Fog in the NCAA Wrestling Rules Committee

Recently, the NCAA wrestling rules committee proposed a slate of rule changes some of which involve scoring. Specifically, the committee proposed (1) increasing the point value for a takedown from two to three and (2) conditioning the riding time advantage point on earning a near fall.

One might reasonably assume the committee knows exactly what they’re trying to accomplish with these fundamental changes, and that they’ve developed some measurable success metrics.

Need for Situational Awareness

Various coaches, including the committee chair, have expressed the goals of the scoring changes as some variation of:

1. Avoiding undesirable scoring scenarios

2. Increasing excitement or ‘action’

These are meritorious goals to be sure.

So, let’s do it!

Not so fast.

The issue with proceeding might be twofold:

1. We don’t know where we are

2. We don’t know where we want to be

Data Free Decision-Making

Consider the goal of “avoiding undesirable scoring scenarios.“

Three questions should be answered before adopting a scoring change:

1. Which undesirable scoring scenarios? These scenarios? Any wrestling scoring scenario can be uniquely described as a sequence of scoring activity in specific periods.

2. How frequently do these scenarios occur now?

3. How frequently should these scenarios occur in the future?

Same argument goes for “increasing excitement or action.” What exactly does this mean?

Answering these questions revolves around collecting and analyzing data — readily available in Trackwrestling — and setting explicit objectives. For example, the committee might say:

“We want to reduce the occurrence of situations in which (describe scoring sequence here) is sufficient to win the match. Currently, this occurs in X% of all college matches. Our goal is to reduce this by (insert goal here). We are proposing (insert rule change here) to achieve this goal by (insert timeframe here).”

If this work hasn’t been done, then it is a matter of fact that we will never know if the proposed changes, if adopted, are effective.

And, that’s a bad outcome for wrestling.