Penn State crowned four individual champs at the NCAA Wrestling Championships over the weekend in St. Louis, and the Nittany Lions finished second to Iowa in the team standings. The Hawkeyes had one individual champion.
PSU became the first team to have four individual champions and not win the NCAA team title, which leads to an interesting question about whether the NCAA scoring system might be flawed a bit.
The champion at each weight gets 16 points, the runner-up 12 points and the third-place finisher 10 points. With only a 6-point differential between the champion and third place, can we ask the question of whether the winner should receive more points?
This isn’t about complaining that Penn State got robbed somehow. It’s merely a question about math and rules.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.Iowa has the deeper team and won fair and square. For wrestling fans who happen upon this, PLEASE understand the value of the discussion as opposed to getting ultra defensive about the sport.
The team competition was already over before the finals had even begun Saturday night, and that was with PSU having four finalists. What we discuss in the podcast is if more value should be given to the winner in each weight, such as, say, 20 points for the champion. Because it seems like the 16-12-10 breakdown doesn’t seem to give the actual winner enough credit.
Andy Stine joined “Sports Central with Cory Giger” on WRTA in Altoona to discuss all of this and wrap up the Lions’ season.
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