Wild Cards Gone Wild

Mid March will always see outrage over wild card selections from wrestling conference tournaments. There's just no way around it. Fans of teams with wrestlers who aren't selected to go to the big dance are going to scream conspiracy. Period. And the thing is, with the system as it is, they might be right.

One of the best things about wrestling is that athletes control their own destiny. Wild card selections are one of the few times where a wrestler's fate is not in his own hands. The announcement of wild cards often results in frustration and head scratching and unfortunately, there are no easy fixes that will make everyone happy.

The amount of wrestlers a conference is allowed to take to the NCAAs is based on performance at the tournament -- specifically how many wrestlers from the conference make it to the round of 12 over the years. An increase or decrease in the number of wrestlers a conference advances to this round results in a change of NCAA qualifiers. For example, the success of the Big Twelve conference recently resulted in a change from 36 to 38 qualifiers.

Because the number of qualifiers a conference earns is most often not divisible by 10, the decision of which of the athletes who didn't place high enough to qualify automatically must be made off the mat. After a conference tournament is over, the coaches have a meeting to vote on the wild cards. The Big Ten appears to have the some of the more strict rules. The two Big Ten wild card slots can only go to wrestlers who finished eighth. This system eliminated Craig Henning from wild card consideration this season, despite the fact that last season he was an NCAA runner-up, losing a close match in the finals.

While this might make the Big Ten seem very merciless in its wild card selection, it does prevent situations such as what happened at this year's MAC Conference. At 125 pounds, third-place finisher Luke Smith of Central Michigan was awarded a wild card over runner-up Andrew Novak of Eastern Michigan, despite the fact that Novak not only placed higher, but beat Smith 11-6 in the semifinals.

So how do coaches decide who should go to the Big Show? How should the decision be made? Well, there are a number of criteria that could be used such as: season record, record against ranked opponents, the strength of the weight class at the conference, the wrestler's ranking prior to the conference tourney, or how the wrestler did in the previous postseason.

Traditionally, emphasis seems to be placed on prior success in the postseason. At least, that's how it's always seemed to me when the wild cards were announced. And while this discriminates against lower-classmen, it's probably more fair. Freshmen and sophomores who stumble in the beginnings of the postseason will have other opportunities to put a better conference tourney together.

One example of this would be the Big Ten wild cards in 1999. There had been much hype about the freshman season of Minnesota wrestler Chad Erikson at 141 pounds. He had regular season wins against 2004 Olympic silver medalist Jamill Kelly of Oklahoma State and two-time All-American Damion Logan of Michigan. But the Big Ten was loaded at 141. In addition to Logan, the weight class featured 1999 NCAA champion Doug Schwab of Iowa, 2000 NCAA champion Carl Perry of Illinois, and three-time All-American Scott Schatzman of Northwestern. Erikson finished eighth, losing 7-6 to Isaac Miller of Michigan State while wrestling with an injured ankle.

Minnesota coach J Robinson campaigned hard for Erikson to get a wild card over Iowa heavyweight Wes Hand of Iowa. It was in vain as, despite having a bad tournament, Hand was a returning All-American.

Hand won two matches at the NCAAs, and those team points were the difference in Iowa winning the title over Minnesota. It was therefore hardly surprising the following year when Robinson voted for Ty Matthews of Indiana for a wild card over Lee Weber of Iowa. Weber had more impressive wins on the season, but was essentially a first year starter and his lack of post-season experience apparently hurt him in getting a wild card. Still, the decision was surprising.

That said, it was even more surpising Minnesota's Tyler Safratowich didn't get a wild card this year. Saftratowich did compete at the NCAAs last year, winning two matches, one over a seeded wrestler. However, freshman Kurt Kinser of Indiana was voted a wild card over him. So I guess you can scratch whatever I said about post season experience being the top criteria.

Obviously, none of these criteria are etched in stone, but perhaps they should be. It would appear that the system is not immune from politics. Because teams at the top of the conference will be slugging it out again once again in the NCAA team race, campaigning against athletes from rival teams helps ones chances at the big show. The correct wild card selecting strategy for a coach isn't to pick the most deserving wrestler but to pick a wrestler from a team that poses the least threat to challenging his own team.

I can't prove that this is what coaches do or have done, but there is a perverse incentive for them to do so. And it hurts the sport. The best solution would be to have no wild cards. Have the wrestlers decide it all on the mat and give no wrestler who has a bad tourney a second chance. The problem is this would mean that all conferences could only have qualifiers in denominations of 10, which wouldn't be fair.

The only other solution is to spell out what the criteria is -- sort of like the old long list of criteria when bouts were tied at the end of overtime. I'm sure some sort of mathematical formula could be constructed and although I'm sure it wouldn't be perfect and would have objections similar to the complaints you hear about the BCS, I think it would feel less ugly than the wild card outrage that erupts from the current system.