A few things folks may wish to consider in this discussion about their apparent discontent with the first half of the season:
(1) Midlands used to be THE holiday tourney. PSU, Okie St, Cornell, Mizzou et al. made Southern Scuffle a solid (arguably better) competitor. But teams also have CKLV and Reno to choose from. And then the National Duals essentially shifted from mid/late January to the holiday season. PSU left the Scuffle for that option, and it was downhill from there for the Scuffle. Brands got pissed about Midlands being canceled last year, so Iowa had added yet another holiday tourney to the options. Look, this is really simple — there are simply too many options available
to teams to get in a good multi-day event before their conference dual season kicks in. There was no analogous spike in the number of D1 men’s wrestling teams to saturate all the excess opportunity. The field could only get watered down.
(2) If PSU put a dinged-up or injured guy on the mat for a holiday event and put himself at risk of a serious setback or even a season-ending, proverbial nail in the coffin, would you feel like that was a good, responsible decision by the staff to put him out there?
(3) Subjective, personal “boiling points” aside, where is the evidence that the sport of wrestling is being harmed by “ducking” and “non-participation”? Any empirical data to back up this claim? Dollars, butts in seats, number of competitors in the sport? Something other than “Well, I was looking forward to that prospective matchup and it didn’t happen, so I’m pissed”?
(4) I’ve been following college wrestling fairly closely for a little over 20 years, too — guys sitting unexpectedly is absolutely not anything new. See #1 above for what is new.
(5) As someone notes earlier, some cool stuff happened in November and December. And it usually does.
(6) Wrestlers are starting younger, training hard younger, competing all over the place younger, and coming into college more battle-tested than ever. Perhaps the toll on the body is showing up sooner. The days of 30-40 match seasons in college are long gone and not coming back.
Anyway, I think people should remember that most spectators of the sport are family, friends, former wrestlers, and diehard fans. It’s been that way a long time. Casual fans come and go, and I really doubt the “non-participation” epidemic is really as bad as some are making it out to be. When Nationals can’t sell out and sees a substantial reduction in television coverage, then maybe I’ll raise a concerned eyebrow. I think the trajectory is still upward, though.