I am curious. What all goes into the Hodge rankings? To me, because Steveson and Starocci are 1 and 2, I am thinking a lot of it has to do with popularity? Mesenbrink the best in the country at bonus rate and most wins without a loss and is third. Hendrickson on this list with the most pins, wins without a loss, and highest dominance score and is 5th. As far as Keckeisen goes, do they include exhibition matches towards the Hodge? Just curious is all.
The first step is to produce a list of finalists. The process for that changes from year to year, but it is always from among the NCAA champions. Sometimes it is all ten, and sometimes it is a subset. For example, in 2023 it was all ten and last year it was 5 of the ten.
Once the finalists are chosen the vote described by
@cowboyfan05 takes place. But what is not mentioned in that excerpt is that there is also a fan vote. The winner of the fan vote receives an additional 5 votes (about 8.5% of the total). It is winner take all in the fan vote and last year there were almost 27,000 fan votes cast.
Mike Chapman, the creator of the award, wrote this recently on the Intermat forum about the award:
"Good discussion and beneficial to anyone interested in wrestlers being honored. When I first came up with the concept back in 1994, I sat down with Dan Hodge (my first book was "Two Guys Named Dan" in 1976 and we became very good friends) and told him of my plans to create something similar to the Heisman Trophy, to draw more media attention and to give college wrestlers something extra to shoot for.
Dan endorsed the idea and said if I named it after him, he would like pinning to be an essential part. In 1956, Dan won three national titles (collegiate, freestyle and Greco-Roman) in two weeks time by pinning all 13 foes. I quickly agreed that pinning would be a main factor.
But since then, Bryan Van Kley (who bought WIN from me many years ago) and I have tried to "keep up with the times" by including dominance to mean techs and majors, as well as pins. And we consult with many former coaches and leaders of the sport who are on the voting committee and try to listen to what fans are saying (WKN and JB, in particular) and some of my longtime friends who have been involved with the sport for over half a century.
Bryan and I are proud that over 20,000 fans vote on line each year and that all the colleges that have a winner play it up big, both at the annual wrestling banquet and at a football game in the fall, often with 70,000 fans in attendance. And we greatly appreciate our sponsor Asics. The goal was always to make wrestling more visible and to honor those who excel at Mankind's Oldest Sport. -- Mike Chapman"
