I'm sitting here in the Fort Lauderdale airport for the second time in two days. Weather, as it's been known to do, has disrupted flights out of South Florida and forced me to have Sunday's flight rebooked.

I was in Delray Beach for the annual NWCA Convention, the first I've attended since I left the NWCA as an employee in 2008. First off, Mike Moyer, Pat Tocci, Tammy Tedesco, Jordon Griffith, Amy DiCato, Jerry Fulmer and Betsy Peachy do a fine job and tons of work for the event. New NWCA staff John Licata and Dan Mayo were also highly visible at the convention. I'm hopeful their efforts will be great in future years.

Pleasantries aside, the annual NWCA Convention's biggest hit was the second year of the Coaching Leadership Academy. I did several videos for the wrestling community talking to coaches as mentors and apprentices at the convention. You can check them out on the USA Wrestling YouTube channel here.

Some of the biggest talk came from about surrounding the future of the NWCA National Duals. Rob Koll was pretty adamant in his comments and that's generated discussion on the message boards here at the USA Wrestling Nation. Personally, the National Duals needs to be an officially recognized event by the NCAA to crown a national dual meet champion. I hope it's headed in that direction. Making a model that benefits all organizations, not just NCAA Division I, is key. A replicable model would ensure increased media coverage and legitimacy in the media with a true "NCAA" champion. If it doesn't go that way, the NWCA National Duals is still the big event teams in the Top 20 (Top 16 in all honesty) need to attend if the format keeps the status quo.

I like the idea of qualifying for the event, making dual meet and conference matches more important. The auto-bids to the NCAA National Dual Meet Championships would provide a March Madness type of atmosphere. Two years ago, Cornell met Iowa in the finals of the National Duals. Look at what Cornell's basketball team got in terms of media coverage this past year with their run to the Sweet 16. I believe the media would eat up the "Juggernaut vs. Ivy" type of angle. That was great for wrestling. But it went largely ignored outside of our wrestling community.

I did one long interview with the new chair of the NCAA Wrestling Committee, Derek van der Merwe, a Senior Associate AD at Central Michigan. Derek has a lot of great ideas that weren't touched on in the interview. My focus was on the topics discussed in the meetings, then I got on a soap box about women's wrestling, since I see so many marginal sports added as "emerging sports" under the NCAA watch, yet NCAA programs are reluctant to give women's wrestling a chance. You don't see this at the NAIA level, where school presidents are willing to add the sport to drive enrollment.

It's the opposite effect of what groups like the Women's Sports Foundation echo. They say, "If you build it, they will come." The NWCA and USA Wrestling has lobbied the NCAA for emerging sports status for women's wrestling, but until a school president (20 of them) sign off on the idea, we'll still sit there and hope. Right now, only ONE NCAA school sponsors women's wrestling -- Pacific in Oregon.

UPDATE: It should be noted that the NCAA Wrestling Committee doesn't have control of what is added to the NCAA membership. It's the responsibility of the schools, not the "NCAA" to determine. Derek van der Merwe will help improve the identity and scope of the NCAA Wrestling Championships on all levels. We need to focus on what they can do to improve the sport. Pressure the schools to add the sport, not the wrestling committee, which as I said, doesn't have that role.

Notes: Check out Coyte Cooper's interview on the YouTube Channel ... It was great to see Mike Finn of W.I.N. taking an active role in the convention. To all you media out there who read this, get to the convention next year. It will help you get a better understanding of what's going on within the sport and the coaching ranks and can help you grasp the root of the issues. Education is never a bad thing. ... Martin Floreani of Flowrestling also made an appearance, which is a positive in respect to the reasons I mentioned above. The better our wrestling community understands, the better our fans can understand as a result. ... Randy L. Buhr was honored with the Dan Gable America Needs Wrestling Award. Some of you might cringe at the thought, but all the things Randy has done have been widely notable as improving the sport and visibility of the NCAA championships. Some might disagree with "all" ... so how about most, if not all, as a better way of describing it. Randy works tirelessly for the NCAA Championships and his involvement cannot be understated.