Outside of football, no sport excites Penn State fans more than wrestling, which begins its quest for a sixth consecutive national championship in just under a month.

You don’t need to do anything extra to generate the buzz the epicenter of college wrestling has in spades every fall, but I think athletics is missing out on a distinct opportunity.

Many programs around the country don’t begin their season with merely a regular dual meet. They begin with wrestle-offs, intrasquad duals where two wrestlers from each weight class battle for a starting spot right before the season.

Now, not all wrestle-offs are the sole deciders of a starting spot. Some schools have a clear starter, but still have them battle a backup in front of a crowd of supporters at their home gym.

Many programs, like Penn State, hold these behind closed doors, but some hold open scrimmages. In the Big Ten alone, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan State, and Purdue host public events. Many smaller programs also do it to drum up excitement.

If it were only a smaller-program thing, that’d be one thing, but Oklahoma State is hosting an invitational that’ll serve as its in-person wrestle-offs. Several contending programs have done it in the past, too, like Ohio State and Virginia Tech.

Big programs aren’t beneath it.

Penn State itself used to do it. Through the 2012-13 season, wrestle-offs would be held annually at Rec Hall to open the season, usually in early November. For an unspecified reason, that tradition ended in 2013-14.

It’s not like head coach Cael Sanderson nixed it when he first arrived, but it’s entirely possible he saw the program’s expectations change, and its philosophies did, too.

The Nittany Lions now hold wrestle-offs almost exclusively behind closed doors, with the Black Knight Invitational sometimes serving as a last-resort tiebreaker. As recently as 2024, Josh Barr earned his starting spot as a redshirt freshman by dominating Lucas Cochran at the Black Knight Invitational.

That’s no fun, so my plea to the wrestling program and the athletic department is simple: host public wrestle-offs.

Both a fan aspect and a marketing aspect are at play here.

As fans, it’s arguably a more compelling dual to attend than many non-conference bouts, since we’ll get to see 20 of the best wrestlers in the country battle it out. Every year, Penn State has multiple backups who’d challenge for All-American status if they were starting.

Even if a lot of the starting jobs are locked up, a few spots still have instant intrigue. Will Masanosuke Ono beat out Braeden Davis at 141 pounds? Will PJ Duke and Tyler Kasak have to battle for one spot, or will one bump up? What about Mitchell Mesenbrink? Will the Mirasola twins be battling it out for heavyweight?

Only a few spots in the lineup are vacuum-sealed right now, so giving the public some insight into Sanderson’s thinking would do the fan base, and the wrestling world, some good.

It would also be good for marketing. If you hold it at the Bryce Jordan Center and make admission free, you’ll easily get over 10,000 attendees and might even sell out. If money is a sticking point, you’ll make a bunch off concessions and parking.

Plus, it’s the ultimate power move. Imagine if they got 15,000 in the BJC for an intrasquad scrimmage, and what that would say about the levels between this program and everyone else. What other wrestling program can pack a concert venue for a preseason scrimmage?

However, logistical issues will probably kill any consideration of this.

The U23 and Senior World Championships are in late October and early November, and current wrestlers Luke Lilledahl, Joe Sealey, and Marcus Blaze will be participating. The latter competition, where Blaze will be, is in Kazakhstan and ends on November 1.

The freestyle circuit, cutting it close to the start of folkstyle season, is often cited as the reason for a light non-conference slate. As such, it might be hard to find a date that works.

The BJC is open for most of the first two weeks of November (except for a few basketball games), but that’s short notice.

So, if it’s too late to do it this year, at least bring it back for next year. The people of Happy Valley can never get enough wrestling.