Bartosh: Can wrestling get up off the mat?, Bartosh: Can wrestling get up off the mat?

Maybe a tombstone pile driver would get them to rethink their position.

At the very least, it would give the executors of it a tangible way to vent some of their frustration at one of the more bizarre decisions ever made by the 15-member International Olympic Committee executive board.

As many of you may already know — and which I discovered while reading a New York Times online account of the story — that not-so-august group of individuals recently put a permanent sleeper hold on wrestling and placed it on the soon-to-be-extinct list. The 2016 Summer Games will be the swan song for a sport that has been part of the Olympic landscape since 1896; its international roots, in fact, actually date all the way back to 708 B.C., a period when Hezekiah and Manasseh probably tried to settle kingly disputes in Judah by commanding their respective underlings to battle it out mano-a-mano on whatever passed for a mat in those days.

That’s obviously a huge hunk of history we’re talking about, which makes the IOC’s move seem even more outlandish. But remember these are the Olympics, where sensibility and fairness often disappear from view.

One supposed reason for the change is that modernization must come to the Olympics, so a sport with such an ancient pedigree is automatically in trouble in terms of survival. In addition, the very nature of wrestling — a close encounter with lots of grunts and sweat, but no garishness or showmanship — flies counter to today’s need for flash and dash.

The modern sports fan requires exposure to wall-to-wall excitement and wants athletic competitors to at least periodically face an element of real danger, which explains why baseball is less relevant than NASCAR to a growing number of people. Race-car drivers constantly put themselves in harm’s way by going at speeds almost as dizzyingly fast as those generated by vehicle operators on our nation’s interstate highways, whereas baseball players’ biggest worry typically centers on how they’ll be able to remove a tobacco-juice stain from their jerseys.

Against such a backdrop, it’s really not shocking as to why wrestling, a sport undertaken without mechanical accouterments or aerial antics, has come to be seen as passe and ripe for elimination.

But before we simply write off the mat game and move on, we should take a moment to consider some of the other sports that currently — or soon will — make the grade as Olympic-acceptable endeavors. Let’s start with 2016’s new entries, rugby and golf.

Rugby is, at best, a fringe sport for athletes with a passion for experiencing mass chaos on a grassy surface. I know rules exist for rugby, but no one except the participants understands them, or much about the game itself, for that matter.

What rugby has on the plus side is that a ball is needed to play it, something that’s missing from wrestling. I guess that alone is enough to gain a thumbs-up from the IOC.

As for golf, the one major criterion it meets is that there are recognizable individuals involved with the professional version of the sport. But what happens to fan interest if Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Rory McElroy and other big names opt to sit out the Games, seeing as how they’ll take place during the heart of the PGA season?

That means we’d be left to watch a bunch of unknowns attired in ugly outerwear. Big deal — we can do the same thing while vacationing on a cruise ship or relaxing at a popular resort.

According to the N.Y. Times story, wrestling could still be saved, but that it would probably have to beat out such activities as rock-climbing, rollerblading and wakeboarding to be reinstated as an Olympic sport. I’d normally make a smart-aleck comment right about now, but I’m too busy trying to figure out exactly what wakeboarding is.

Young people supposedly gravitate to sports like the three mentioned above, as well as equally unusual Winter Games events such as snowboarding and halfpipe. Excuse me while I seek out the nearest exhaust pipe.

In the N.Y. Times article, the president of the Russian Wrestling Federation and a former gold-medal-winning grappler, implored his sport’s movers and shakers to “make some drastic changes in the sport, make it more attractive, especially for TV audiences.” He did not, however, offer any specific suggestions to the Reuters correspondent who conducted the interview.

I’ll be glad to help him out with a couple. For starters, amateur wrestling needs to borrow from its more popular professional cousin. There’s no reason to go as far as scripted outcomes — although politics certainly took care of that in the 1972 basketball final between the U.S. and Soviet Union — but there are some definite elements that would spice up matches.

For instance, there should be a loosening up of the rules. Let individuals incorporate without fear of penalty such time-tested pro maneuvers as the eye gouge, knee to the groin and steel folding chair to the back of an opponent’s head. Granting such latitude would create more dramatic, easier-to-market wrestling matches because no point margin would ever be insurmountable and no hold completely unbreakable.

The IOC could also sanction mixed wrestling, which would certainly be an enticement for male viewers, and probably the wrestlers as well. Hey, females have broken the gender barrier in high school, so why not internationally?

And speaking of females, they might become interested in watching, too, first for the novelty and then to see if love eventually blooms between combatants and a heart-tugging feature segment can follow on NBC. At the very least, they can tease their spouses or boyfriends whenever a woman triumphs.

The real irony of the situation is that, unlike many other athletes, wrestlers consider the Olympics their pinnacle. Winning a gold medal is as meaningful as it gets for a grappler, unless he one day decides to pocket some of Vince McMahon’s money.

So how does the IOC decide to reward perhaps the Games’ most loyal participants? By choosing to remove their competition in the name of “improvement.”

Sounds ominously like so many corporate downsizings, where the little guy gets punished and the big guys all get raises. And unlike the old days, there’s no gold watch handed out along with the pink slips.

I’m sure the soon-to-be-without-a-gig wrestlers wouldn’t want the gold watch as a going-away memento, either. A pair of brass knuckles, however, might be another story.