The Jordan Burroughs problem

Quick. Name the best wrestler on the Olympic and international scene the United States has ever produced. The name most people would name -- if, that is, they could name even one name -- would be Dan Gable, who won Olympic gold in Munich in 1972 while not giving up even a single point. The Gable legend was, over the years, further enhanced by his incredible coaching career at the University of Iowa.

There are, of course, others. Just to name a few, and the proud history of American wrestling means a list like this runs the risk of omitting many others: Lee Kemp, Dave Schultz, Steve Fraser, Bruce Baumgartner, John Smith, Cael Sanderson, Rulon Gardner, Henry Cejudo.

A few days ago, 25-year-old Jordan Burroughs won the 74-kilo/163-pound freestyle class at wrestling's world championships in Budapest, Hungary. The victory ran Burroughs' unbeaten streak to 65. The man has not lost at the senior level since he started competing internationally.

The sport of wrestling, as is widely known, got itself back into the Summer Games in 2020 and 2024 via a vote earlier this month by the International Olympic Committee's full membership in Buenos Aires. That's a big win. But, to be blunt, there's still has a long way to go. Wrestling, to sum up, has a Jordan Burroughs problem.

It's not that Jordan Burroughs himself is a problem.

Far from it.

The problem is the other way around. Who knows about Jordan Burroughs?

Now that wrestling is back in, the same energy, enthusiasm and passion that got it there has to go toward building the brand. Right now, wrestling has a window of opportunity. Burroughs is without doubt its biggest current star, particularly in the United States.

So why isn't he on SportsCenter? Leno? Letterman? Conan? The Daily Show? The Colbert Report? Making the rounds of the early-morning TV shows as well? Being offered up for bit roles in movies? For that matter, why aren't people scrambling to make documentaries about him -- or making him the centerpiece of films such as The Great Wrestling Comeback of 2013?

Wrestling is huge in Russia. Wouldn't it score political points to bring Burroughs to Sochi to have him mingle with the IOC bigwigs and maybe even Russian President Vladimir Putin himself this coming February?

Attention, Billy Baldwin. You were front and center in the months up to the IOC vote. By all accounts, you played a significant role in rallying Hollywood and even Wall Street in fund-raising drives that helped lift wrestling's profile.

Now comes Phase Two.

"The Miami Heat," Burroughs said in a phone interview, "had a 27-game winning streak. It was all on SportsCenter. It got huge press. Here I am at 65 and no one even knows.

"This is important to help the sport," he emphasized. "It is not important to me personally. It is something I wish we could do more of. It is not, let me repeat, something to me to be a self-fulfilling guy."

Burroughs is the 2012 Olympic gold medalist; the 2011 world champ; and, now, the 2013 world champion, too. He is a two-time NCAA champion, in 2009 at 157 pounds and in 2011 at 165. In 2011, he won the Hodge Trophy, wrestling's equivalent of football's Heisman.

In the final in Budapest, Burroughs defeated Iran's Ezzatollah Akbarizarinkolaei, 4-0. The victory made him the first U.S. men's freestyle wrestler to win back-to-back world titles since Smith, in 1990 and 1991. Burroughs also became only the second U.S. men's freestyle wrestler to win three straight world or Olympic titles; Smith won six straight world or Olympic titles from 1987-92.

The victory in Budapest is all the more remarkable because, as Burroughs disclosed afterward, he suffered a broken ankle training Aug. 22 in Colorado Springs, Colo.; he had surgery the next day and at the worlds still had five screws in his left ankle for stability. He guessed he was perhaps at 75 to 80 percent when he arrived in Hungary.

Burroughs is thoughtful, well-spoken, an incredible role model. He is just about to get married. He is everything USA Wrestling -- indeed, the U.S. Olympic Committee -- would want.

Even so, Jordan Burroughs could walk down most streets in the United States of America and no one would know who he is.

On most blocks they know who LeBron James is. And Peyton Manning. Switching to Olympic sports -- Michael Phelps and Apolo Ohno, too.

But not Burroughs.

That is a big problem for a sport that is -- and make no mistake about it -- still going to be fighting for its Olympic life.

As Serbia's Nenad Lalovic, the new president of FILA, the sport's international governing body, said in an interview in Buenos Aires, a couple days after the IOC vote, "This job is not finished. We are just starting."

Burroughs is a bigger star in Iran than he is in either New Jersey, where he grew up, or even Nebraska, where he went to college. This fall, Taylor Martinez, the Cornhuskers' starting quarterback, is a way bigger deal in Lincoln.

In Teheran? This past February, the U.S. team took part in a World Cup there. The just-released book "Saving Wrestling," by James V. Moffatt and Craig Sesker, is filled with inside nuggets on wrestling's path back to 2020. As the book recounts, in Teheran, after he won, Burroughs had to be pushed through the crowd by U.S. assistant coach Bill Zadick to get to the team bus.

Mind you, this was a crowd of bearded Iranian men seeking photos or an autograph from an American wrestler. The two countries' political leaders -- until President Obama's telephone call last week to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani -- have had no high-level contact since 1979.

Burroughs says in the book, "I received more attention there than I receive on my home soil. It was kind of like being Justin Bieber with all the attention that I was getting. It was nuts."

The competition in Iran took place just days after the IOC's policy-making executive board move to boot wrestling out of the Games.

As the saying goes, sometimes a crisis presents unexpected opportunity.

In wrestling's sake, the sport effected in seven months the sorts of changes -- political, governance, rules -- that would otherwise have taken 15 or 20 years. Or maybe longer.

"This is the best thing that ever happened to wrestling," said Jim Scherr, the former USOC chief executive who played a key role in presenting FILA's winning case to the IOC.

Among the changes were the development of women's and athletes' commissions. FILA didn't have such boards. So simple. One of the members of the new athletes' commission is American Jake Herbert, a 2012 Olympian. He called it a "step in the right direction," adding, "They are getting there."

This is the thing, though -- they are not there yet.

The sport essentially faces two big-picture challenges, all of which is clear from reading the IOC materials that led to the executive board action in the first instance:

One, it needs to do a much better job of promoting itself at the high end, meaning the creation and promotion of a brand and image for the sport and its athletes.

Two, at the grass-roots and club levels it needs to attract way more kids and young people -- boys and, in particular, girls -- and make the sport more friendly to them and their parents.

Bill Scherr is Jim's twin brother. Bill is chairman of what was called the Committee for the Preservation of Olympic Wrestling, and said, "All sports federations have their problems and issues. 2024 is 11 years away." Referring to FILA, he added immediately, "We face elimination again. I would think they would be motivated to make the changes necessary."

This all leads back to Jordan Burroughs.

It's not complicated. All sports thrive on stars.

When he gets back from his honeymoon, you'd like to think there would be some really smart people waiting to talk to him. With real money for a PR campaign, or two, for the sport, built around this All-American guy.

"What wrestling has done," Burroughs said, "is put itself back in the spotlight." In Rio de Janeiro, at the 2016 Games, "We are going to be one of the 'it' sports -- people are going to be watching, asking, 'Let's see why this sport deserves to be in the Olympic Games.' People are going to be paying attention.

"I think," he said, "we have all the tools."

IOC throws wrestling to the mat

In Sydney in 2000, who can forget Rulon Gardner beating the Russian man-mountain, Alexander Karelin, for gold? Or in Beijing in 2008, the brilliance of Henry Cejudo, who came from the humblest of beginnings to claim gold?

Or last summer in London, the awesome ferocity of Jordan Burroughs? He had said beforehand that nothing was going to get in his way of his gold medal, and nothing did.

Wrestling has offered up so many compelling gold-medal memories  at the Olympics, in particular for the U.S. team.

And that's very likely what they'll be going forward: memories.

The International Olympic Committee's policy-making executive board, in what some viewed as a surprise, moved Tuesday to cut wrestling from the 2020 Summer Games as part of a wide-ranging review of all the sports on the program.

It's a surprise only to those who don't understand the way the IOC works.

"This is a process of renewing and renovating the program for the Olympics," the IOC spokesman, Mark Adams, said at a news conference. "In the view of the executive board, this was the best program for the Olympic Games in 2020. It's not a case of what's wrong with wrestling. It's what's right with the 25 core sports."

Adams, as ever, is being diplomatic.

In fact, it's totally what's wrong with wrestling, and in particular its international governing body, which goes by the acronym FILA. Otherwise, the sport wouldn't have been cut. That's just common sense.

The IOC move came as part of a mandate to cut one sport to get to a "core" program of 25 sports. One sport of the 26 from London last summer had to go. Those were the rules.

Two sports were most at risk, as everyone inside IOC circles has known for weeks: modern pentathlon and wrestling.

All the sports on the program were subjected to a questionnaire from the IOC program commission purporting to analyze 39 different factors: TV ratings, ticket sales, a sport's anti-doping policies, gender issues, global participation and more.

The questionnaire did not include official rankings. It did not include recommendations.

Even so, it was abundantly clear that pentathlon was No. 1 on the hit list and wrestling No. 2.

Why?

Pentathlon has been at risk ever since the IOC's Mexico City session in 2002. The sport involves five different disciplines -- fencing, horseback riding, shooting, swimming and running -- and, obviously, there just aren't that many people in any country who do that. But it traces itself back to the founder of the modern Games, the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, and has waged a clever political campaign, instituting just enough modern touches, like the use of laser pistols instead of real guns, for instance.

Wrestling brought women into its sport at the Athens Games in 2004. It also has reconfigured some weight classes. But aside from those developments, it was pretty much the same as it ever had been -- pretty much the same as it had been in the ancient Games in Greece way back when. Ticket sales in London lagged, when virtually every other sport was a sell-out, a clear sign something was amiss.

Thus, heading into Tuesday's board meeting, the decision would be -- as usual -- subject to politics, conflict of interest, emotion and sentiment.

This is the way the IOC works. It may or may not make sense to outsiders that, for instance, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., a first vice president of the modern pentathlon union, sits on the executive board while the fate of modern pentathlon is being decided.

But this is the way it is.

The IOC voted Tuesday by secret ballot. We will never know whether Samaranch Jr. voted. Frankly, it doesn't matter.

What matters is that he is matters. The proof of that is his eminently convincing win last summer at the IOC session in London when he was elected to the board.

As an aside, it's early in the race for the 2020 Summer Games -- the vote won't be until September -- but Tuesday might be an intriguing indicator.  Madrid is, of course, one of the three cities in the race, along with Tokyo and Istanbul, and Samaranch Jr. is a key player for Madrid.

And pentathlon. And pentathlon surely proved to have political influence within the IOC.

The pentathlon World Cup next week in Palm Springs, Calif. -- featuring five Olympic medalists from London, including both the men's and women's gold medalists, now promises to be a celebration -- not a dirge.

"We are very open but we know where we have to go together," Klaus Schormann, the president of the modern pentathlon federation, said in a telephone interview from Germany.

Taekwondo -- seemingly forever battling for its place on the program -- also showed political smarts. A few days ago, IOC president Jacques Rogge traveled to Korea, where taekwondo was developed. Though the sport's medals were spread among a number of nations at the London Games, it still carries enormous prestige in Seoul, and when IOC president Jacques Rogge held a personal meeting with South Korea president-elect Park Geun Hye, what was one of the things she told him: keep taekwondo in the Games, please.

What was FILA's political strategy? Nothing, apparently.

Who was advocating inside the IOC board for wrestling? No one, seemingly -- of all the biggest wrestling countries, none have seats on the IOC board.

A belated, after-the-vote statement on the FILA website declared that it was "greatly astonished" by the IOC action and would take "all necessary measures" to try to get back on the program.

"Greatly astonished"? Like gambling in the movie, "Casablanca." Shocking, just shocking.

At the top of the FILA website -- it's Feb. 13, mind you -- the page greets you with "Season's Greetings!" and best wishes for a "peaceful and successful New Year 2013!" This is an international federation that just isn't up to speed.

The way this works now is that wrestling will join seven other sports -- the likes of wushu, squash, baseball and softball -- in trying to get onto the program for 2020.

Bluntly, the IOC move Tuesday probably signals the end for baseball and softball, which are trying to get back on as one entity, not two.

If the IOC is going to let any one sport back on, it might -- stress, might -- be wrestling. "I would have to think the IOC made an uninformed decision," Jim Scherr, the former USOC chief executive officer and Olympic wrestler (fifth place at the 1988 Seoul Games), said Tuesday, urging reconsideration.

The current USOC chief executive, Scott Blackmun, said in a statement: "We knew that today would be a tough day for American athletes competing in whatever sport was identified by the IOC Executive Board.

"Given the history and tradition of wrestling, and its popularity and universality, we were surprised when the decision was announced. It is important to remember that today's action is a recommendation, and we hope that there will be a meaningful opportunity to discuss the important role that wrestling plays in the sports landscape both in the United States and around the world. In the meantime, we will fully support USA Wrestling and its athletes."

To get back on the program now, though, the fact is wrestling faces considerable odds. This, too, is the way the IOC works.

Rulon Gardner's (increasingly slimmer) profile of courage

Rulon Gardner has always displayed courage larger than life. Being larger than life -- that, it seems, is now the problem.

The man weighs -- or, to be more accurate, when he weighed in recently for his initial appearance on "The Biggest Loser" on NBC -- 474 pounds.

Even for a big man, and Rulon is a big man, that is way too big.

Nobody should weigh nearly a quarter of a ton.

That is obscene. For an Olympic champion -- indeed, one of the most amazing American Olympic champions of our times, that is all the more so.

Which is why Rulon, who is now 39, who said Friday he wants to live 'til he is 100, deserves extraordinary credit for acknowledging his problem and resolving to do something about it while he can. That's called courage.

In the six years since he won bronze in Athens in 2004, his second medal in Greco-Roman wrestling, Rulon said Friday in a conference call with reporters, "I had allowed myself to enjoy the fruits of life and not be accountable for it."

He also said, "It came down to lower self-esteem and, I hate to say it, but … depression."

It takes real courage to acknowledge that kind of stuff.

No one could be more down on reality TV than I am. Reality TV is stupid. Historians will look back on our fascination with the likes of "Survivor" and the Kardashian women and wonder why so many of us in these first years of the 21st century were apparently eager not only to be couch potatoes but vacuous morons.

That said, Rulon had a point when he was asked why he couldn't have just gone to the gym to lose weight.

Because, he said, being on reality TV was going to help keep him accountable.  And it finally dawned on him last summer that he had to take stock. This, he said, was when he was being inducted into the wrestling hall of fame, his tux didn't fit, he finally squeezed into something he could wear, they had the ceremony and a nice dinner and, afterward, he and his wife, Kamie, went out for fast food.

"More like I had fast food and she went with me," he said, and as he and she sat in bed and watched on TV the ceremony they had attended that night, he literally did not recognize himself on the screen. He had gotten that big.

He got up from the bed. "I looked in the mirror and said, 'Holy cow, you are so physically unhealthy, you are so obese.' "

This, he said, is how bad it had become, Rulon never one for pulling punches:  "Through my weight gain, I was almost embarrassed to be intimate with my wife … to have the confidence to be intimate with my wife."

Again, Rulon has lived a life that is large in the telling.

To recap just some of the highlights:

A gold medal in Sydney in 2000 over Russia's Alexander Karelin, who hadn't lost in more than a dozen years. The bronze in Athens in 2004.

In 2002 Rulon had to have a toe amputated after suffering frostbite. He had gotten stranded during a wilderness snowmobile trip.

In 2004 he got hit by a car while riding his motorcycle.

In 2007 he and two others were aboard a small plane that crashed into Lake Powell. They survived the impact, then had to swim in water that was said to be about 44 degrees Fahrenheit for more than an hour. After reaching shore, they then had to make it through the night -- no shelter or fire -- as the temperature dropped to 28 degrees. In the morning, a fisherman found them.

All that has taken courage to get through.

This, though -- this is by far the toughest. Because this isn't Rulon against Alexander Karelin, or Rulon against Mother Nature. This is Rulon against himself.

When he wrestled in 2000 in Sydney, Rulon weighed 286. In Athens, 264 1/2.

Reality TV is so, so stupid. That said, Rulon lost 32 pounds during the first week of "The Biggest Loser." So if that's what it takes to get Rulon to lose 200 pounds, and if he can do it, and keep it off for good -- good for him, and what a great example for everyone.

You know how much he really wants to weigh? He wants to drop more than 300 pounds. Down to 150.

He wants to be more like -- well, me. He wants to be a scrawny -- er, toned -- sportswriter. "Everyone thinks being big and strong is the best way to be," he said. "In my mind I always pictured being 150 pounds as being the best way to be."

Let's see. Buff sports scribe or "big and strong"? Which is the "best way to be"?

Call me when you get to 150, Rulon. We'll compare abs. My money is on you. In the meantime: let us all admire your (slimmer by the day) profile of courage.