I’ve Fallen in Love With College Wrestling, Why It Might Be the NCAA’s Best Sport Going Right Now

When David Taylor got hired at Oklahoma State, I had heard his name before, but I’d be lying if I said I knew too much about him. For most of my life, I only cared enough about wrestling to understand was going on inside Stillwater.

Flash forward a few years, and I just filled out my NCAA Wrestling Championships brackets (frontside and back) and made a note to myself to keep an eye on Rider’s 125 pounder who has a knack for pinning people.

Life comes at you fast.

As stated, much of my college wrestling knowledge before the past two years has centered solely on Oklahoma State. I went to the duals and wrote about what happened, but I didn’t need to know much more than that because we had Seth Duckworth (who now does excellent work at OWrestle) or Dekota Gregory (who now writes about the team down south). Both of those guys had a much deeper knowledge of the sport, and I was more or less there to assist them with their wrestling coverage.

Last season was my first without either, so I dove in.

It’s been a blast.

I’m far from a wrestling expert. I wrestled in the second grade and then quit in the third. I don’t know what all the moves are called, but I’ve picked up on some as things have gone on: I know what an inside trip is because of Daton Fix, and I know what a slide-by is because of Jax Forrest.

I think there’s an argument to be made that my wrestling fandom started at the 2024 NCAA Championships in Kansas City. Myself, Dekota and Devin Wilber (PFB’s photographer) all went up to KC and shared one small hotel room for three days. I went to the 2023 NCAAs in Tulsa the year before, but being so close to home I found myself juggling everything else in life as well. Secluded in KC, it was just three days focused solely on wrestling.

Little did I know from then that within a couple of years I’d be keeping tabs on different high school tournaments to have eyes on some of the high-level recruits.

The David Taylor Era starting as electric as it has no doubt strapped a rocket to my intrigue of the sport. How could you watch Wyatt Hendrickson beat Gable Steveson and not be enthralled?

So, that’s the setup. I’m not your stereotypical “wrestling guy” — the lifelong wrestler who has long lived and breathed with the sport. Rather, I was always familiar with wrestling but didn’t follow it closely at a national level until these past few years.

Given my position of getting to cover a wide range of NCAA sports, I think there’s a strong argument to be had that wrestling is college athletics’ best product right now.

For starters, the nature of the sport is appealing. It’s one-on-one combat, a style of sport people have taken interest in for thousands of years (history of wrestling). It’s also the ultimate “man in the arena” sport.

Advancing to more modern times, NCAA wrestling has an interesting relationship with the transfer portal. While the movement of athletes from one school to another has drawn the ire of some, you could debate its success in wrestling more than in other sports.

Of the eight starting quarterbacks in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals, half were at a different school than they started at. The four who advanced to the semis were all transfer quarterbacks. The portal is now a necessary way of life in football and many other sports.

In wrestling, the Penn State Nittany Lions are nationally dominant. They’ll run out 10 guys at the national tournament next week in a lineup that includes only two transfers. Penn State’s team that set the NCAA scoring record last season had one transfer on it.

That’s not to say transfers don’t work in wrestling — see Dean Hamiti Jr. and Wyatt Hendrickson. But nationwide, not many expected those two to win national titles. Hamiti didn’t finish on the podium the season before winning his natty, while Hendrickson hadn’t finished higher than third.

Despite their success, OSU’s future seems built around recruiting and developing high schoolers. Taylor has four true freshmen in his current lineup and another top-ranked class on the way.

That’s, at least for now, the blueprint for winning big in wrestling. Maybe it’s a matter of being in the right system and having a higher importance placed on wrestling or maybe it’s a tie to the old Marvin Hagler quote of “It’s hard to wake up and do road work at 5 a.m. if you’re sleeping in silk pajamas.” Wrestlers, especially at the highest levels, are making money now, but just because a team is spending money doesn’t guarantee it top-of-the-line success.

The last thing I’ll touch on for my newfound affinity for college wrestling is the ridiculous amount of storylines available.

Each team has 10 guys who are, to a certain extent, competing independently of each other. That within itself provides more talking points than one could ever write about.

In years where a given team isn’t wrestling to expectation, that team might have a guy or two who are still giving a fanbase hope. The storyline of one wrestler’s season might be much different than that of one of his teammates.

Take OSU 174-pounder Alex Facundo for instance. The storyline of this Cowboy team has been its talented youth, but Facundo’s college career started back in 2021. He was at Penn State for four seasons, juggling redshirts and injuries before reemerging in Stillwater this year. The old me would’ve seen his 1-3 record at National Duals and might’ve jumped to a conclusion that he wouldn’t be much of a factor come March. The new me knows that Facundo, who hadn’t regularly competed in a while, wrestled four Top 10 guys in the beginning of the year and hung tight with all of them.

This is a sport that should be bigger than it is and for whatever reason, it isn’t. But OSU fans, you shouldn’t take for granted (and aren’t taking it for granted based on attendance figures) that the Cowboys are nationally relevant one of the best sports in the modern NCAA.

NCAA Wrestling Championships

Thursday
Preliminaries — 11 a.m. on ESPN2
Preliminaries and wrestle-backs — 6 p.m. on ESPN

Friday
Quarterfinals and wrestle-backs — 11 a.m. on ESPNU
Semifinals and wrestle-backs — 7 p.m. on ESPN2

Saturday
Consolation finals — 10 a.m. on ESPNU
Championship finals — 5:30 p.m. on ESPN