NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships
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| Founded | 1928 |
|---|---|
| Number of teams | 69 of 75 (2015) |
| Current champions | Penn State (6) |
| Most successful team(s) | Oklahoma State (34) |
| Television broadcasters | ESPNU |
| Website | NCAA.com |
The NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships for wrestling individuals and teams have been held annually since 1928 (with official sponsorship in all years but 1929 and 1931–33), except for a hiatus in 1943–45 during World War II.
In 1928 and from 1931 to 1933, there was only an unofficial title. Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) won the 1928 and 1931 unofficial titles. Indiana University won the 1932 unofficial title, and in 1933, Iowa State and Oklahoma A&M were unofficial co-champions.
The NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships is a double-elimination tournament for individuals competing in ten weight classes. Thirty-three wrestlers in each class qualify through eight conference championship tournaments. From 2012 through 2015, a West Regional tournament was held; throughout that period, it involved members of the Western Wrestling Conference (WWC), which had dropped from seven members, the minimum required for a wrestling conference to be an automatic NCAA qualifier, to six. The Big 12 Conference chose not to participate in the 2015 West Regional despite losing their recognition as an NCAA wrestling conference after the 2014 season. During the 2015 offseason, the Big 12 once again became an officially recognized wrestling conference when it effectively absorbed the WWC. Each of these tournaments are allocated a number of automatic qualifying slots in each weight class, and the unallocated slots are filled with at-large selections picked by the NCAA Division I Wrestling Committee based on certain criteria. During the championships, individual match winners earn points based on the level and quality of the victory, which are totaled to determine the team championship standings.
The Oklahoma State Cowboys have won more NCAA team championships than any other school, with 34 titles (including 3 unofficial), the most recent being won in 2006. The second most championships were won by Iowa with 23 NCAA titles. No other school has won more than eight times. While Oklahoma State has the most NCAA titles, schools from the Big Ten Conference won the championship from 2007 to 2016.
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