Iowa State athletics director Jamie Pollard said Thursday that the standalone wresting facility initially planned for fall of 2025 is now "on hold," with no alternative plan on the table as of now.
Pollard, speaking at the Cyclone Tailgate Tour in West Des Moines, said the decision was made about three weeks ago due to the new college football TV deal set to begin in 2026, as well as the increasingly likely prospect of revenue sharing in college athletics that will impact the budgets of athletic departments across the country.
"There's just no way possible to go forward and convince the state that we can take bonds out to pay for a wrestling facility when the College Football Playoff decided to take all the money and give it to the Big Ten and SEC," Pollard said. "With this (NCAA anti-trust) lawsuit getting ready to be settled, you just can't go forward with projects like that. That's the same reason we didn't go forward with Hilton (Coliseum renovation). You just can't bond for them."
Iowa State wrestling coach Kevin Dresser also spoke at the event, expressing his understanding of the situation.
"There's a lot of challenges in college athletics right now financially, so I'm sure Jamie's just pumping the brakes on a lot of things right now," Dresser said. "You don't know what's gonna hit you with these players getting paid in the future, how these conferences are going to shake out, who's going to get what and who's not going to get what."
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The proposed facility was set to be in the current All-Iowa Attack basketball facility, next to the Sukup Basketball Complex a few miles off campus. Plans included purchasing the building, adding six mats in the center of the building, weight rooms, workout rooms, lounges and other modern amenities. It had an estimated price tag of about $20 million, Dresser said in October.
Dresser said then that the building also would serve as a "museum of wrestling" of sorts, with photos of previous team and individual champions displayed throughout the building.
In April of last year, there was also a plan to renovate Lied Recreational Center for the same timetable of fall 2025. The standalone wrestling facility was announced by Pollard in October of 2023.
College athletics appears to be headed for major changes. A report from Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports suggested that schools could be forced to share upwards of 22% of their annual athletics budget with athletes as revenue sharing nears reality as the House vs. NCAA anti-trust lawsuit and others approach settlement.
Regardless of what the number will eventually look like, any direct distribution of revenue to athletes would dramatically alter athletic budgets across the country.
"It's going to be a drastic change, and that change is not going to happen overnight," Pollard said.
There are other major decisions like the College Football Playoff TV deal with ESPN that have impacted this decision as well. In that distribution, Big Ten and SEC schools are set to receive nearly $22 million per season, while ACC schools would receive approximately $13 million and Big 12 institutions would get roughly $12 million starting in 2026.
As a result, Big 12 schools such as Iowa State could see some financial challenges, and pushing forward with the standalone wrestling facility would be risky. Still, Dresser and Pollard expressed confidence in the current facility at the Lied Recreational Center after a fourth-place finish at the NCAA Championships.
At some point, though, Dresser hopes to revisit the project.
"I still think it can happen sooner than later, but maybe I'm too optimistic," Dresser said. "We'll keep chugging along. We got a great facility where we're at right now, but we're looking forward to getting into something like that at some point."
Decisions like this raise the question of what sports like wrestling at the NCAA level will look like when revenue sharing cuts into future budgets. While neither Pollard nor Dresser could give direct answers on that topic, Pollard has confidence that college sports will evolve and survive.
"It's not going to go away," Pollard said. "It's going to look vastly different than what it has in the past. Maybe that's good. To say today exactly what that is going to look like, no one knows that. We're all hypothesizing about how were going to deal with this, but we'll figure it out. We always do. We'll continue to move forward."
Eli McKown covers high school sports and wrestling for the Des Moines Register. Contact him atEmckown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at@EMcKown23.
