2018 NCAA Division I Wrestling Committee Annual Report

Click to access 2018DIMWR_Annual_Mtg_Report_20180725.pdf

Some of these recommendations are huge:

1. Allowing up to four weekends worth of multiple duals (over a three-day period now) to count as a single date of competition. (this will free up more dates of competition for institutions, and allow for more home dates…note that they want this effective for this season, however, as of yet, the required legislation has not been filed)

2. Seeding all 33 wrestlers in each weight class, with wrestlers seeded 29-33 being randomly drawn into brackets, and only wrestlers seeded in that bottom five can be assigned to pigtails.

3. Weigh-ins will now be two hours prior to competition for each day of the NCAA Championships.

There’s other information in here, but most of the rest of it is back-end stuff that the fans won’t immediately notice.

Rep. Jim Jordan’s accuser: A personal story.

By Britt Malinsky:

Let me preface this by stating that I am a Democrat, and, politically, agree with virtually nothing Jim Jordan has ever said within the halls of the United States Capitol. I don’t usually like to talk about politics in this space, however, when politics and wrestling intersect, as they do here, this discussion is unavoidable.

The AGON Wrestling Championships were an ill-fated venture of Mike DiSabato, one of the accusers of the Congressman. AGON III took place on January 26th, 2014, at Kachel Gymnasium, in Whitewater, Wisconsin. Initially, attendance was reported as being 3,413. However, the official capacity of Kachel Gymnasium was (and still is) 2,495. At this point, I responded by asking where the fire marshall citation was, knowing darned well that the attendance figure mentioned was preposterous. Mr. DiSabato, who was the founder of AGON, came back by saying something along the lines of Williams Center (the building containing Kachel Gymnasium) was a big place (I can’t find the actual tweet, unfortunately). I pressed the issue, and eventually got a response from one of Mr. DiSabato’s staff people, Kevin Schlosser, stating that the actual attendance for AGON III was 1,085, and the 3,413 number came from everybody entering the building, such as students using the adjacent weight room and recreation center, for example.

This is an exceedingly small issue, of course, but it lends me to believe that the person making the accusation is simply not credible, and using this situation for attention. As the saying goes, you can only cry wolf so many times before nobody is going to believe you. The fact that Mr. DiSabato would outright lie about something so trivial tells me that he would also lie about something as big as this.

Note: The first tweet of the Twitter exchange can be found at https://twitter.com/Britt_Malinsky/status/427694678767443968, and the rest can be found at https://twitter.com/TheNotoriousMHD/status/427695324082081792. The actual attendance figure was sent from Kevin in an e-mail. For further information on Mr. DiSabato’s character, I encourage you to read up on the rest of his tweets as well.

Further, anybody else who has a story they would like to tell, feel free to mention in the comments below.

Britt Malinsky is the Editor-in-Chief of WrestlingByPirate.