It should gall everyone who has ever wrestled that our sport must accept handouts to survive. But instead of whining about how Title 9 can lead to cuts in wrestling, we have to find a way to make the dual meet season so exciting that people will be crashing through the gates.

Wrestling, with its current style of collar ties and straight-ahead attacks combined with increased skill, has become rather boring for the average sports fan.

It’s almost like chess (which, by the way, I find exciting), but how many people like chess as a spectator sport? My idea of chess wrestling (Bastardi opening: pawn to king four followed by a front headlock and choke out) is not likely to be adopted.

So what do we do? I have a few suggestions that will make schools across the nation will pick up the new, moneymaking sport:

First of all, there will be no changes to the post-season, since it already has plenty of support. It will remain a tournament.

But what about the dual meet season? We need something that promotes scoring and fan involvement. Here is how this is done:

1) The match consists of two halves. All weight classes wrestle two three-minute periods, separated by a 15-minute halftime. Both halves begin with the wrestlers on their feet, but they will start from the referee’s position if taken down.

2) The score is the actual score. If someone wins 22-3, that is what goes up. If one wrestler beats another by 19 points, that is the advantage his team gets. 



3) A pin or a default is worth the greatest score spread, plus five. For example, if junior Brad Patacky comes out and wins 22-3
and someone down the line pins his guy, the teammate will get 24 points (a 19-point difference plus five extra points). 



4) An opponent can be pinned twice, once in each half. Theoretically, a mismatch can lead to a bonanza.

5) Strategy has to be involved. If a team has several pins, but the biggest point spread is only a few points, one of the guys needs to go out and run up the score to improve the point spread of the pins.

6) Anyone at any weight can wrestle from his weight class up. If a team has a kid who can go out and beat half of the other team’s line up, let him loose.

7) Substitutes can be made at halftime, but the sub has to start with the score from the first half. Why not? How many times do we see mismatches get exploited in other sports? There is a reason LeBron James and Kobe Bryant are household names.

I am proposing that we make wrestling in the dual meet season as much of a game as it is a sport. That is the key.

Think about the implications: Cael Sanderson is walking off the mat, and here comes the mic in his face. "Coach, you are winning 52-33, but Iowa may do blah, blah, blah. Can you continue to expand on your lead?”

The crowd is into it, points are flying all over the place, and fans are thinking things out. "Should we try pick up another pin here, or should we try to go for points?” “Will we see someone else in the lineup?”

These changes could get people to use the remote to switch between wrestling and basketball on TV.

New statistics would be kept on the sport, and the commentary would continue well after a match. Say sophomore Quentin Wright is 12-0 with eight pins under the current system. Under my system, he would still be 12-0, but we would keep track of points earned vs. points given up.

People would get into it, arguing about who is better on both offense and defense. We’d start having national leaders on offense and defense.

Now, remember we want keep the post season pure, but seeds for the post-season would be decided by records that factored in "playing time" and scoring averages. This could make for some wild seed meetings.

In the end, the wrestlers would still have to train for and win the tournament the old way. But, boy, we could have a lot of during the regular season.

If we don’t do something like this, wrestling will die. The barbarians are at the gate and we, lovers of this sport and what it means, have had no answer.

Let’s open this up so people can see what this sport is about, if we have the guts to do it. If we, as wrestlers and wrestling fans, truly love the sport, we should want to make it stand on its merit, not handouts.