You're the AD: give the bag to a coach or a wrestler? 💰💰💰

[Caveira]

2 hours ago, PortaJohn said:

@Wrestleknownothing who is the last champ to wrestle 32 regular season matches?

Jesse Mendez ?

[Wrestleknownothing]

28 minutes ago, Caveira said:

Jesse Mendez ?

We are both wrong. I missed Mendez because of the loses. And I just noticed he said regular season. 

I think the right answer is 2015 Gabe Dean who wrestled 32 D1 regular season matches and 35 total regular season matches. 

[Caveira]

1 minute ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

We are both wrong. I missed Mendez because of the loses. And I just noticed he said regular season. 

I think the right answer is 2015 Gabe Dean who wrestled 32 D1 regular season matches and 35 total regular season matches. 

Didn’t know they all needed to be wins ?     I thought total matches.  No worries either way 

[PortaJohn]

10 minutes ago, Caveira said:

Didn’t know they all needed to be wins ?     I thought total matches.  No worries either way 

It's in reference to Cael's record.  Someone would have to average 32 regular season wins plus 8 post season, (3 conf/5 NCAA's) to surpass him.  

Edited July 16 by PortaJohn

[Caveira]

8 minutes ago, PortaJohn said:

It's in reference to Cael's record.  Someone would have to average 32 regular season wins plus 8 post season, (3 conf/5 NCAA's) to surpass him.  

No worries.   

[Wrestleknownothing]

21 minutes ago, PortaJohn said:

It's in reference to Cael's record.  Someone would have to average 32 regular season wins plus 8 post season, (3 conf/5 NCAA's) to surpass him.  

It is just easier to look for 40-0 or better since different conferences have different sized brackets.

The last to do that was Ben Askren, who did it two years in a row. 2006 he went 45-0, 2007 he went 42-0.

That also shows the problem. He had to fatten up on a lot of cupcakes to get to those numbers. He has talked about it on FRL too. 

Even looking at Sanderson's totals it includes a wins over teammates wrestling unattached, and wrestlers from Augustana, Coe College, Cumberland, Minnesota State-Mankato, Montana State-Northern, Millersville, Montclair State, Nebraska-Kearney, Portland State, Southern Colorado, SUNY-Buffalo, Wartburg, and William Penn, none of which would count now.

[ionel]

1 hour ago, PortaJohn said:

I wouldn't know. My Captain, @MPhillips, recruited me into the commoners club

Is it true Captain MPhillips wrote the lyrics for this tune while researching cattails along the Texas Gulf coast?  

 

[The_KC_Godfather]

4 hours ago, ionel said:

How do you break Cael's record?

4 years undefeated with no redshirt…

[ionel]

Just now, The_KC_Godfather said:

4 years undefeated with no redshirt…

Well with HS Jr's beating world champions this doesnt seem like a big ask.

[fishbane]

There are probably more meaningful ways for someone to exceed Sanderson's NCAA career than just winning one more match. One more win is a record but doesn't more the needle much.  

Sanderson was perfect.  One could win 5 NCAA titles.  Have an undefeated redshirt season.  Undefeated 4xer without a redshirt.  Win 4 Hodge trophies.  Outscore Sanderson at NCAAs (107.5 team points).  Win a world/Olympic title in college.  All those those things can be done wrestling a modern schedule.

[1032004]

If the coach is only guaranteed to stay for 4 years, I’d go athlete(s).

And if we’re assuming the $ figure is somewhere around $1 million per year, I’d rather spend it on like 5 AA type dudes with multiple years of eligibility. Looking at this year’s portal list (and not including guys like Welsh and Ryder that probably weren’t going anywhere else than where they are), something like:

Ethan Stiles, Rafael Hipolito, Jore Volk, Dylan Fishback, Cody Chittum (we’re guaranteed they don’t leave, right?)

(I guess Ohio State was employing this strategy)

[The_KC_Godfather]

32 minutes ago, ionel said:

Well with HS Jr's beating world champions this doesnt seem like a big ask.

Agree 100%. But we’ve all seen guys that we thought were the next Cael and something always happens. Honestly, part of it is truly luck. Luck meaning no injuries, no illnesses, no over training or just feeling “off” on match day.

I look at J’Den as a good example. True freshman at an upper weight (18/19 y/o vs. full grown men)…he was insane his true frosh year. Bad couple of matches otherwise he would have been a 4-timer and possibly undefeated with no RS. Same with Dake.

Would love to see Jax or Duke be the next, but you never know…

[RawDog]

3 hours ago, ionel said:

They don't wrestle that many matches now days so I'll ask again:  how do you break Cael's record?

Cael did lose to Paul Jenn I think, during his redshirt year.

So would a wrestler completing their college career undefeated, with or without a redshirt, break caels record?

[ionel]

17 minutes ago, RawDog said:

Cael did lose to Paul Jenn I think, during his redshirt year.

So would a wrestler completing their college career undefeated, with or without a redshirt, break caels record?

Not in my book.  Now if he pinned, teched or majored everyone.  

[ionel]

43 minutes ago, The_KC_Godfather said:

But we’ve all seen guys that we thought were the next Cael and something always happens. Honestly, part of it is truly luck. Luck meaning no injuries, no illnesses, no over training or just feeling “off” on match day.

 

Cael was just that much better than everyone and maybe his style was less prone to injury.  He had to be sick or dinged up at some point but you couldn't tell watching.  It wasn't luck in his case.  

[bnwtwg]

5 hours ago, fishbane said:

 Analysts call the NBA a players' league because 3-4 superstars can win a title and, as such, a single superstar player wields great bargaining power - far more than any coach.  The impact of a single wrestler can have on the team standings at NCAAs points to it being a players' league too.

That is extremely false. The OKC Thunder this year, the Celtics last year, and the Spurs dynasty were all built on homegrown talent. Victor Wembenyana (VW) recently had this to say in an interview with Maxime Aubin (MA):

MA: You'll be eligible for a lucrative contract extension next summer, worth around $300 million over five years. Do you still plan to stay with the Spurs for the long term, or even spend your entire career there?
**

VW: To be honest, I haven't given much thought to this contract extension, or how much it would cost. But, yes, of course. I know it's not everyone's ambition in the NBA, but it's obviously my dream to spend my entire career with one franchise.

MA: In recent weeks, several NBA stars have been linked with San Antonio, such as Kevin Durant, who eventually left for Houston, or Giannis Antetokounmpo, still with Milwaukee. Shouldn't we have recruited a player of this caliber?
**

VW: No, I don't think so. Breaking up your entire core for a single player rarely works. And the Spurs are masters in the art of building teams without having to go out and get too many big players, or having to sacrifice the balance of the group.

 

Baseball was also won by teams that built from the ground up until the Dodgers adopted the Madoff method of deferring billions of dollars twenty years down the road (and certainly nothing bad will come of that).

The NFL regularly demonstrates that you have to build from within through the draft.

Carl has proven this method to be the best at the most dominant dynasty in US sport as well. He occasionally takes a mercenary, but for the most part PSU is homegrown and other than Max Dean and maybe Truax, the VORP for the typical PSU transfer is fairly negligible given their insane depth.

[fishbane]

12 hours ago, bnwtwg said:

That is extremely false. The OKC Thunder this year, the Celtics last year, and the Spurs dynasty were all built on homegrown talent. Victor Wembenyana (VW) recently had this to say in an interview with Maxime Aubin (MA):

Nothing you said contradicted anything I said.  Your point seems to be that building through the draft is preferred in professional sports.  That is probably true for the NBA and to a lesser extent some of the other leagues, but I never said anything about how the players were acquired just that that's where the money should be spent.  Furthermore, there is also no draft mechanism (currently) in NCAA sports so it is not an option.  NCAA GMs/coaches can only sign free agents.

Regardless of how the players are acquired, Draft or free agency, they have far more negotiating power than the coaches in the NBA and all top professional leagues. The highest paid NBA players get ~$60 million/year and the highest paid coaches ~$17M.  If you order all the players and coaches by annual salary no coach would be in the top 100.  The salaries of the top players are artificially suppressed by the CBA, but there is no CBA for coaches. Teams are free to pay a coach whatever they want and whatever the market determines.  Coaches that have won multiple championships; Greg Popovich, Steve Kerr, Erik Spoelstra, only make ~$15-17M.  If hiring the best coach was the path to a championship these guys would command more for their services.  

The ceiling for coaches' salaries in the NBA is where it is because they are largely replaceable.  The Boston Celtics are an example of this.  The coach is replaceable whilst the star players - Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are not.  The Celtics initially acquired the duo with Brad Stevens as the coach and they were very good. Made the conference finals twice with them in the lineup.  Then when Stevens was elevated to GM one of his former assistant coaches who had never been a head coach in the NBA before, Ime Udoka, took them to the NBA finals in his first season.  Udoka then left to go to the Rockets where he has yet to make it past the first round of the playoffs and one of his assistants, Joe Mazzulla, became head coach.  Mazzulla had never been a head coach before and in his second season the Celtics won the NBA championship.  There is a reason Tatum and Brown are each paid $50M+/year and Mazzulla ~$5M.  Their relative salaries are easily explained; replacing Mazzulla is relatively easy, but replacing Tatum or Brown would be very difficult and costly.

Getting a Cael Sanderson type player in the NBA would be even better than either Tatum or Brown.  It would be one of the GOATS.  It would be more like a LeBron James.  James has taken teams to the NBA finals under 5 different coaches.  When he left Cleveland the first time the Cavs went from having the league's best record to winning 19 games with a roster largely unchanged apart from James.  When he left the second time, a team largely unchanged from the one that had lost in the NBA finals, apart from James, again won only 19 games.  LeBron James was the difference between being one of the best teams in the league and winning only 19 of 82 games twice.

[bnwtwg]

Oh gotcha since GOATs that are generationally transcendent seem to grow on trees that's probably where I would put my resources too lol

[CHROMEBIRD]

Thanks for those takes, @fishbane - that's interesting stuff. My instinct tells me that, if given a choice, spending the money on a GOAT coach is a better investment than a GOAT wrestler because a coach can instill a long-term culture, build a deep recruiting pipeline, and develop talent. They may also have more leverage with the AD to keep the sport well-funded for the long haul. But you make good points for the value of superstar athletes. Look at how Caitlin Clark changed wbb at Iowa.

In pro sports, star players definitely fill seats and move merch, but I also think that there's less risk to splurging on "big pro sport" talent these days since we are in the moneyball era and unknowns about performance, fit within a system, etc. are mitigated to an extent; whereas in college wrestling we don't have similar quantifiable reassurances to fall back on. 

Imo though, a big reason for the salary disparity between the best players and coaches in the NBA comes down to basic supply & demand. Sports like basketball cast such a huge net that there are tons of great coaching candidates who could step in anytime and be very successful with whatever roster they are given. Maybe not so much with college wrestling, where the shortlist of elite coaches like Gable, Cael, maybe Taylor/JB/Dake/Nolf, etc. to choose from is a pretty small pool, esp relative to the # of teams. The market also prices coaches based on different metrics than players. Even under the CBA, athletes leverage their own stats and free agency to command premium salaries; opportunities for coaches, otoh, are tied more to overall team success (or the movement or firing of coaches elsewhere).

I can see how guys like Spencer and Taylor have created or reinforced a winning culture and opened new doors for recruiting and other stuff, but at the end of the day I think top wrestlers are still drawn to a program and a coach, not just a big bag. The converse might also be true, but in theory a top coach could take raw talent and develop a kid into something good, whereas star athletes don't really develop coaches.

[CHROMEBIRD]

Anyway, all the recent talk (not just in wrestling) of "affording" superstar athletes had me wondering, why not drop some serious cash on an elite coach and build from the ground up?

[reversaloffortune]

Wrestling isn't the type of sport where money can buy a title.  A brand new facility and hiring Sanderson or Dake, or Taylor is still not likely to bring Northern Colorado a DI team title.  That said, go after the best coach.

[CHROMEBIRD]

Idk, I feel like Northern Colorado could win a title if they hired Cael. I know a lot of pieces need to be in place, and he didn't exactly start with an empty cupboard, but Cael won a team title and had his first individual champion (Ed Ruth or Quentin Wright, I forget which) in his second year at PSU.

I'd love to see a team try this and to be proven right or wrong either way.

[fishbane]

On 7/17/2025 at 2:57 PM, CHROMEBIRD said:

Thanks for those takes, @fishbane - that's interesting stuff. My instinct tells me that, if given a choice, spending the money on a GOAT coach is a better investment than a GOAT wrestler because a coach can instill a long-term culture, build a deep recruiting pipeline, and develop talent. They may also have more leverage with the AD to keep the sport well-funded for the long haul. But you make good points for the value of superstar athletes. Look at how Caitlin Clark changed wbb at Iowa.

In pro sports, star players definitely fill seats and move merch, but I also think that there's less risk to splurging on "big pro sport" talent these days since we are in the moneyball era and unknowns about performance, fit within a system, etc. are mitigated to an extent; whereas in college wrestling we don't have similar quantifiable reassurances to fall back on. 

Imo though, a big reason for the salary disparity between the best players and coaches in the NBA comes down to basic supply & demand. Sports like basketball cast such a huge net that there are tons of great coaching candidates who could step in anytime and be very successful with whatever roster they are given. Maybe not so much with college wrestling, where the shortlist of elite coaches like Gable, Cael, maybe Taylor/JB/Dake/Nolf, etc. to choose from is a pretty small pool, esp relative to the # of teams. The market also prices coaches based on different metrics than players. Even under the CBA, athletes leverage their own stats and free agency to command premium salaries; opportunities for coaches, otoh, are tied more to overall team success (or the movement or firing of coaches elsewhere).

I can see how guys like Spencer and Taylor have created or reinforced a winning culture and opened new doors for recruiting and other stuff, but at the end of the day I think top wrestlers are still drawn to a program and a coach, not just a big bag. The converse might also be true, but in theory a top coach could take raw talent and develop a kid into something good, whereas star athletes don't really develop coaches.

I think if there is money in the budget for wrestlers too then the obvious choice is to get the coach first.  It will make everything easier.  If there isn't much money for wrestler acquisition on top of paying the coaching staff then a coach will only be able to do so much with a 4 year horizon.  On the other hand the GOAT wrestler will provide immediate success which could be built upon.  Cael Sanderson the wrestler was good for 27 team points at NCAAs.  That would have been good enough for 16th this year at NCAAs.  

Over the past 30 or so years there have been a handful of examples of a really great wrestler going to a less storied program.  Not to downplay the roll of the coaching staff at these institutions, but the exceptional wrestler made a huge impact in every situation.

1) Ben Askren to Missouri

Not Cael Sanderson, but a bonus point machine in his own right that made 4 NCAA finals and won 1 hodge trophies.  Before he arrived in Columbia coach Brian Smith had 1 AA in 4 seasons.  By the time Askren graduated that number had grown to 14.  Missouri had their first ever national champ and the best ever team finish at NCAAs (3rd).

2) Cary Kolat's transfer to Lock Haven

The year before Kolat transferred Lock Haven had 0 AAs and hadn't had a national champ in 25+ years.  The two seasons he was there they would have 3 AAs followed by 5 AAs, win the PSAC 2x, the EWL once, and achieve their best ever team finish at NCAAs (5th).

3) TJ Jaworsky transfer to UNC

Maybe a tier below the last two Jaworsky still won 3 NCAA titles and Hodge at UNC.  The year before Jawosrsky arrived UNC was 18th with 1 AA who was graduating.  He was their only AA in 1993 when they finished 15th.  The next two years they had 4AAs/season finishing 6th and 8th.  Two of only 5 top 10 finishes in program history.  Jaworsky accounted for 3 individual NCAA titles at a program that had only had 2 in their history before him.

4) Ricky Bonomo Bloomsburg

He won three titles for Bloomsburg from 1985-1987.  Aided by his brother Rocky this propelled Bloomsburg to finish 10th, 7th, and 5th at NCAAs.  These are the only top 10 finishes in program history.

5) Greg Jones West Virginia

Jones won individual titles in 2002, 2004, and 2005.  Though he wasn't the bonus point machine like the others he rarely lost (128-4) and WV finished 13th, 17th, 16th and 18th at NCAAs with him in the lineup.  Since he graduated WV wouldn't finish as high until the past two seasons (17th and 18th).

6) Jake Herbert Northwestern

Before Jake Herbert placed 3rd in 2005, Northwestern had not had an AA in 5 years.  With him in the lineup they would finished 14th, 13th, 4th, and 13th in the team standings.  The 4th place finish tied their best ever.  His Hodge Trophy was their first in program history and his two NCAA titles the first since 1990.  More would follow with Tsirtsis and Fox winning in subsequent years.

There are a few other examples of wrestlers of a similar level at a small program in the last 30 years.  Haslerig at Pitt-Johnstown and Abas at Fresno state.  I didn't look too deep into these two.  Haselrig was at a D2 program and it was hard to find information on the Fresno program history as they subsequently dropped the program.  The 6 in the list are probably the closest to Cael Sanderson the wrestler at a tier 2 D1 program.  The impact of Cael Sanderson the wrestler could be even bigger.

Looking at WV and UNC might give some insight into this question because they are two programs that recently got great coaches.  WV has Tim Flynn at the helm who did an outstanding job at Edinboro.  In his 6th year at WV they finally broke into the top 20 at NCAAs (17th).  With Greg Jones in the lineup this was all but guaranteed and Flynn has not equaled the best finish of the Jones years (13th) or produced a national champion through 7 seasons.   UNC now has Rob Koll as the head coach.  He's only been there two years, but with two years of TJ Jaworksy UNC was a top 10 team with a national champion.  It would be truly impressive in Koll is able to get them into the top 10 within 4 years.  They have not been in the top 10 since Jaworsky graduated and great coaches at less storied programs (Koll/Cornell/Stanford/UNC, Zalesky/Oregon State, Brands/VT, Flynn/WVU, Ryan/Hofstra) take time to find success.

[CHROMEBIRD]

Awesome stuff. A recent example that comes to mind though is Gable Steveson. Not that Minny is a crummy program by any means, but Gable was a generational talent but I don't think he propelled the program into the mix with the big three (or maybe he did, Idk how much separation there was pointswise between UMN and the top schools while he was there).

It's probably not realistic to expect a generational talent to commit to a school without a great coach, but I hope one of the upcoming hs phenoms does it so we can see this play out.

[fishbane]

41 minutes ago, CHROMEBIRD said:

Awesome stuff. A recent example that comes to mind though is Gable Steveson. Not that Minny is a crummy program by any means, but Gable was a generational talent but I don't think he propelled the program into the mix with the big three (or maybe he did, Idk how much separation there was pointswise between UMN and the top schools while he was there).

It's probably not realistic to expect a generational talent to commit to a school without a great coach, but I hope one of the upcoming hs phenoms does it so we can see this play out.

Yeah I didn't pick him because MN is an AA factory of sorts.  Here are MN finishes under Eggum with teams featuring Steveson in bold 7th, 17th, 8th, COVID, 7th, 11th, 15th, 22nd, 5th.  Another heavyweight example might be Gwiz at NC State.  He transferred with his coach so it is a little difficult to isolate the two. 

Any given year there are probably 20 teams that are one Cael Sandreson/Gable Steveson/Ben Askren/Cary Kolat away from being a top ten team, because just getting one of them is a huge piece.  In all the examples of great coach to lesser program (Koll/Cornell/Stanford/UNC, Zalesky/Oregon State, Brands/VT, Flynn/WVU, Ryan/Hofstra) none had a top 10 team within 5 years though some left after only 2 years.  It seems likely that Brands would have had a top 10 team within 5 years at VT if he had stayed.  Slaton, LeClere, Metcalf, and Borschel had near 10th place points their first year wrestling for Iowa.  The question today would be if Brands could have landed those guys if Zalesky had access to Bob Nicolls $$ to make NIL deals.