Connect with us

Wrestling

Why Has OU’s Wrestling Program Fallen Behind the Curve in Recent Years?

Published

6 years ago

on

OU historically boasts a top five wrestling program. Many of their fans don’t seem interested in that, but that is the case. The NCAA even thinks so. They rate them as No. 4 all time.

Currently, however, that is not the case. They went 8-11 last year and finished 6th (!) in the Big 12 Championships. It’s gotten so bad for OU that they recently refused to wrestle the traditional home and home matchup with Oklahoma State they have always done.

OU has lost 22 straight Bedlams in Stillwater. OSU has won 15 of the last 16 Bedlams and 42 of the last 47. The Cowboys’ overall lead in the Bedlam Series is 140-27-10. [NewsOK]

They did make a recent new head coaching hire and are doing some things with their facilities and in other areas to make improvements, and I do believe they will get better. But the program is a long way out from contending with OSU or any other top program. They’re even far behind most average programs. They finished 56th at the NCAA tournament this year.

The question now becomes: Why are they so bad?

One explanation is recruiting. When you spend like a top 10 program, are top five historically, and have the high level facilities they do, you should be recruiting at that level right? They’re nowhere near that. They’ve been in the top 10 once in recruiting in the last six years and often find themselves outside of the top 20.

So … why is that happening?

It could be a number of things. High school wrestling is a bit down in Oklahoma, and there are some other factors that should probably be considered. But here’s one explanation and one I honestly believe could carry a lot of weight: It’s their own fans’ doing and much of it comes via social media.

Ironically, especially when it comes to Bedlam, because OU is so good at football (and to an extent, basketball), it works against them in wrestling. We’ve all seen it. When you bring up the fact that OSU dominates in other sports (most notably wrestling), OU fans act as if the sport doesn’t even exist. Their attendance at duals is emblematic of this, too. They don’t even get an average of 1,000 fans at home in recent years. Army (Army!) gets more fans than OU does.

Naturally there’s plenty of Bedlam banter on social media. When the Bedlam wrestling debate comes up, OU fans don’t have many directions to go except the way of trashing the sport itself. We all know OSU is quite a bit better at wrestling. A level-headed fan would maybe just take if for what it is, that they have a good program that is simply dwarfed by OSU. That’s not what happens, they go straight to bashing wrestling as a sport, and it’s not hard to find plenty of social media evidence of that.

I found those tweets and many more in about a five minute Twitter search.

I say all this not to trash OU fans, or even hurt their program. I’ve noted here that as OSU fans you should hope they improve. I say it all to point out the fact that the Bedlam debate with them almost always goes that direction. And it’s probably hurting their recruiting and thus their program.

My freshman year in high school, Johny Hendricks and Teyon Ware were the top recruits on the planet and both were from Edmond. Everyone around the sport knew who they were and everyone was after them. That was in 2001 and before social media. Ultimately Ware went to OU, and as most know Hendricks to OSU. Both were NCAA champs and big time talents at their schools.

I can clearly remember conversation around the sport at the time with coaches and older guys that had been around for a while being “Johny’s going to go down in history at OSU and no one at OU’s even going to remember who Ware was at OU. I can’t believe he’s going there.” And some of that was even from OU people. I’m sure John Smith tried explaining that to Ware in his recruiting pitch.

Ultimately that’s exactly how it played out. Johny is a household name at OSU and you’d be hard pressed to find many OU fans who even know who Teyon Ware is. Seventeen years ago before social media was much of a thing, those conversations about how it would go for Ware were just things people said. There was really no way to show a recruit.

The OU staff could still say “hey we’ve got all these titles, we’ve got money, facilities, we’ve got history, we’ve got legends like Danny Hodge and Dave Schultz,” and we can sell that to recruits. Today they still sell that, but it would take not only OSU coaches, but any other coach out there competing with OU for a recruit about five seconds to pull up some Twitter comments and show them that not only do OU fans not care about the sport, they don’t even respect it.

If I’m that recruit, that stuff matters. If I’m being wooed by multiple programs, I’m probably going just about anywhere else that offers me similar money, but respects what I do even if they don’t have as much history, as nice of facilities, as big an overall budget, or anything else. That’s part of the reason why the South Dakota States and Wyomings of the wrestling world have overtaken a traditional power like OU.

There are certainly other factors to blame for the fall of OU wrestling, but some of it falls directly on their fans for their rhetoric in the Bedlam discussion.

Related Topics:

Most Read

Copyright © 2011- 2023 White Maple Media