March 30, 2011
Wrestling, Sport for Our Times
Men wearing nearly nothing, coached by men who make next to nothing.
The official sport of the "new normal" recently held its annual championships in Philadelphia. Think of college wrestling as the athletic version of an austerity program. Wearing almost nothing, coached by men who make next to nothing, and with no hope of professional careers because they don't exist, 33 competitors in each weight class arrived on the mats of the NCAA tournament.
Of course, all but one in each of the 10 weight classes left disappointed. As consolation prizes, many received significant facial bruising and at least one, defending champion Darrion Caldwell of North Carolina State, a dislocated shoulder.
Was anyone helped by quantitative easing? Not really. Some easing occurred when Arizona State's Bubba Jenkins released his cradle and stopped forcing his opponent to touch his knee to his head. But that was because the referee had signalled a pin to end the match, so Mr. Jenkins could afford to be accommodative.
Since the financial crisis, many Americans have talked about a return to traditional values like thrift, prudence and hard work. You can't get more traditional than wrestling. Even before Odysseus and Ajax grappled to a draw in Homer's Iliad, even before wrestling was a fan favorite at the ancient Olympics, cavemen scrawled images of prehistoric bouts.
Prudence? Experience in this sport teaches that one small mistake can result in a wrestler being thrown to his back. As for thrift, many competitors and coaches weren't even spending money on shampoo, their shaved heads gleaming under the lights of the Wells Fargo Center. Hard work? These guys have to train for "man's oldest form of recreational combat" on a diet.
Sports fans still struggling with unemployment close to 9% may find that wrestling has a new appeal in this environment. NFL players and owners still haven't agreed on how to split $9 billion. In baseball, just two players, Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo, are scheduled to earn a combined $18 million from the New York Mets?even though neither one was good enough to make this year's team.
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Associated Press
Arizona State's Bubba Jenkins, bottom, flips Penn State's David Taylor during their NCAA finals match in Philadelphia.
Major college sports can also leave fans scratching their heads. The University of Tennessee just fired its men's basketball coach for a series of alleged violations of NCAA rules, but it still gave him a settlement of close to $1 million as a parting gift. Most wrestling coaches don't make that much in a decade. In 2008, the Des Moines Register found that the average annual salary for a college head coach was less than $70,000.
Fans who give wrestling a try may find that it offers all of the excitement of other sports. It is pure joy to watch kids like Penn State's David Taylor, a redshirt freshman who seemed to be without fear as he charged undefeated through the college season and into the NCAA final. Unfortunately for him, that's where he ran into the aforementioned Mr. Jenkins.
The low-budget nature of wrestling also makes it an efficient vehicle for charity. Clinton Matter was a two-time champion of the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association in the 1990s at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined with a group of friends in 2009 to start an organization called Beat the Streets Philadelphia, which supports youth wrestling programs as well as inner-city high school teams.
Mr. Matter, who works on Wall Street and serves as chairman of the organization, reports that he and his friends are supporting programs in Philadelphia and in nearby Camden, N.J., that provide opportunities for 475 wrestlers. They accept grapplers as young as four years of age, and they don't turn anyone away.
The organization buys mats, often used, for about $7,000 apiece and gets insurance for $35 per child. A deal with Philadelphia's Department of Recreation means the group doesn't pay rent on city gyms. A pair of wrestling shoes costs $15, protective headgear is $10, and another $50 provides warm-ups and a wrestling uniform called a singlet. Another $20 buys a pair of shorts and a t-shirt for practice. Since some of the gear can be reused, the group can now add a child to the program for about $75 per year.
The kids learn the virtues of discipline, hard work and accountability?all the qualities they'll need as they grow up. They might even help a prosperous America become the next normal.
Mr. Freeman is assistant editor of the Journal's editorial page
Source: http://www.usawks.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=210389
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