The vote this spring will be by the NSAA board of control, which represents certain regions of the state. Contrary to popular belief, the NSAA itself does not legislate what happens with rules. The Board of Control represents the schools in the NSAA. So in order to make sure this gets through, you need to talk to your coach and have him talk to the athletic director. The Board is going to vote based on what the member schools want. There's been a lot of great points made on here for the move, esp in regards to parity. If you wrestling fans and especially you coaches, want this done then you have the opportunity to make it happen. It needs a push and you have the opportunity to make a change for Nebraska HS wrestling that is going to effect the future of the sport. I am hoping that Craig Sesker's last order of business will be to help influence this decision for the future of Nebraska wrestling. Hopefully he will voice his opinion before he leaves.

Fellow coaches and wrestling enthusiasts,

I am sure that the kneejerk reaction here is to follow Ross' lead on this one. However, I think, in this case, discression is the better part of valor. Remember this, folks, Ross is a journalist and a wrestling fan. All things being equal, he would like to see one class in Nebraska, sort of the KING OF THE HILL scenerio.
BUT this is not what Nebraska is built around. It is built around a system that was designed for all sports. It wasn't built on wrestling alone.

I am NOT SAYING THAT WE SHOULDN'T MOVE to another system, however, we should do our homework before he make the move. In this case, I would like to see the data so that we can, collectively, make the best decision we can make. I don't think this is too much to ask. I have asked Ross many questions that are data related, and he has given me nothing at this time. Most businesses and even schools, these days, are data driven. In this case, if you look at the Auburn proposal, you will see that none of it is data driven.

I certainly cannot interpret things like "parity" in numbers. And I think we need to look at the numbers. See, folks, what we are doing is basically throwing the school size formula out the door, and what is driving it? You would be off base if you didn't think it was one school. Right now legislation exists on a larger scale for this very issue. The Catholic Schools multiplier is legislation out there to combat the problem, and in a wise move, our school administrators are taking a cautious look at it. What will it mean in the long run and what are the implications.

This recent legislation might be similar in nature. But lets do a thorough investigation before we make a final decision.

How will moving the number impact the quality of the wrestling in the other classes?

Is the difference between the 40th team and the first team enrollment wise fair in comparison with the other classes?

What if the problem indicated in class A right now becomes the problem in C or D...then have we attacked the problem the right way?

Is the problem in wrestling only a problem in wrestling? Why have we isolated from the other sports?

What if the problem indicated in wrestling is a similar problem in football?

Anyway, we could go on and on...heck who knows...maybe we should make each of the classes equal in amount of schools....maybe we should add a D-2 or C-2 like they did in basketball and football? Maybe the numbers warrant it.......

The questions abound here folks.....All I am saying is that we need to make sure that we make a well informed decision. If you read Ross' post, his information is kind of a propaganda technique: "If Sesker says it is good, then it has to be good!" Far as I know folks, this surely doesn't deal with numbers.

Let's look at the data and make the most informed decision we can make...we owe it to wrestling and we owe it to our constituents!

Class A
1997 Class A has four teams with less than 13 points at state

1998 Kearney wins Class A by 70, five teams score less than 13 points

1999 Omaha North wins Class A by 30, three teams score less than five points

2000 Burke wins Class A by 40, ten teams score less than 26 points

2001 The top two teams in Class A win by 45 over third place, only competitive team race in the past 9 years. Five teams score less than 5 points.

2002 Lincoln East wins by 30 points. Two teams score zero points. Eight teams score less than 26 points

2003 Lincoln East wins by 46 points. Ten teams score less than 25 points at state.

2004 Lincoln East finishes 74 points ahead of the third place team finisher and 20.5 ahead of runner-up Millard South. Ten teams score less than 25 points.

2005 Millard South wins by 60 points. Five teams score less than 5 points at state.

2006 Millard South wins by 93 points. Twelve teams finish with less than 25 points.

I make the case for a call for parity here-because right now Class A is consistently wrestling with about 24 teams. The team races are non-existent and it didn’t just start two years ago. I see this pattern continuing for as long as there are 32 teams in A.

I can add what this would do to the blowout Class B team races we’ve seen over the past nine years as well.

Right now I am working on getting the total number of Class A wrestlers over the past nine years with losing records at state and specifically those that have wrestled less than 10 matches going into state.

Ross...I guess the only question I have about your previous post is: how many legit team races have we had in ANY of the four classes over the last several years? This year's D race came down to the finals, and that's the first one we've had in 4-5 years that I can recall. For the last several years, team races have been a foregone conclusion by Saturday morning.

Whether that is a strike for or against moving to 40 schools, I don't know. I guess I would be more inclined to look at the number of losing records each class' qualifiers have had since the restructuring (throwing out 1996, or course, when A was 24). Looking at this year's numbers, Class A had more than the other three classes combined and would probably have had about half that if A was 40 this year instead of 32.

And now that I'm trying to figure numbers in my head, I think I'm getting a headache...

Obviously B hasn't been close. Off the top of my head there have been several very good C and D races over the past several years. What the Class A 40 teams would do is not only make Class A more competitive, it would also have a trickle down effect that would make all the other classes more competitive from a team and individual qualifying view as well.

The problems you are pointing out about teams not scoring points at state will always be there no matter how many schools are in Class A. The only way to do away with that is to make the schools that can't score any points drop their wrestling program and then that would automatically moves teams up from the lower classes. I don't think NSAA or anyone else is in favor of that. Several teams in every class do not field a serious wrestling team, but it seems to only draw attention in Class A. When you talk parity are you talking parity on school size or how competitive each school can be? Most states create classes based on a parity in school size. You seem to be wanting to create classes based on competition parity. I am in agreement with grapplinman on this one.

I know it is that fashionable right now to bash on claaa A. But is it really justified? The 5th place team in class A, Kearney beat most of what made up the top ten in B. Honestly the top 5 teams in A could compete with anyone other than Skutt. Also look at the kids who won titles in A. If I were to match up class to class this year I would go with A.
Is the real problem parity or is it kids jumping ship going to other schools? Maybe something needs to be done to make it harder to change schools.

just an idea, how about they make the classes by the number of athletes competing in wrestling instead of school size??? this way it would be more fair for the schools like omaha roncalli catholic or whatever there names are that have like 5 kids out

Grapplerman you keep asking for data. Where is your data? HB has been providing data. He showed the percentage of losing records in each class and now the difference in team races. You have not shown any data other than saying A records are worse because they wrestle each other. Well in the other classes they wrestle each other all the time to. My son wrestled for a C school and they see the same team 6 times during the season. And other sports are like comparing apples and oranges. Each sport has different numbers in the classes.

That would seem like the fair thing to do harw however it would probably create more ethical problems and not really solve that much.

I can just see it now... coaches cutting kids left and right and limiting the number of freshmen who go out just to make a lower classification. It'd end up being a huge mess.

I would also say that adding 8 teams is a very small but subtle shift. Its not 15 and its not 20 teams. You're effecting a very small number of schools in an attempt to fix the problems that currently exist.

BAM you bring up an excellent point about Kearney. Isn't that the way it should be? Larger schools and individuals beating their smaller counterparts? The problem is that Class A has been running at 75% since they switched the classification from 24 to 32 teams. Certainly you're not going to make the argument that the bottom 5-10 teams in Class A could beat the top Class B, C and D schools are you? Therein lies the problem. Every year you're going to have a bunch of teams in A that stink up the joint-the problem is that in Class A its magnified so greatly because of the small number of teams.

I love your logic HB...we take the bottom of a class and say that they can not beat the top of another class. Therefore we should add more to that class so that we can have more competition at the top...so lets step away from Nebraska wrestling for a minute and apply some of your logic to other sports prgrams and divisions. Lets start with Division I football. We take the top Division II or Division III schools that are annually dominating the scene and move them up so that we get some more parity in some conferences like the WAC, MAC, etc. That way those conference and teams could compete with the big boys like the Big 10, Big 12, SEC, etc. They would have a better chance of winning the BCS. We could have more parity in Division I because those weak teams that we have there are ruining college football. See how stupid that is?

There are always going to be the top teams, middle teams and bottom teams. That it how it is set up. You are always going to have diffrent divisions and class systems.

Are there going to be injustices in all cases...sure, but just because HB and others are tired of seeing Skutt win the title, we should not look at making changes to the classification system. It impacts more sports and activities than wrestling! Would it be fair to those 8 teams that you are trying to get added to A to have to play Millard North, Papillion, Creighton Prep, Norfolk, etc. every Friday night? Do you want to have those 8 track teams trying to beat Kearney every year? Do they even have pools for the swimming teams? How about baseball? Drama and debate?

You can see that the list gets complicated when it becomes inclusive of other sports!

I know you grew up in a small town HB, but just because its not fair to have Skutt winning all the time, that is not a reason to get all worked up. Your numbers do not hold true when you skew the data. What you take from one class and add to another has a rippling effect that will be felt down the line!

I suppose that we can argue until the cows come home about all this.....and I don't have any cows.....and Granby....I sure in the heck don't know wrasslin....

I had posted some data previous to this post and it really didn't make much difference. Anyway, the overall win % in the test group I did on class A was nearly 69% win. Then I did the other classes and they were between 71 and 73%....If you analzye this data, my learned Granby, you would be hard pressed to see the glaring problem that is suggested by the proposal. You will need to go back to the proposal and stick to the verbage used therein....if we want to argue other stuff...we can, but let's argue the proposal only.

Wrasslin your comparison is stupid. We all know that comparing wrestling and football in terms of competition is silly. Before you were a proponent of eliminating all classes....now you're saying that these divisons are a good thing? You of all people seemed to be set on the "we can't move forward unless we eliminate classes" and now you're saying the complete opposite. You're falling into the trap of saying "we can't legislate wrestling individually." Once again, why? Its a unique sport. Its not track and its certainly not football. I could care less about what's happening with track, its not my concern. Let the people that know that sport recognize the problems if they exist and move forward. They've legislated wrestling individually in the past-now we have a small minority of people that don't want Class A 40 teams so we start saying, no we can't do that? C'mon dog.

Good points have been made on both sides.

I truly believe we should be at 4 classes in all sports.

What are the magic numbers I do not know.

Coops and schools not offering all activities bring other factors into the equation.

Has ther been any thought to going straight enrollment?

Any school 700 and up Class A
250-599 Class B
150-249 Class C
149--below Class D

Just purely for discussion purposes.


Remeber Stats can say what you want them to say.

I have 2 brother who are accounts..favorite answer to what is 2 + 2? What do you want it to be?

Yo yo yo Homey. My dog! Are you watching too much American idol? Ok Randy, I mean Ross, the way I see it dog, is that you are not getting the picture. SO let me clear up my position. I am all for a one class system in Nebraska. I still favor the idea of only 1 champion per weight class and one team Champion. We all know that will never happen because of the feel good factor in this state! Now if we are going to look at any changes, you must examine your logic. You want to make this just about wrestling and so we should reclassify so that you can get Skutt our of B. I know that last year when Brad chewed your ear, you got your feelings hurt, I just never realized you would try and reclassify them. Do you really think it makes much difference to them what class they are in? They will win whatever class they are in. That is without question.

Your reason for moving them is flawed. If you want to so something DOG to support wrestling in Nebraska, you would get behind the ONE CLASS movement. But agin, your small town boy upbringing keeps you wanting to name a champ in those small school classes. You just want to get Skutt out of there...Those Bullies!

Out,

G Dog!

You're not going to make the one class thing happen. I'm for 3 classes but one is not realistic. Skutt is a small portion of this argument and they fit into the parity idea here. They could, if they chose to do so, opt up to Class A for wrestling. To my knowledge they've never inquired or asked about it. My understanding is they think Class B is tougher which is sort of true and sort of not true. You act like I put forth the legislation. I see the logic in this but its not my doing. Truth is this issue has been on the table for a number of years now and I'm just along for the ride. What you fail to see is that its a move towards a three class system which is going to happen within 10 years regardless. And no I don't think it matters what class they're in-they'll win a team title. What does matter is they draw from a pool of wrestlers that is far beyond almost every other Class B school's reach. Not one person can deny that. 40 Class A teams is the next best step for everyone in the state.

Ross...I know that you are not the one that is going to write, pass, vote on, etc. any of the legislation. The fact that you are hoping Craig can say something that would have an impact shows just how much you do not understand the politics in this whole thing. If coaches even think they have a say, they are wrong. It comes down to the administrators and AD's at the schools.

To try and go to a three class system is not going to work either! Like I said, if you are a true supporter of wrestling, you would promote and support a very competetive state meet that has value! One class is what is needed!

Support that and use your PR vehicle to make that happen! That is the only voice you really have!

Coaches, dont forget that if you move the top B teams up, then approximately an equal number of C teams will move to B along with D teams moving to C. HB does not speak for coaches like he thinks he does.I see it causing more problems than it will solve.In class A you already have teams with a student base of over 2500 competing with teams down under 800 or 900 students.You are proposing we move teams like Gering,Alliance,Hastings, some of whos projected student base numbers will be under 700 and smaller into A and telling them to compete with teams like Lincoln Southwest, the Milliard schools(several of which have 60-70 kids out for wrestling),etc with much higher numbers along with the ability to fill holes with transfers.That doesn't sound very equitable to me.As a coach I'm against it, and I would ask that you not put a whole lot of credence into what a wrestling media guy who has no connection to any coaching staff or administration has to say, but ask some of the coaches/administrations that will be effected in each class what they think.HB, if you want to use your forum as a soapbox "to improve wrestling" in the state, then work on getting rid of open enrollment and the recruiting that goes on in athletics including wrestling as a way of leveling the playing field back like it used to be.

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