The coronavirus pandemic has obviously affected things far more important than sports all across the world. The impact on sports cannot be understated, though. The biggest domino in all of global sports fell on Tuesday, when the IOC announced that the Tokyo Olympics would be postponed until 2021.
This postponement will obviously have ripples throughout the sports world. Individual sports will have to figure out how to work around the Olympics. Will World Championships be held as scheduled, or postponed as they usually are in Olympic years? Will qualifying for Olympic sports reset? Will it be extended? Will deadlines for sports with rankings be based on this year’s rankings or next? All of these questions will have to be answered, of course.
For the NCAA, it will have a very unique set of problems for Wrestling.
Olympic Redshirt
NCAA Wrestling has a unique relationship with the Olympics. The NCAA allows any qualified wrestler (being qualified is essentially based on whether a wrestler has a serious chance of qualifying for the Olympics) to take off an Olympic season without using up a year of eligibility. The redshirted wrestler can train with his team but cannot compete in dual matches. The point of this is that the wrestlers is taking the year to train for the Olympics–so even though they are not injured, they get a redshirt.
Several of the top wrestlers in the NCAA–like Daton Fix, Yianni Diakomihalis, and Max Dean, among others–opted to take a redshirt in 2020. Diakomihalis, in particular, should have been expecting to medal in Tokyo. What happens to all of these athletes in 2021?
The basic principle behind the Olympic redshirt should still stand. Any wrestler who can qualify for Tokyo 2021–whenever and however that is–should be able to take the year to train without losing a year of eligibility. It seems like an easy decision, but it could be complicated further. Now students who were freshman in 2016 or 2020 could effectively be in college for seven years to wrestle (redshirts in three of 2016, 2020, 2021, and 2024). That’s a long time, even if we’re expecting them all to be attending graduate school.
Furthermore, the NCAA has a general problem of what to do about athletes in winter sports, which wrestling falls under. I’ve already made the claim that everyone should be granted another year of eligibility since they didn’t get to compete for a championship. But what happens to wrestling in particular?
Giving a second Olympic redshirt year will create a huge advantage for schools with athletes who have qualified players. Not only do they already have world-class wrestlers, but those wrestlers can still be competing in 2020. In fact, the existence of the redshirt already gives those schools a huge advantage if all wrestlers don’t get another year. These world-class wrestlers preserved a year of eligibility while the other top wrestlers lost one–and it didn’t cost the redshirts a chance at a championship.
The Olympic redshirt has the chance to create a huge inequality in 2021 and 2022, whether the NCAA grants a second year of it or not. Its very existence means that–unless the NCAA gives every wrestler who competed in 2020 another year of eligibility–those wrestlers who took one will be able to dominate college wrestling the next few years while most of their top rivals graduated.
