Tom Franck, Staff Writer
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The team race in folkstyle wrestling tournaments is an exciting and important aspect of the sport. While the competition within each weight class is thrilling by itself, one wrestler alone can’t win a team title (at least I’ve never heard of that happening). A school must do as best they can in as many weights as they can to bring home the championship.
A tournament team race begins as a slow-moving monster. The early rounds are long and points are added in small bits at a time. As the rounds get shorter, the points start coming faster and increase in amount. The totals can be difficult to follow. Most of the time, fans, wrestlers, and coaches wait for the announcers inform them of the scores.
Point structures for college wrestling tournaments have not been devised without great thought. Rule-makers have meditated deeply and changes in points over the years have been sound: both in promoting excitement and striving for fairness. This is not something that folkstyle wrestling fans should take for granted. To see how sensible the NCAA race is, one must merely study the team point scoring system employed by FILA for the Worlds, which seems to get increasingly silly with each subsequent change.
If there’s a problem with folkstyle team races it’s that it’s not uncommon for a champion to be determined well before the conclusion (or start) of the finals. Unlike other sports where the championship team has to win in every single round, a strong performance by a school early on can sew things up mathematically even before the last day of the tournament.
Indeed, despite the competitive nature of NCAA wrestling, some teams distance themselves from the pack and dominate the field. By demolishing all contemporaneous challengers so soundly, such performances cause one to wonder how a certain winning teams compare with those of other years.
The debate is strictly theoretical, since the field a team faces changes each year and the wrestlers from one year (or era) can’t wrestle each other. However, one can compare team point totals. The team that scored the most points is the best, right? Not so fast. It’s not as easy as that. As mentioned previously, the point scoring system in college wrestling has witnessed change. So how can one rate one team’s total with another when points were scored differently? Rescore the champion teams using the same system!
I believe this is fair exercise to a certain extent. The trend in point changes has been one of inflation and I have difficulty imagining this changing the way a wrestler of the past wrestled any particular match. I just can’t picture Dan Gable telling one of his athletes not to go for a pin because it was only worth one team point, or a wrestler not fighting as hard as he can in a placement match because of its particular point value.
But this isn’t to say that rescoring brackets and then comparing point totals is problem-free. While I applaud rule-makers for not making any drastic scoring changes in any particular year, incrementally, the differences add up the further you go back and things become more speculative and unclear. I felt it unsound to even look at the brackets of any championship team before 1979 since that’s when All American honors for seventh and eighth place were introduced.
I therefore simply studied the teams since 1979 and rescored the top five under the current rules (as best I could). Not surprisingly all five teams were Dan Gable-coached Iowa squads. While last year’s Oklahoma State team cracked the top five before rescoring, they were eclipsed by earlier teams that didn’t have the luxury of current point values.
There have been two main scoring changes during the era under consideration. The most recent came in 2001, when placement points were increased for third through eighth place. The placement point system used to be 16-12-9-7-5-3-2-1 and then went to 16-12-10-9-7-6-4-3.
These increases were controversial. The argument was (or is) that it placed too much emphasis on team balance and removed the dynamic of a team with a few studs being able to perform well. Personally, I prefer the new point structure. I felt that the old system put too much value on the semifinals. A wrestler in the semis had earned only three team points (since they’d assured themselves of a finish no worse than sixth) and a semis win would instantly give them nine more. Too often, tourneys would be won or lost in the semis and the semis alone. With the new placement points, more rounds became exciting for team race followers. The quarters, the All-American round and all the placement matches are now much more important to the team race and therefore more exciting
It should be noted that this change alone has a great impact on results. In 1999, Iowa edged out Minnesota for the team title 100.5 to 98.5. Iowa had five All Americans — X 3-1-1-8-X-X-2-X. Minnesota had six — 5-X-X-7-5-X-X-2-1-2. Using the increased placement points of 2001, Iowa would get an additional point for their third place finisher (Eric Juergens) and an additional two points for their eighth place finisher (Jamie Heidt). Their point total under the new rules would be 103.5. Minnesota would get two more points for each of their two fifth place finishers (LeRoy Vega and Chad Kraft) and an additional two points for their seventh place finisher (Troy Marr). So their point total under the new rules would be 104.5 and they would win the title!
The other significant rule change occurred in 1996 when bonus points were doubled. Up to that time, they were one point for a pin, default, forfeit or disqualification, .75 points for a technical fall with back-points and 0.5 point for a major decision or tech fall in which no back-points were scored. This change was less controversial since few people have difficulty rewarding domination. It raised score totals overall, but more importantly for this exercise, changes what’s currently in the history books.
The Results…
1997 Iowa
Dan Gable’s swan song team is currently in the record books for scoring the most NCAA points at a whopping 170. They had five champions (Jessie Whitmer, Mark Ironside, Lincoln McIlravy, Joe Williams and Lee Fullhart). The team had a second place finisher in Mike Mena, a fifth place finisher in Mike Uker and a sixth place finisher in Kasey Gilliss.
So how do they stack up under current rules? Rescoring this team is relatively easy. Bonus points were worth then what they are today, but Uker would earn and additional two placement points and Gilliss would earn an additional three.
ALL AMERICAN PLACES = 1-2-1-6-1-1-5-X-1-X
ORIGINAL POINT TOTAL = 170
ADDITIONAL PLACEMENT POINTS = 5
ADDITIONAL BONUS POINTS = 0
NEW TOTAL = 175
1991 Iowa
After not winning an NCAA title for four years, Dan Gable’s Hawkeyes came back with a vengeance. Six Hawks made the finals with Tom Brands and Mark Reiland winning titles and Chad Zaputil, Terry Brands, Troy Steiner and Tom Ryan taking second. Other All Americans were Terry Steiner and Bart Chelsvig who both took third and Travis Fiser who finished sixth. What was possibly most impressive was that this killer lineup featured not a single senior.
Today, this team would get an additional placement point from Chelsvig and Terry Stiener, plus an additional three placement points from Travis Fiser.
This team’s total was tallied before the change in bonus points, so they’ve got more coming in that department as well. The 91 Hawks scored five pins, six technical falls and n majors. This is where rescoring gets tricky. The pins and majors are easy enough to figure out, but when you only have the final score from each match, it’s impossible to tell if a particular tech fall had backpoints or not. For this exercise, I’m going to score each and every tech fall as if backpoints were indeed earned, although that could very well not be the case. Since the results are so close this lack of information could incorrectly place one year’s team ahead of another.
With that in mind, this squad would currently receive an additional 5 points for the pins, 4.5 points for the tech falls and 4.5 points for the majors for a total of 14 additional placement points.
ALL AMERICAN PLACES = 2-2-1-2-3-2-1-3-6-X = 5 more placement points
ORIGINAL POINT TOTAL = 157
ADDITIONAL PLACEMENT POINTS = 5
ADDITIONAL BONUS POINTS = 14
NEW TOTAL 176
1992 Iowa
The powerful lineup from the previous year stormed back the following March and did not disappoint. Terry Brands, Tom Brands and Troy Steiner all stood at the top of the podium. Chad Zaputil took second, Tom Ryan and Bart Chelsvig took third and Travis Fiser and John Oostendorp finished fifth. Shockingly, the only Hawkeye not to earn AA honors that year was defending champ Mark Reiland, who went 2-2. The 1992 Hawks piled up the bonus points, amassing six pins, one DFT, ten tech falls and eleven majors, which would give them an even greater boost today.
This performance would earn eight more placement points (two for Terry Steiner, one for Ryan, one for Chelsvig, two for Fiser and two for Oostendorp) and would score twenty more bonus points (7 for the pins and DFT, 7.5 for the tech falls and 5.5 for the majors.)
ALL AMERICAN PLACES = 2-1-1-1-5-3-X-3-5-5
ORIGINAL TOTAL = 149
ADDITIONAL PLACEMENT POINTS = 8
ADDITIONAL BONUS POINTS = 20
NEW TOTAL = 177
1986 Iowa
This team was in the record books as the highest point scoring finish in NCAA history until 1997. But how does it stack up when the points are counted equally? Well, it’s difficult to tell. 1986 was a long time ago and besides the aforementioned placement and bonus point changes, a number of other factors make fair comparisons more difficult. This Iowa team had all eight of its NCAA qualifiers earn AA status, but the Big Ten only sent the top four place finishers back then (currently the top seven finishers plus two wildcards at the Big Ten tourney qualify for the NCAAs). With such modern era NCAA performances as Brandon Paulson in 1998 (seventh in Big Ten, seventh at NCAAs) and, even better, Alex Tirapelle in 2003 (seventh at Big Tens second at NCAAs) it’s difficult not to speculate if the 86 Hawks could have picked up a few more points with two more guys.
The 1986 Hawkeyes had a record tying five champions — Brad Penrith, Kevin Dresser, Jim Heffernan, Marty Kistler and Duane Goldman. Greg Randall finished second, Rico Chiapparelli finished fourth and Royce Alger finished fifth. Today, they’d get two more points each from Chaipparelli and Alger.
1986 was a year that had slightly different bonus point system. Both a pin AND a tech fall (with or without back-points) was worth one point, a superior decision (12-14 point advantage) was worth .75 points and a major was worth .5 points.
The 86 Hawks scored seven pins, one MFF, three tech falls, four superiors and five majors.
If my calculations are right, that comes out to 13 additional bonus points (eight for the pins and MFF, 1.5 for the tech falls, one for the superiors and 2.5 for the majors.
ALL AMERICAN PLACES = X-1-2-1-1-5-1-4-1-X
ORIGINAL TOTAL = 158
ADDITIONAL PLACEMENT POINTS = 4
ADDITIONAL BONUS POINTS = 13
NEW TOTAL = 175
1983 Iowa
Although their stats are slightly lower than those of other years, the 1983 Hawks are the favorite team of many wrestling fans. Many consider it to be Gable’s best lineup, filled with hard-nosed wrestlers who were truly emblematic of the Iowa style.
The 83 Hawks had four champs in Barry Davis, Jim Zalesky, Ed Bannach and Lou Banach. Duane Goldman finished second, Harlan Kistler took third, Jim Heffernan took fourth and Tim Riley and Jeff Kerber both took fifth.
It should be noted that even though qualifying in the Big Ten was more difficult, unlike the 86 Hawks, this team managed to get all ten wrestlers through. Rico Chiaparelli was the only Iowa wrestler not to place, but he did win two matches.
This lineup rolled through the tournament with 10 pins, one tech fall (counted as a superior at the time) five superiors and seven majors.
So although their stats have technically made them take a back seat to the Iowa 86, 91 and 1997 teams, how does the sentimental favorite measure up under current scoring?
Well, Kerber, Riley and Heffernan would get them two more placement points each today and Kistler’s third place would tack on another point for a total of seven.
They’d get 10 more points for their pins, .75 for the tech fall, 1.25 for the superiors and 3.5 for the majors. That comes out to fifteen and a half more bonus points. So lets add it all up.
ALL AMERICAN PLACES = 5-1-5-3-4-1-X-2-1-1
ORIGINAL POINTS = 155
ADDITIONAL PLACEMENT POINTS = 7
ADDITIONAL BONUS POINTS = 15.5
NEW TOTAL = 177.5
So there you have it. Apples to apples, the 1983 Hawkeyes win out in a squeaker against all of Dan Gable’s other squads and deserves more abstract consideration as the best of all time.
Like any good math student, I’ve tried to “show all work “whenever possible. I’ve done this not merely to try and support the new totals I’m presenting, but also to allow readers to spot mistakes. The difference between all five teams is obviously very close, so even the smallest of errors could change the standings.
To look over brackets yourself, be sure to visit the amazing Web site WrestlingStats.com
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