the Series....but somehow this is super duper confidential secret. Either way no amount of money is worth the deal that USA Wrestling or LSV is paying.

How many people saw National HS Duals on LSV....Lets see a show of hands, come on get em up! Oh No one...huh. I guess you couldn't be a fan of that event unless you went to Oklahoma, but what about World Trials or Senior Nationals in Vegas...Come on all you guys and gals must have ESPNU at your house for the taping of 10 matches. You must have been watching it at home because about 35 people were in the stands for the biggest wrestling event of the year. You mean to tell me that you couldn't be a fan for that event either. Wow!

This is a wake up call for USA Wrestling and NWCA. People dont want to say it, but it needs to be confronted. USA Wrestling needs to make all their events open for anybody and everybody to film. The more it is out there the better. I'm sure it helps their egos to say that the rights are reserved for this that and a couple of squirrels. But it doesn't do their wrestlers any good and any would be sponsors to have no one watch an event on ESPNU. It is the new age and USA wrestling and the NWCA should get on with it. For wrestling to survive they must begin to open up their outlook on media and never mutter the words "Title IX" again.

Now Jim Ravannack is USA Wrestling's President. He is a business man and entrepreneur and founder of the Gator Wrestling Club. I hope he can pull wrestling out of the dark ages. It will be a very critical couple of years. He is going to have to make some serious cultural changes at USA Wrestling. We can only hope that if Jim Ravannack decides to make changes that Mike Moyer and NWCA are not far behind.