Wrestling Blogs - Jim Brown

We love wrestling in Iowa. Every year the high school tournament sells out within a day or two of the opening of ticket sales and then all three division finals are shown live on broadcast network affiliates throughout the state.

Saturday night the Oklahoma State Cowboys came to Carver Hawkeye Arena on the University of Iowa campus for a dual meet with the Hawkeyes. As you probably know, this meet matches up the two most successful programs in the history of American college wrestling. Coach John Smith’s Cowboys controlled the tempo, won all of the key tossup matches and scored a major upset when Jake Dieffenbach defeated Iowa’s returning NCAA champion, Mark Perry. Congratulations to Coach Smith and his wrestlers.

Sports writers at any number of newspapers have already written better accounts of the meet than I can. Thanks once again to Martin Floreani and flowrestling you can also enjoy the meet yourself at:

http://www.flocasts.org/flowrestling/coverage.php?c=151


This event was witnessed by 14,332 people. That’s the seventh largest crowd for a dual wrestling meet in NCAA history and tops the attendance of many NCAA Division I basketball games.



All seven of the largest crowds involved the Hawkeyes and four of those were in Carver. In the first two dual meet sessions this year (Iowa had a double-dual with Cornell College and the University of Northern Iowa to open the home season) the University of Iowa has already had more fans see wrestling in the 2007/08 season than any school except Oklahoma State had attend the entire 2006/2007 season. The first 1,500 people that walk through the gates on January 20th for the Penn State meet will then take this season’s attendance past last year’s OSU season attendance.

Why is that? Is there any logical reason why far more people support wrestling in Iowa – the 30th ranked state in the country population-wise - than in any other state? Al Bevilacqua of Beat the Streets makes the point that interscholastic wrestling competition opportunities are limited or non-existent in many of our major urban areas. This lack of exposure certainly contributes to the lower support in some high population states. At the college level you also have to consider the “front-runner” factor. When you completely dominate a sport for 25 years as the Hawkeyes did, it’s much easier to develop a fan base.

My question to college athletic directors, coaches and fans is simply this, “If we can do it in Iowa, why can’t you?” The answer – you can – you just have to try!

I suspect that Coach Smith left Carver Hawkeye Arena generally satisfied with the results and looking forward to the rest of the season. It’s my hope that OSU AD Mike Holder took a look at the crowd and asked himself, “Why don’t we do that? Our wrestling team is the most successful program in the history of NCAA sports – why don’t we draw 6,700 fans a meet, like Iowa does? Why don’t 12 or 13,000 fans attend Bedlam?”

When a second college steps up and begins to challenge Iowa for attendance leadership then the Hawks cease to be the anomaly. Mainstreaming college wrestling then becomes attainable. It doesn’t have to be Oklahoma State – it could be Minnesota or Penn State or Hofstra. Someone just has to set the goal and work for it.

How do you do that in a world of shrinking budgets for non-revenue sports? I don’t have a magic formula but I can make a suggestion – the internet. The Iowa sports marketing department contributed little, if any, effort to getting 14,322 “butts in seats” Saturday night. It seems to me as if they made far less effort than they made to get people to attend the Eastern Michigan football game or women’s basketball.
Many people attended because of interaction on “fan forums”. Hawkeye fans gravitate to two sites: HawkeyeReport.com and HawkeyeNation.com. Participants on both “boards” did an outstanding job of encouraging followers who had never attended a meet to be sure to be there Saturday. Jon Miller, of HawkeyeNation.com, went so far as to negotiate a block of tickets for HN “posters” that could be purchased online at half-price. Three hundred and nine (309) fans took advantage – many of them first-time or infrequent attendees.

The availability of match videos on the web also seems to be playing a major role in developing fans. The casual fan can see the action and the excitement and is encouraged to attend. The more that people are exposed to wrestling, the more likely they are to finally decide to attend a meet.

Wrestling is the “world’s oldest and greatest sport” Our colleges and universities need to start treating it as such.

If we can do it in Iowa – you can do it anywhere. You just have to want to.