I was just at the NCAA Championships and had a chance to visit with Dave Bennett. He had just returned from India and I had just recently returned from an international event held in Cuba. We couldn’t help but begin to compare our collegiate wrestling rules with the current international rules for freestyle wrestling. Because of the differences, it is a huge task for our athletes to make the adjustment between the styles after four to five years of competing in the collegiate arena. We believe there are a few changes we could make that would not only make competition more exciting at the college level, but would also make the transition easier and make us more competitive internationally than we currently are.
The first is to institute an out of bounds rule. College wrestlers today spend more time at the edge of the mat than any other area of it. They have learned to use the edge of the mat to avoid having to wrestle their way out of trouble. They back out of bounds continually and seem to get away with it numerous times before stalling is called, and then it is usually a token call during the last few seconds. If there were a penalty for going off the mat as there is in freestyle, they would quickly learn to find the center of the mat and to continue to wrestle through the situation.
Second, if there were a point for any back exposure as there is in freestyle wrestling we would see less of just hanging on to a leg while on ones back to avoid a takedown and to stalemate the situation. We currently have a two-point and a three-point nearfall for a two second and three second count respectively, why not just add a one-point exposure.
These two changes alone would have a huge impact on how long it takes our college athletes, who decide to go on to an international career, to become competitive. In addition, these changes are simple enough that even those high school and college coaches who have never been involves with freestyle wrestling would be able to adjust their coaching to them.

Bobby Douglas