Getty Image / Jay LaPrete
While many sports fans are getting ready for March Madness next week, a subset of the population, including me, is getting ready for March Matness. The NCAA Division I Wrestling Tournament is one of the toughest tickets in all of sports, and it will take place next weekend at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, PA.
Wrestlers qualified either by their performance at their respective conference tournaments, or by receiving an at-large bid into the 33-man brackets for each of 10 weight classes. But, there’s a bit of controversy surrounding one entry, who reportedly has been out of eligibility all year long, and no one noticed until right before the brackets were unveiled on Wednesday.
Arkansas-Little Rock is one of college wrestling’s newest programs. It debuted in 2019, and has quickly established itself as a top-25 program in all of college wrestling. This year, they’re sending an impressive six wrestlers to the NCAA Tournament, and captured the PAC-12 Championship. One of those wrestlers is 174lber Tyler Brennan.
Brennan had a solid season this year, going 17-8 and capturing the PAC-12 Championship, earning himself the 28th seed in the bracket. But, there’s one problem. Brennan may be out of eligibility.
Brennan competed during the 2019-2020 season, which is his freshman year. He did not compete during the 2020-2021 season, which was his free COVID year. He competed in 2021-2022, his sophomore season, 2022-2023, his junior season, and 2023-2024, his senior season.
That means that this year is his fifth year of eligibility. Now, there are some wrestlers, like Penn State’s Carter Starocci, who is going for an unprecedented fifth national championship, who will be in their fifth NCAA Tournament this year. But, that’s because those wrestlers wrestled during the free COVID year, meaning that their four years of eligibility were used in the springs of 2022, 2023, 2024, and this year. That’s not the case with Brennan. But, nobody noticed! That is, until they went to seed the bracket this week.
So, here’s the situation.
Little Rock has filed a waiver for Brennan to compete at NCAA's. I'm told that will be reviewed and decided on by tomorrow night.
If he's not allowed to compete, the NCAA berth will go to Michael Wilson of Rider. (not PAC 12's Murphy Menke).
— KingOfAllWrestlingMedia (@MatScouts1) March 12, 2025
If they approve, this would open up a huge can of worms. Simple math shows that Brennan is out of eligibility. But, who knows what the NCAA will do.