Another team championship (the program’s 13th and its fourth in a row for the third time), with a record-setting points total (177), two individual national champions and 10 All-Americans.
That’s dynastic, impressive stuff. It was another super week for Penn State at the NCAA Wrestling Championships.
Penn State solidified its status as the best program in the sport and left no question about its prowess as team members turned away most challengers and pounced on opportunities to pile up points in Philadelphia.
Coach Cael Sanderson has led Penn State to 12 of those championships in the past decade and a half. The program has produced 40 of its 61 all-time All-Americans during Sanderson’s tenure.
There’s no indication Penn State will lose its spot atop the sport anytime soon, either. While familiar challengers remain and some historic programs might have reason for optimism, the blue-and-white program’s marketing line seems appropriate. Penn State … wrestling lives here.
It’s a little weird, then, that some seemingly thin-skinned responses and storylines perked up during what should’ve been another completely happy-happy, joy-joy coronation.
Most notably, the timing of Carter Starocci’s championship bout got a lot of attention Saturday.
His matchup against Northern Iowa’s Keckeisen opened the lineup of 10 individual championship bouts and Starocci himself stoked complaints over the timing. Both men won individual titles last season, and both came into the championship match undefeated.
Starocci blamed ESPN, claimed the scheduling approach would hamper the growth of the sport and tried to make a case for his match to be later in the lineup.
He won and became the sport’s first and likely only five-time champion (unless some future global pandemic reshapes future competitors’ eligibility), but he’s just wrong.
Former Penn State national champ and UFC fighter Bo Nickal also made a case for a co-main event approach for Starocci and the heavyweight bout featuring Minnesota’s Gable Steveson. The analogy was fine but flawed.
Adding to all the complaints (and those two were just the most prominent among many), ESPN’s clunky approach to broadcasting the sport’s championship event did not win in many supporters.
Too often during the championships, ESPN seemed to go through the motions, at best, and seem ill-prepared or uninformed — especially in terms of production quality and serving fans with information. That context was all part of the buildup to the championship matches.
However, as the leadoff match, Starocci’s pursuit of his fifth title got much of the attention to start the show Saturday night — more than it would later, no matter where it fell in the lineup. And, unfortunately for all the wrestlers and the sport in general, no matter when the match happened it was not going to prompt some huge casual audience to watch.
Honestly, no matter when any match happens at the event each year (and there have been alterations in the past), it’s not going to move the needle in terms of viewership. It’ll help build anticipation and excitement in the arena, but the only upside of that is if ESPN helps convey that atmosphere to fans at home … and sometimes that does not happen as well as it should.
College wrestling attracts dedicated, generally wrestling-wise viewers. They’ll be there at the start and stick around until the end, but they’re not going to prompt viewership numbers to rival the NCAA men’s basketball tournament that happens at the same time every year.
So, if anything, getting Starocci’s pursuit and that big five-time-champion storyline out early probably had more of a chance of it helping the event draw an audience than waiting until later.
Kudos to Starocci for his accomplishment — again, impressive, one-of-a-kind stuff. It’s worth celebrating.
And maybe that’s the slight disconnect for me. It should’ve been more about the celebration than trying to fix some perceived problem that did not matter. If anything, the biggest damper on Starocci’s celebration (and many fans complained about this on social media) was the arrival and presence of President Donald Trump.
As he made another of his man-of-the-people sports visits, Trump stole a little bit of Starocci’s attention, although the wrestler was clearly pleased to meet with the president when given the opportunity.
Likewise, ESPN saw an opportunity with shaking up the match order. It was not perfect, but it was not as pathetic or problematic as some have indicated, either. When the network and college wrestling’s powers that be review all that happened during this season’s championships, there are several more important lessons to be learned — and hopefully fixed.
Next season, when Penn State arrives in Cleveland to pursue another national championship, maybe some of that will be ironed out.
Until then, and hopefully for the immediate future, Penn State and its wrestlers can focus on what they accomplished and celebrate accordingly.
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