JT1Wrestle's Proposal for the Perfect NCAA DI Season.

 Having been a college wrestling fan most of my life & having been involved in reporting about it for the last 23 seasons, I've often thought to myself, what would the perfect season look like.  How could we get the NCAA Division I (and in suit DII, DIII, NAIA, NJCAA) wrestling season about as perfect as we could get it.  

Right now our season is roughly 5 months long.  We start in late October & end in the third week of March.   We start the season off with a ton of Opens, Invitationals, Classics & Memorials.  Starting in 2025-2026, second week of November we threw in the National Duals.  Coming up soon is our largest of our in-season tournaments with CKLV, & by the end of December/January we will have three more with Midlands/Southern Scuffle.  Second week of January all the way up through conference tournament time, is dual after dual. 

Each team wrestles approximately two dozen duals a season, give or take.  As former Ohio State wrestler Johnni DiJulius states, these duals have little effect on anything.  What could be done to give more duals more meaning? 

Well, here is my proposal...

I say we move wrestling to a one semester sport.  Does it really make sense to have a sport centered around weight management also take place during the Country's most festive times?  Thanksgiving/Christmas?  I say we completely get rid of that nonsense & have our season start the first of January & go to the final week of April.  Shorten it by one month. 

How to give those duals more meaning? 

What if we did this....

W1 = Conference Duals
W2 = Conference Duals
W3 = Conference Duals 

You have three weeks of facing teams within your conference.  This would help to determine your seed for the upcoming Conference Dual tournament.  I have gathered that most schools & coaches like hosting large events, as it brings in revenue for the school.  Right now, having an individual Conference tournament only, schools in the BIG 10 for example, have to wait every 14 years to host.  If we also had a conference dual championship, then it would be far more often that a school got to host a huge event. 

W4 = Conference Dual Championships  (and this would be the only event schools would be a part of for this week.  So you end your Week 3 on a Saturday or a Sunday.   Then you train/recover Monday/Tues/Wed/Thur/Fri...to compete the weekend of Week 4 at the Conference Dual championships.) 

Now obviously the BIG 10 & the BIG 12 are going to look a lot different than the PAC-12.   So I've thought a lot about this.  How do we handle it? 

This year's National duals featured 16 teams & every school had between two & four duals apiece.  I say we add four teams & make it a 20 team event.  

Qualifiers would be 

4 of BIG 10
4 of BIG 12
3 of ACC
2 of EIWA
2 of IVY
2 of MAC
2 of SOCON
1 of PAC

If you don't like this, we could analyze it to death and come up with something else, but these would be the team qualifiers for the National Duals.  Which I say, give a few weeks to help build up anticipation/ect. 

W5 & W6 could be our non-conference duals

W7 could be where the teams that qualified for National Duals give their starters a rest in preparation. This is where we could throw in an Open or a tournament.  I don't see how it would make much difference than what we already have going on.  Half the time we never know if we're getting starters or backups anyway.  So if you qualified for National Duals, send your backups, if you didn't, send your starters. 

W8 = The National Duals.  


W9, W10, W11, W12 = I think somewhere within all of this we could still have CKLV, RENO, The Southern Scuffle & The Midlands.   Or at least one of them.  I know some like Johnni DiJulius want to get rid of all tournaments outside of qualifiers & Nationals, but I don't.  I think we need another big tournament, something big. 

I mean think about it....


If we have four months of wrestling, I think each Month should have something huge to hype up and look forward to. 

January = The Conference Dual Championships
February = The National Dual Championship
March = CKLV and/or Midlands/RENO/Soldier Salute/Southern Scuffle 

And make it an event.  CKLV some years has been tougher to place than the NCAA's, and that's a good thing.  It makes it fun and exciting. You know you're going to see some really good, competitive wrestling.  I don't think we should move in the direction of getting rid of this, I think we should move in the direction of making it an even bigger deal. 

Then April comes along for our final month of wrestling. 

I see no issue in taking W13 & W15 off.  

Say that we have W11 be our CKLV

That means after national duals on W8, that W9 & W10, two full weeks can be for whatever.   Then having CKLV (or whatever event(s) we decide to have) on W11. 

W14 could be the Individual Conference championships

And then we end on W16 for the NCAA DI championships. 


I realize I'm thinking out-loud, I have ADHD and it's probably showing severely right now.  

Give me feedback, what do you think?