Producing a Division I Wrestling All-American is Expensive

Back in 2016 we first looked at the cost of producing a Division I wrestling All-American. Here we update that analysis for the most recent Division I Championship in March 2019.

Of the 70 participating teams, the twenty most expensive programs collectively spent about $32.3 million annually (averaged over four years).

These programs captured 59 (74%) of the All-American awards at the 2019 Championships.

On average, this group of teams invests roughly $521,000 annually per All-American with a range of $322,000 to $1.86 million.

Most Efficient College Wrestling Programs

Many of the most expensive programs are also pretty efficient at producing All-Americans. However, the two most efficient programs — Princeton and Cornell — aren’t in the group of the twenty most expensive programs.

We can also look at how much it costs to produce a team point in the championship. This metric encompasses more teams than cost per All-American. The chart below compares annual expenses (averaged over four years) versus championship team points.

The line on the chart is statistically fitted to the data (though the fit isn’t great) and attempts to show the average relationship between expenses and team points. To the extent that this line is meaningful, it is desire-able to operate above or the the left of the line as this represents above average performance. Conversely, operating below the line represents below average performance. Again, the line doesn’t fit the data very precisely so these conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt.

Know Your Numbers

Wrestling has been under assault for quite some time. When we did this analysis back in 2016, Boise State’s program had just been terminated. Recently, Stanford’s wrestling program has been threatened with discontinuance justified, in large measure, on financial grounds. It helps to know where you stand in terms of delivering results for funds invested when your program’s future hangs in the balance.