While most sports fans cautiously watched their NCAA basketball brackets in hopes of winning their work or online pool, the NCAA held its wrestling national championships at Iowa City.

All the hype of basketball’s “March Madness” has raised concerns among many wrestling coaches and officials that the sport is not getting the proper coverage it deserves.

With that in mind, the wrestling committee will meet between April 4-7 to consider moving the championships to the third week of April.

The move would put the conference championships a week after the men’s basketball Final Four ends. Wrestlers would then have a week off before the NCAA championships.

Some coaches like this idea but would also like to see the season shortened to make it a one-semester sport.

“I like the idea of moving the tournament back, but I think that it should be done gradually … maybe each year,” NIU wrestling coach Dave Grant said.

A different proposal suggests the season start earlier and end in February, before the NCAA basketball tournament begins.

Both ideas have come against resistance from mostly lower division schools’ coaches and administrators. Coaches at these schools usually teach classes in addition to their coaching responsibilities and feel the move would affect their classes, Grant said.

Wrestling received a boost this year as ESPN2 televised the championship matches live for the first time.

“I was happy that they were able to televise the match live,” Grant said. “There were a lot of great matches fans, I think, really enjoyed.”

In previous years, the matches were not televised until 1 or 2 a.m.

In order to accommodate ESPN, wrestling officials moved the starting time of the championship matches from 6:30 p.m. to 1 p.m. The move put a little more strain on wrestlers who were forced to wrestle at 8 a.m., after wrestling the night before.

Attendance at the tournament has been positive. At this year’s tournament, 20,000-plus fans packed Iowa’s Craver-Hawkeye Arena. People were spending as much as $300 on tickets to gain access to the championship matches.

“The arena was packed tight,” Grant said. “People were purchasing tickets weeks ahead of time.”

Increased ticket sales have caused tournament officials to begin looking at new venues to hold the tournaments.

“There aren’t any college arenas that hold this amount of people,” Grant said. “They are looking into the bigger, private arenas as an option.”

Wrestling is the sixth fastest growing sport among high school students. Interest in wrestling is not limited to just boys, as Texas has 50 high schools with female wrestling teams.