Timely Updates for
Takedown Scoring and Stats Users
Fog in the NCAA Wrestling Rules Committee
We might need to tap the brakes.
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:
Avoiding undesirable scoring scenarios
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:
We don’t know where we are
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:
Which undesirable scoring scenarios? These scenarios? Any wrestling scoring scenario can be uniquely described as a sequence of scoring activity in specific periods.
How frequently do these scenarios occur now?
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.
Overtime Conundrum and Resolution
No good deed goes unpunished. In an effort to improve the college rules book, a real head-scratcher.
The NCAA Rules Committee made significant changes to overtime for the 2021-2022 season.
Two changes of interest to us are the following:
If at the end of any overtime round the scored is tied, the wrestler with one second or more of riding time advantage will be declared the winner (Rule 3.16.4). Previously, the one second rule was applied only after the first overtime round.
The first Sudden Victory period (SV-1) is two minutes in length. Previously, SV-1 was one minute.
As we considered implementing these changes in Takedown, the following question arose: what if a wrestler accumulates 60 seconds or more of riding time advantage in the first overtime around and, at the end of both tiebreaker periods, awarding the riding time point caused the score to be tied? Would the one second rule also apply and the wrestler with the riding time advantage point declared the winner?
The scoring for such a situation appears below:
We discussed this situation with the NCAA rules editor who agreed that it needed clarification which was subsequently published in the NCAA Wrestling Case Book, A.R. 3-11.
Generalizing from that interpretation:
In any overtime round in which a riding time point is awarded, Rule 3.16.4 does not apply.
In any overtime round in which a riding time point is awarded, the riding time clocks are reset to zero before proceeding, if necessary, to the next overtime round.
Each wrestler can earn a maximum of one riding time point in overtime.
This is a “corner case” for sure and isn’t expected to occur very often. But, it will happen at some point and it’s good to know how to properly score the situation.
How Fat Are College Wrestlers? 2020 - 2021 Edition
Periodic look at the weight certification data for college wrestlers.
Every once in a while we drill down into the college weight certification data. For this past season, 2020 - 2021, we looked at 8,413 wrestlers rostered by 298 NCAA and NAIA wrestling programs. This data is from the week of 3/1/2021, just in time for the Big Ten and NCAA Championships.
You can explore the data on your own here.
From this initial group, 7,907 wrestlers had a certification weight above their Minimum Weight Class (MWC), meaning these athletes must lose weight to achieve MWC. Average body fat % at certification for this group is 16.2% with a range of 14% to 29% depending on MWC.
If all wrestlers in this group dropped to their MWC, the average body fat is 7.1% with a narrow range of 6.5% to 7.7% excluding the 285 weight class. As in 2019-2020, if all wrestlers (except 285 pounders) sucked down to their MWC the fattest weight class is 125 pounds at an average 7.7% body fat.
For NCAA Division I wrestling teams, average body fat % at certification is 15.3% with a range of 13.8% to 16.2% depending on conference.
Other Fun Facts
Average roster size: 28.2
Redshirts: 20% of all rostered wrestlers
1st year of eligibility: 41% of all rostered wrestlers
Average weight of all wrestlers at certification: 175.8 pounds
Aggregate weight of all wrestlers at certification: 739 tons
Aggregate drop to get to Minimum Weight Class: 66 tons
At certification and on average, a wrestler from:
Univ of Michigan weighs more than Michigan State by 2.7 pounds
Univ of Oklahoma weighs more than Oklahoma State by .9 pounds
Iowa State weighs more than Univ of Iowa by 1.4 pounds
Penn State weight more than Ohio State by 1.6 pounds
Army weighs more than Navy by 14.2 pounds
Air Force weighs more than Navy by 1.3 pounds
More Information
How Expensive is an NCAA Division I Wrestling All-American?
Updated look at the cost of producing a NCAA Division I wrestling All-American with reference to the March 2019 championships.
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.
How Fat Are College Wrestlers?
Periodic look at the weight certification data for college wrestlers.
Every once in a while we drill down into the college weight certification data. For this past season, 2019-2020, we looked at data for 7,706 wrestlers rostered by 251 NCAA, NAIA and NJCAA wrestling programs. This data is from the week prior to NCAA Division I conference championships.
You can explore the data on your own here.
In this sample, 7,268 wrestlers have a certification weight (also called assessment weight) in excess of their Minimum Weight Class (MWC). Average body fat % at certification for this group is 15.9% with a range of 14% to 30.3% depending on MWC.
If all wrestlers in this group dropped to their MWC, the average body fat is 6.9% with a narrow range of 6.4% to 7.4% excluding the 285 weight class. Somewhat counterintuitively, at least for me, with all wrestlers (except 285 pounders) sucked down to their MWC the fattest weight class is 125 pounds at an average 7.4% body fat. Didn’t expect that.
For NCAA Division I wrestling teams, average body fat % at certification is 14.8% with a range of 13.6% to 16.7% depending on conference.
Other Fun Facts
Average roster size: 30.7
Redshirts: 19% of all rostered wrestlers
1st year of eligibility: 40% of all rostered wrestlers
Average weight of all wrestlers at certification: 174.2 pounds
Aggregate weight of all wrestlers at certification: 671 tons
Aggregate drop to get to Minimum Weight Class: 60.1 tons
Highest aggregate team weight at certification: 11,600 pounds
Highest average wrestler weight at certification, Division I: 184.1
Want to explore the data on your own?
More Information
More Leaders Needed in College Coaching
Sample NCAA Division I head coach responses to an email outreach:
Head coach 1: "I'd like to learn more about your app."
Head coach 2: "I didn't ask for this email, take me off the list"
Neither coach has a top 20 team.
Head coach 2's team website is sparsely populated with stats and their team Twitter feed lacks timely and consistently presented dual and match results.
Head coach 1 may or may not use Takedown.
But, that isn't the point. Head coach 1 is a learner.
College wrestling is in dire need of more coach 1, less coach 2 leadership. The sport can't survive with coaches that spend more time polishing their cauliflower ears than they do innovating in all aspects of their program.
We need more CEOs, fewer mat moppers.
The Cost of Breaking the Top Twenty in Division I Wrestling
How expensive are team points in the NCAA Division I Wrestling Champsionship?
Expenses associated with men's college wrestling are publicly available from the US Department of Education. Team points earned at the championship, as a measure of program performance, is also available. We wondered if there's a relationship between investment and performance using these two available metrics. And we also acknowledge that these metrics can be problematic. There are many ways to measure success and investment, some of which are difficult to quantify. We chose these two metrics because they're available and, in the case of expenses, consistently surveyed and reported. Many would agree, we think, that team points earned in the championship is a measure of program success.
Team points and program costs over the period 2013-14 through 2016-17 for the Top 20 Division I teams in 2018:
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Total Expenses
We used four years of expenses to smooth out any year-to-year aberrations. We also wanted to account for the multi-year effort required to earn team points at a specific championship.
Here's a look a the total expenses sorted in ascending order, least to most expensive:
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Team Points for Top Twenty
And, here's a look at team points earned for this group:
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Cost per Team Point
Dividing expenses by team points earned at the 2018 championship, we get:
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Wow, the cost for a team point is all over the map.
Investment v. Performance
Perhaps a better way of looking at costs v. team points is:
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Eyeballing the data (and you might eyeball differently), looks like there's a set of teams for which increased investment is resulting in higher performance measured by team points:
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Another eyeballing shows a set of teams that are spending way more than South Dakota State and achieving roughly the same results:
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Admittedly, as we said in the intro, this is just one way to look at cost-effectiveness of a Division I wrestling program. There are other, perhaps better ways. We used available data, reliably collected and reasonably applied which is a good start.
Takedown Helps Athlete Get College Scholarship
Getting a look from college coaches can be a challenge. Takedown helped one athlete get a scholarship.
From our inbox last week, a very nice and satisfying note from a head coach:
“I have used this app for a few years now. It is amazing. It played a very important role in helping one of our athletes get a scholarship to wrestle for the Univ. of Jamestown. We provided them with very detailed stats and she will be the first in her family to attend college and on scholarship!”
Good luck to this young lady as she transitions to the next level!
If you want to know how to help your athletes get to the next level by using Takedown's digital scoring and stats, see this post.
Record Video and Score Matches Simultaneously in Takedown
Just because you like sausage doesn’t mean you want to live in a sausage factory. Video is a lot like sausage.
Coaches love match video. But they don't like hauling around separate recording devices, transferring files from camcorders (or mobile devices), renaming video files, organizing video libraries and making their video library easily accessible to athletes, parents and other coaches. It's one of those love-hate things. Video consumption is valuable. Video production is a pain (and time consuming).
Integrated Video Recording/Review
Luckily, Apple's iPad is a video production powerhouse. Our upcoming Fall 2018 release will utilize the iPad's native video capabilities to offer video recording and review from within the Takedown Scoring and Stats app. This new feature address the major pain points of video production: recording, storage, labeling, organization, cloud storage and sharing.
Here's a Q&A about this exciting feature.
Demo and Early Access
If you'd like a demo or want to kick the tires, let us know by filling out this form. We expect to continue internal testing this month, offer pre-release this summer and App Store availability in October.
Unfortunate Plight of NCAA Wrestling Assistant ADs and SIDs, Part II
Another example of why NCAA athletic departments must do better and wrestling coaches need to get involved.
In November 2016, we first lamented about the regrettable job of a wrestling assistant AD or SID having to regurgitate rote scoring information that Takedown can generate in automatically. That post can be read here.
Recently, we looked at a Brown University News post about two of their duals. Here's that release with the content that Takedown does not generate highlighted in yellow.
Reciting scoring and match outcomes in 2017 is low value-added. We need more color, back-ground and in-depth content, the qualitative stuff that Takedown Scoring and Stats doesn’t provide. That’s what fans want and need.