Wrestling Blogs - Jim Brown

A conversation with Mike Duroe – part 2

When you enter the lobby of the Cornell College gymnasium it resembles dozens of other small college or high school gyms – right down to the trophy case. However, if you’re a wrestling fan you’ll notice a couple of astonishing exceptions. First, there are the two national championship trophies from 1947 – the NCAA and the AAU. Then there are the induction plaques from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum for Distinguished Members coach Paul Scott and wrestler Lloyd Appleton (Coach Richard Barker and wrestler Lowell Lange are also Distinguished Members).

The 1947 season is one of the greatest real-life David vs. Goliath stories in the annals of American collegiate sport - it has also been told by better writers than I. Here’s a link to the revwrestling.com article by Mark Palmer.

http://revwrestling.com/articles/2917/Rev-Rewind-1947-Cornell-College

Noted wrestling historian Arno Niemand is also writing a book about this extraordinary feat.

This is the backdrop when Mike Duroe and I sit down to “chat about wrestling”.

I asked Mike one of my favorite questions, “How do we attract more fans to this sport we love?” Mike made the observation, frequently cited by others, that if you look at the fans at a college meet, most of them will have had some experience with wrestling – either they wrestled, their kids wrestled, they have friends on the team, etc. So I asked, “How then do we get the general sports fan to attend college wrestling meets, and how many times do they have to come before they become a true wrestling fan?

“It isn’t about quantity, it’s quality. Wrestling is unique – you get 10 separate battles in college - that’s 10 chances to entertain the fans. I tell my guys that we have to be entertaining. We have to give the fans action. Americans like scoring – that’s why soccer doesn’t have a large following here. It’s up to us as coaches to teach this to the kids. Too many coaches teach a style that wins, but isn’t entertaining to the fans.”

I brought up the University of Iowa lineup in the early nineties of Zaputil, Brands, Brands, Steiner, Steiner, Ryan, Reiland, Chelesvig, Fiser and Oostendorp as one of the most entertaining in the almost 40 years that I’ve been attending college wrestling meets. When I mentioned that my wife and I made it a point never to be late, Mike replied, “With those guys, if you were 15 minutes late you might have missed the first three matches.”

Also from Mike, “You know four or five years ago it seemed like (Oklahoma State University head wrestling coach) John Smith changed his approach. At first, it seemed like he was trying to make everyone wrestle like him and nobody else is that good. Since then he’s been encouraging his kids to be themselves and they wrestle some very exciting matches.”

I asked Mike about the lack of pinning (with the exception of Ben Askren) in recent years. “It’s our (the coaches) fault. We don’t spend enough time teaching it. Winning in college is mostly about scoring from your feet and getting out from underneath. In practice we’ll spend 70 - 75% of our time drilling on the feet and another 20% working on getting out. The rest of the time we may spend working on top. I suppose we ought to teach it (pinning) more.”

Our conversation moved to the loss of college programs, especially the most recent: Fresno State, Eastern Illinois and the University of Oregon. “You know these administrators are being short-sighted. I don’t have any statistics, but I’ll bet that former wrestlers on average donate more money to (their alma maters) than any other athletes. Look at (1950 Cornell graduate and member of the 1947 Cornell wrestling team) Richard Small. He made a major contribution for our new wrestling room and the weight room. He frequently tells people that winning the Midwest Conference Championship is one of his proudest accomplishments.”

(Author’s note: On Friday, October 12 – more than two weeks after the above comment – Richard Small committed $15 million to the “Campaign for Cornell College”.)

More from Mike, “We need more athletic directors and presidents that were former wrestlers.” I suggested that if there were more (former U of I and current Stanford Athletic Director) Bob Bowlsbys in college sports wrestling would be healthier. “Yeah, (Stanford wrestling coach) Kerry McCoy’s in a great situation.”

Mike then took me on a tour of the new wrestling and weight rooms and showed me the construction. Finally, we walked back upstairs to take another look at the trophy case and the photos on the wall. He pointed out with a respect bordering on reverence the photos of Lloyd Appleton and Lowell Lange and Coach Scott and many others.

My last question was, “You’ve coached at every level, from high school to elite athletes. Do you have a favorite?”

“You have the greatest influence on wrestling ability in high school, and I really enjoy coaching our elite wrestlers (pause) I think you make the biggest difference in lives in college. I see these successful adults come back and I meet their families. That’s my favorite.”