Aug 19, 2019
Capturing the nation's attention
In the big money world of Division I college athletics, only five
championship sports actually make the NCAA money. Of course, the
biggest is the Final Four, the NCAA Division I men’s basketball
tournament. Now 68 teams play their way to a championships. The
venues are large and the volume of printed brackets and online
office pools is astronomical.
The other championships that make the NCAA money are the College
World Series, held annually in Omaha, the Frozen Four, the name for
the NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey tournament, the NCAA Division
I Men’s Lacrosse championship – AND – to the surprise of many – the
NCAA Division I Wrestling Championship.
Before you say “but what about football,” did you know the NCAA
actually does not award a trophy and present an actual championship
for what’s called the Football Bowl Subdivision? Oh, sure, there’s
a trophy, but the only NCAA logo on a Division I football trophy
belongs to the winner of what’s called the Football Championship
Subdivision, formerly known as I-AA.
Semantics and officialness aside, wrestling has been a consistent
moneymaker at the championships level for decades. Much of that has
come from the move away from campus sites and into larger
metropolitan areas and major league arenas. Or in the case in 2020,
NFL Stadiums. Yes, Minneapolis’ U.S. Bank Stadium, home of the
Minnesota Vikings, is expected to draw over 40,000 fans across each
of the six sessions in March of 2020. It’s an indication that the
health of wrestling has improved.
It’s also a great spot to sell the sport of wrestling to curious
college administrators. For people looking to start a Division I
program in Arkansas, a sellout crowd at Quicken Loans Arena in
Cleveland in March of 2018 was the perfect backdrop to make
history.
Welcome to Rocked Up, the story of the foundation and formation of
the first Division I college wrestling program in Arkansas,
starting in November of 2019 at the University of Arkansas at
Little Rock. This is the fifth edition of this story. The first
four set the table, because to tell the story of the Little Rock
Trojans wrestling program, you had to start from the ground up –
with the foundation of Arkansas high school wrestling, which didn’t
even exist 11 years ago.
Since the beginning, we’ve introduced you to high school coaches,
wrestling leaders, athletic directors, financial benefactors as
well as some of the pioneers within the state. Today, we meet one
of the architects and one of the people who needed to say yes in
order for this dream to actually become a reality – Little Rock
Athletics Director Chasse Conque.
EPILOGUE: As this episode gets released in August of 2019, there
was a personnel change between the time we had meetings with Conque
for this project. In early August of 2019, Conque took a similar
position at Division I Texas-Rio Grande Valley. While he’s no
longer at Little Rock, his fingerprints are still all over this
move.
Rocked Up is a presentation of the Mat Talk Podcast Network and can
be found on the web at GetRockedUp.com or at MatTalkOnline.com.
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