Tony Brindley, father of Mortimer Jordan multiple state wrestling champ Brandon Brindley and big-time fan of the sport, sidled up beside me as we both stepped over and around people during a quad-match at the Blue Devils’ gym a couple of weeks ago.

“Make sure that you take note that we had about 600 people here tonight,” Brindley said.

He may have underestimated the crowd. I put it at more than 700. Thankfully, the fire marshal wasn’t one of them.

The first wrestling match of the year, a quad-match at Fultondale, also brought quite a crowd to the school’s “old gym.”

A capacity crowd, and then some. Not a seat to be had.

So just how much did the match bring in at the gate?

“About $1,300, and we stopped charging admission before some of them came in,” said Wildcat coach Billy Hughes.

That figure raised the eyebrows of Richie Busby, whose Wildcat boys basketball team is enjoying success on the court, but often comes up short with fans in the stands.

And the Jordan match?

About $1,800, said coach Terry Tingle.

Which brings us to a conclusion that some folks might find a bit surprising: High school wrestling, at least around these parts, is a revenue sport.

It’s not on the level of football. Nothing is, and in Alabama nothing ever will be.

But fans of the mat pony up at the ticket booth. And compared to the high expenses of the gridiron, wrestling is much less expensive.

Once you buy the mats themselves — the most expensive part of the sport, by far — the other necessities are few, and the costs are often borne by the competitors. All they need are singlets. The kids usually purchase the shoes, headgear and such.

Add a couple of portable electronic scoreboards and you’re good to go. Locally, even those are often shared. I’ve seen Fultondale and Jordan take theirs to other schools for meets. Same with mats, especially for big tournaments.

So I will not be surprised when I see lots of folks pitching in for this weekend’s big Fultondale Invitational, just as I wasn’t last weekend for Gardendale’s Jim ‘N Nicks Invitational at Bragg Middle School. Nor will stands packed with fans be any surprise to me, either.

I have pondered several times, though, on why high school wrestling is so popular in our area in particular. Most local schools compete in the sport, including nearly all of the big over-the-mountain schools. They even sink a fair amount of money into it — Vestavia Hills has a big contraption mounted on their gym wall that stores and unloads their mats automatically.

But will you see Hoover’s big gym packed with wrestling fans for a Thursday night tri-match? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet money on it.

And you won’t even see the sport in a school south of Montgomery.

I think some of the local popularity has to do with the fact that we’re a middle-class, blue-collar area, and wrestling is a down-to-earth (literally) sport. There is no pretense, no pageantry, no bands, and few cheerleaders. You roll out the mats, the coaches get together and determine the “batting order,” the referee blows the whistle, and off they go.

Our area shares much in common, sociologically speaking, with the parts of the country where wrestling has long been a big-time sport. Iowa is probably the first state a casual sports fan would associate with wrestling, where boys who grew up on the farm slinging hay bales are equally at home slinging each other on the mat. Oklahoma is also stronghold of the sport, as is much of the Great Plains.

Here, they grow up on farms, in the steel mills, and in the coal mines. There are more similarities than one might realize at first.

As Hughes and others have told me a number of times, wrestling is a close-knit community. Many of these young men have wrestled together on youth clubs, and opposed each other for years. It’s not uncommon to see guys from opposing teams chatting with each other for some time at a meet, then hear their names called and off they go at each other.

And so it is that the so-called “minor sport” of wrestling has become something that may make some folks in other areas scratch their heads.

A revenue sport.

“Ka-ching,” indeed.

Robert Carter is the sports editor of The North Jefferson News.