I would love to see us dump a crap load of $$$ into an Olympic sport (comparatively speaking) and become dominant in that sport. I don't even care what it is - just pick one and go all-in (times 10).
I mean, Youngstown State won the 2025 NCAA bowling championship. Their head coach makes $50,000 a year. We couldn't spend $1 million a year and completely own that? Same thing with rifle, beach volleyball (ocean adjacent TCU just won that), water polo, etc, etc.
Wrestling probably has the most local talent but lol @ the suggestion that it would draw more popularity than baseball
The more storied wrestling programs in this nation (Iowa, OSU, Penn State, NC State, Michigan) do it easily so it's not even a new precedent, especially considering our baseball team has not been historically that good. Hell, Iowa State averages over 6,500 at their home wrestling meets and drew over 14,000 when they hosted Iowa. Back when they had a baseball team, the best numbers I can find suggest an average attendance of 4,000 people. Nebraska regularly draws over 6,000 to wrestling and averages 4,500 to their baseball games. Mizzou averages over 3,000 for wrestling and 1,500 for home baseball games. Tointon still doesn't average over 2,000 for our home games in the last decade, and that number is above our historical average.
There is no evidence to indicate that if we were to become the only D1 wrestling program in the state that we would not follow a similar path to our regional counterparts and regularly have a higher attendance for wrestling than we would for baseball.
I admittedly do not have numbers to refute you but I still find the suggestion improbable.
Serious question; why?
I knew your initial response wasn't going to be accurate for the big boys, but you made me curious and so I let my ADD take over on this Friday afternoon. There are 78 D1 wrestling programs in the US for the 10 weight divisions recognized by the NCAA. After listing them all out I removed all the private schools or the crazy small public ones. That left us with 44 schools. The military academies didn't publish number for baseball attendance so I removed them. The same goes for Utah Valley, Appalachian State, North Dakota, Northern and Southern Illinois, and Ohio University. That leaves us with 35 regular sized D1 schools with both baseball and wrestling with published attendance numbers for both sports.
Out of those 35, only 12 reported higher average baseball attendance numbers than wrestling. They were Oregon State (3,679 to 2,116), North Carolina (2,439 to 1,652), Arizona State (3,667 to 1,529), West Virginia (3,223 to 1,460), Purdue (1,461 to 1,237), Oklahoma (3,307 to 975), California Polytech (1,905 to 966), Illinois (1,721 to 810), Arkansas Little Rock (3,750 to 653), Michigan State (4,373 to 597), Virginia (3,309 to 527), and California State (664 to 379).
In my opinion, all of those make sense due to regional, cultural, or historical factors. The regional note is certainly not without merit either as the only SEC schools that have wrestling programs are honestly Big XII schools, Missouri and Oklahoma. If you go through the full list you'll see that wrestling is obviously most prominent in the plains states and Big 10 country, which culturally, shouldn't shock anyone.
With Tointon average attendance being around 1,500 (someone check me on that) I don't see how a D1 wrestling program in Kansas doesn't match or beat that. We have multiple junior colleges with national championships in this state and Fort Hays sends guys into the tournament and up levels as well. Couple that with the explosion of women's wrestling that has occurred within the past few years in this state since it was established and now you have a whole new generation with twice as many children growing up participating in it. Again, when you look at the D1 schools around us, that have similar sizes and programs, it all points to us being able to have a successful program here at K-State. My guess is either money or something with Title XIV won't currently allow for it. I also know that people have met with Gene Taylor to discuss a wrestling program at K-State already this year. How serious it ever ends up being I don't know. I'm not privy to that information concerning the hurdles we would need to clear to reinstitute it here.
Yes, you read that correctly. We used to have a D1 wrestling program at this university. I only have minimal information as to why it was cut though; Title XI or money, or a combination of both. Anyways, it was axed in 1975. So again, I'm not that out of line for wanting this.
Wrestling fans are a thing. they're real and they're terrifying.
Eh, just give us some Liquid IV and a reminder there's no weigh-ins tomorrow and we're usually fine.
gross
Your girl showed up with ringworm one day told you it was just from the gym, didn't she!?
can we get Ric Flair to lead the program or is he not alive anymore?
He's still alive. However, he now has too much blood in his cocaine system to take on the rigors of being a coach.
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