Rio 2016 Olympics to cut men's wrestling weight classes

[npope]

While wrestling battles to just stay in the Olympics for 2020, its appearance in 2016 will be significantly altered as men's freestyle and greco lose yet another weight class as they allocate two additional classes to women's wrestling. Essentially the logic is that the IOC/FILA is robbing "Peter to pay Paul." There's some discussion of the issues over on the MatCom forum.

http://www.intermatwrestle.com/articles/11902

[TomM]

http://www.examiner.com/article/fila-seeks-adding-women-s-weight-classes-shirtless-greco-grapplers-for-olympics?cid=taboola_inbound

[TomM]

http://news.internationalwrestling.org/2013/08/wrestling-to-go-with-six-classes-for-greco-mens-and-womens-freestyle-in-2016/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2013/05/08/olympic-wrestling-women-weight-classes/2144819/

[DocWrestling]

It is just sad that so many good people have fought over the years for women's wrestling and now there success is costing the men's program.  It is not supposed to be that way.  Why is it that the good of some has to be a detriment to others?

Same thing with title IX.  Great thing for women's sports but why does it have to be a negative to men's sports.

[imnofish]

It is just sad that so many good people have fought over the years for women's wrestling and now there success is costing the men's program.  It is not supposed to be that way.  Why is it that the good of some has to be a detriment to others?

Same thing with title IX.  Great thing for women's sports but why does it have to be a negative to men's sports.

One of the easiest ways to undermine something positive is to implement it in a way that creates winners and losers, by unnecessarily pitting groups of people against each other.

[npope]

What I don't get is this, it takes 10 wrestlers to field a starting line-up in college wrestling but they only get 9.9 scholarships.

5 players to field a starting line-up in basketball and they get 13 scholarships.

24 players (including kicker and punter) to field a starting line-up in football and they get 85 scholarships.

I am sure that is a rhetorical statement ignoring the answer we all know to be true...$$$. Scholarship allocations aren't based (at all) on the necessary number of participants. Instead, it is based (largely) on the revenues the sport generates. That said, somebody could shut me up quick if they could tell me that track has something like 25 scholarships - which I wouldn't think to be the case.

But the bottom line is that the sports associated with higher education have become whores. It's not about educational ideals. It's not about the personal development of the student. Yada, yada, yada. It is about merchandising the Golden Cow. Higher education sold that part of its educational mission to make money. While I understand that some of that $$ may go toward some traditional academic endeavors, I also know that those funds go to handsomely endowing the coffers of the attendant sports infrastructure and salaries that frequently approach $1 million. The money that goes to true academic endeavors can be viewed as the tax institutions have to pay in order to buy the silence of the board of trustees and the academics on campus. And too, our endless thirst for entertainment of all kinds prevents us from critically examining what the collegiate sports machine is all about.

It's just sad...and a little embarrassing.

[TomM]

http://news.internationalwrestling.org/2013/08/opinion-taking-back-the-world-championships-version-2-0/

By Jason Bryant
Editor, Amateur Wrestling News

It really shouldn