Tramel's ScissorTales: OU wrestling has fallen, and it's not likely to get up
OU wrestling is looking for a new coach. Lou Rosselli resigned this week after seven years on the job.
Only a hearty few still are invested in Sooner wrestling, but some of them have questions. My OU sources provided some answers.
Was Rosselli fired or did he just tire of being ridden in the new order of NCAA wrestling?
OU says no. But Rosselli offered no clues on why he’s leaving or where he’s going. He said in a statement only that he had hoped to accomplish more and is optimistic about the future of Sooner wrestling.
Rosselli was unsuccessful by any measurement. If he wasn’t fired, why wasn’t he? OU athletics has high standards.
The OU administration is frustrated at the lack of success but also at the lack of support. I don’t know if someone can invigorate the program with more energy and personality than Rosselli displayed, but in many ways, the job has become thankless.
OU wrestling is a program with lots of tradition, but tradition that is getting further and further from the present. Think UCLA football or North Carolina State basketball.
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Will Joe Castiglione consider dropping the sport?
No, Castiglione said. He’s looking for a new coach.
But it’s a solid question. Only 78 schools compete in NCAA Division I wrestling. In the Southeastern Conference, where the Sooners are headed in July 2024, only Missouri wrestles.
Heck, in the Big 12, only OU, OSU, West Virginia and Iowa State wrestle, which is why schools like North Dakota State, Wyoming, Air Force, South Dakota State, Utah Valley, Northern Iowa, California Baptist and Northern Colorado have joined the Big 12 as auxiliary members for wrestling. Missouri, too.
Will OU stay in the Big 12 for wrestling?
The Sooners hope to. They have applied for affiliate membership. When Missouri left the Big 12 in summer 2012, Tiger wrestling was not allowed to compete in the Big 12. Mizzou spent a decade in Mid-American Conference wrestling before returning to the Big 12 this past season.
It’s in the Big 12 wrestling schools’ best interest to keep the Sooners around, just for the warm bodies if nothing else.
In the 1970s, seven of the Big Eight members fielded wrestling teams. That was down to five in the in the 1980s. When Nebraska went to the Big Ten and Missouri to the SEC, Big 12 wrestling was endangered.
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What happened to OU wrestling?
The balance of power in NCAA wrestling has shifted north and east. The Big Ten dominates the sport.
A Big Ten school has won every NCAA wrestling title since 2006, the last of OSU’s four straight titles. In that time, Penn State has won 10, Iowa four, Ohio State and Minnesota one each.
But even before that, the Midlands’ hold on the sport was slipping. Before the Cowboys’ four-peat, either Iowa or Minnesota had won 12 of the previous 13 NCAA championships.
Iowa’s ascension in the late 1970s ended Big Eight rule. From 1928-77, OSU, Iowa State or OU won 38 of the 47 NCAA titles contested.
The Cowboys won 26 outright and shared one with Iowa State. OU won seven. Iowa State won four and shared the one with OSU.
Lots of factors go into Big Ten domination, including the Big Ten itself having a full slate of teams. All 14 Big Ten teams wrestle. The Big Ten Championships are a virtual mini-NCAAs.
High school wrestling in Oklahoma (and Iowa) remains strong, but it doesn’t have the monopoly it once had, with the upper Midwest and East Coast (New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York) producing far more elite wrestlers, perhaps just because of population.
I mean, OSU’s wrestling status has slipped. If OSU wrestling is going to slip, how is OU wrestling not going to avoid an avalanche?
The Sooners have produced three all-Americans since 2016: Don Demas, Jake Woodley and Anthony Mantanona. OU has produced just two NCAA champions since 2005: Cody Brewer at 133 pounds in 2015 and Kendric Maple at 141 pounds in 2013.
Those individual titles were under coach Mark Cody, who was fired in 2016.
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Stan Abel coached the Sooners to the 1974 NCAA championship. From 1981-86, Abel’s Sooners finished second, second, fourth, fifth, second and second in the NCAAs.
But the program stagnated in the early 1990s. Jack Spates was hired in 1993 and produced some good teams. From 2000-2006, OU finished third in the NCAA four times and fourth twice.
But the fan base aged and withered. Wrestling once was OU’s second-most popular sport among fans. Soon enough, that gave way to basketball, then baseball. Women’s sports arrived, and you know that story well.
Sherri Coale’s women’s basketball teams were all the rage, and these days, K.J. Kindler’s gymnastics team draws rousing crowds and Patty Gasso’s softball team has become the Beatles circa 1964.
The idea that wrestling once stood behind only football in campus popularity seems quaint and antiquated.
Here are the OU’s NCAA finishes since 2006.
Under Spates: 33rd in 2007, 39th in 2008, 31st in 2009, fifth in 2010 and 16th in 2011.
Under Cody: 13th in 2012, 12th in 2013, 10th in 2014, 18th in 2015, 13th in 2016.
Under Rosselli, who had been an Ohio State assistant coach: 32nd in 2017, 56th in 2018, 25th in 2019, 24th in 2021, 29th in 2022, 40th in 2023.
Things are getting worse instead of better. The Sooners are finishing far behind not just the Big Ten schools, but the likes of Virginia Tech and Cornell and North Carolina State. Even Missouri, forever the fifth-best team in a five-team Big Eight, is far superior to the Sooner program.
And now OU is headed to the SEC, which means more of an uncertain future.
Coaching Sooner wrestling is a tough job, and it’s getting tougher by the year.
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Pac-12 Conference waits to continue
The Pac-12 television contract ends in summer 2024. No new deal has been announced and won’t be, ESPN reported Thursday, for a few more months.
I’ve been steadfast in believing the Pac-12 will stick together and expand. I’m still in that camp. But every day – or month – that goes by without a new contract cuts away at Pac-12 stability.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark has not hid his desire for westward Big 12 expansion. And the delayed Pac-12 contract only increases Yormark’s negotiating power.
With Southern Cal and UCLA headed to the Big Ten in summer 2024, the Pac-12 was in the same precarious situation as the Big 12 in July 2021. But the Big 12 rallied; added Central Florida, Brigham Young, Cincinnati and Houston in September 2021; hired Yormark to replace the retiring Bob Bowlsby last summer; and announced a television contract extension with ESPN and Fox last autumn, even though the Big 12’s deal went into summer 2025, a full year after the Pac-12 expiration.
In other words, the Big 12 has operated at a much faster pace than has the Pac-12.
Is that good strategy? Who knows? Time will tell us.
But the Big 12’s strategy absolutely brought solidarity to a staggering conference, and the Big 12’s future seems secure.
Meanwhile, the Pac-12's strategy has sown questions and doubt, even after the Big Ten seemed to put the brakes on immediate further expansion, which could have included Oregon and Washington.
A new television contract, in the same general financial neighborhood as what the Big 12 received, would seemingly make the Big 12 less attractive to Arizona State, Arizona, Utah and Colorado, the four-corner schools that have been prominently mentioned as Big 12 expansion candidates.
But financial fear is what has driven conference realignment for decades, and with each passing day without a new Pac-12 television contract, the four-corner schools must wonder if the clock is ticking.
It only takes one school to waver for Pac-12 solidarity to crumble.
Whatever is holding up a Pac-12 TV contract – financial terms, distribution, a reluctant school or two – is keeping the Big 12 expansion flame burning.
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Mailbag: OU’s 2023 schedule
Fans responded to my column on the 2023 OU football schedule being the easiest in Sooner history.
Mike: “Analysis over time supports easier. Agree. And your words include transfer portal adding variables that can't be analyzed cleanly. NIL and transfers are flattening the bell curve. Variance is increasing around the mean. Twelve games is a very small sample size. NIL, the portal, the probability of outliers. Each of those easier teams are used to ‘playing up’ two times a year. And each is only a few players short of being a nasty surprise. There's some honey badgers in the woods we can't see until mid-September.”
Tramel: True. These are turbulent times. We know that programs have a short adjustment period when moving up to the Power Five Conference level, and we know that the transfer portal boldly impacts a roster. What we don’t know is how the transfer portal can impact a program moving up from, say, the American Conference to the Big 12.
All of which makes 2023 Big 12 football a fascinating test case. But until further notice, I stand by what I wrote. With six opponents who were not in a power conference last season, this figures to be the easiest schedule in OU football history.
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The List: Big 12 transfer exits
Big 12 basketball is not immune from the mass transfer portal exodus around the nation. Here are the 10 most prominent Big 12 players who have entered the portal:
1. L.J. Cryer, Baylor: Averaged 15.0 and 13.5 points per game the last two years, while shooting .425 from 3-point range.
2. Fardaws Aimas, Texas Tech: Red Raider big man was limited to 11 games by injury, but he averaged 27.5 minutes, 11.1 points and 7.9 rebounds.
3. Avery Anderson, OSU: Defensive whiz played in 109 career games, averaging 25.2 minutes. His shooting wasn’t great (.264 3-point for his career) but he was an effective driver, averaging 9.7 points for his career.
4. Kalib Boone, OSU: Third-team all-Big 12 as a senior but wildly inconsistent. Boone has played in 123 career games, averaging 7.8 points, including 10.6 in 2022-23.
5. Jalen Hill, OU: Defensive specialist played in 122 games, making 73 starts, and became a solid offensive player the last two years, averaging 9.4 points and 5.8 rebounds.
6. Daniel Batcho, Texas Tech: Red Raider center averaged 24.4 minutes, 7.9 points and 5.9 rebounds in 2022-23.
7. Ismael Massoud, Kansas State: Power forward played well in KSU’s NCAA Tournament run; in two K-State years, he averaged 19.7 minutes and 6.1 points.
8. Shahada Wells, TCU: Energetic wing averaged 17.3 minutes and 5.9 points a game for the 2022-23 Horned Frogs. He scored 17 points in TCU’s victory at Kansas.
9. Caleb Grill, Iowa State: Cyclone sharpshooter averaged 9.5 points and shot .368 from deep this past season but left the team late in the year due to mental health issues.
10. Eddie Lampkin, TCU: Horned Frog center averaged 6.6 points, 6.1 rebounds and 21.6 minutes per game but left the team late in the season.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OU wrestling fall isn't tied to now-departed coach Lou Rosselli
