Maybe Next Time You Will Estimate Me Trivia

[Wrestleknownothing]

Jan Gould - "I underestimated you Michael"

Michael Scott - "Well, maybe next time you will estimate me"

This one needs a little explaining.

I was taking a fresh look at my breakdown of the eras in college wrestling with an eye toward calculating who exceeded expectations by the most. The reason you need to break things up into eras is because the exceeded expectations calculation depends on starting and ending points (seeds and AA finishes). How the tournament has been seeded and how many AA's per tournament was highly variable in the early days. The sport was growing and organizers experimented a bit before settling on a more stable structure.

I call this The Growth and Experimentation Era. The number of AAs steadily increased as the size of the tournament increased, but seeding was a hot mess. Some year the number increased, some years it decrease, some years it disappeared, and some years even had different numbers of seeds in different brackets. Like I said, hot mess. I am going to ignore this era in this trivia.

What followed were three more eras where the number of AA's stabilized at 8, but the number of seeds increased incrementally. This will be our area of focus. Maybe it is best to share a graphic at this point that illustrates the concept.

 

Now back to the trivia questions.

In the 12 seed era (1979 - 2013) only 4 wrestlers exceeded their seed every year and finished on the podium four times. Who are they?

In the 16 seed era (2014 - 2018) only 3 wrestlers exceeded their seed every year and finished on the podium four times. Who are they?

In the 33 seed era (2019 - 2025) only 1 wrestler exceeded their seed every year and finished on the podium four times. Who is he?

A couple of notes.

Each one of these wrestlers started and finished their careers within the era. There are probably wrestlers whose careers spanned two eras who qualified, but I didn't bother to look for them. This eliminates a guy like Yianni Diakomihalis who was a freshman in 2018 (16 seeds) and a senior in 2023 (33 seeds). 

That leads to the second note. Yianni would be eliminated even if his career was within an era because he was often a #1 seed, making it impossible to exceed his seed. So forget about anyone who was ever the favorite.

[jchapman]

I'm exhausted just thinking about researching this!

[Wrestleknownothing]

1 minute ago, jchapman said:

I'm exhausted just thinking about researching this!

Gotta get your reps in to build stamina

[JimmyCinnabon]

Bro you REALLY like numbers. Like REALLY like them. 

[ExBSUfan]

In the 16 seed era, I think Cody Brewer exceeded his seed every tournament.

[MrAnonymous]

Quentin Wright for sure in the 12 seed era

Edited Wednesday at 05:50 PM by MrAnonymous

[ExBSUfan]

Cory Clark AA’d all 4 years and exceeded his seed 3 times, but met his seed 1 time. Does that disqualify him?

[MrAnonymous]

Shane Griffith is the only one in the 33 seed era

[Wrestleknownothing]

33 minutes ago, ExBSUfan said:

In the 16 seed era, I think Cody Brewer exceeded his seed every tournament.

Brewer is correct, but one of the edge cases I ignored. Thanks for finding him. His first AA was in the 12 seed era, his next three in the 16 seed era.

[Wrestleknownothing]

21 minutes ago, MrAnonymous said:

Shane Griffith is the only one in the 33 seed era

Bingo. The man who saved Stanford wrestling.

 

[Wrestleknownothing]

26 minutes ago, ExBSUfan said:

Cory Clark AA’d all 4 years and exceeded his seed 3 times, but met his seed 1 time. Does that disqualify him?

Worse than that. It disqualifies me. It turns out no one exceeded their seed in the 16 seed era four times while AAing. 

I had an error in my query.

But there were three who met OR exceeded. Let's go with that instead. In the meantime, I will learn to live with the shame.

[ionel]

18 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Worse than that. It disqualifies me. It turns out no one exceeded their seed in the 16 seed era four times while AAing. 

I had an error in my query.

But there were three who met OR exceeded. Let's go with that instead. In the meantime, I will learn to live with the shame.

interns!  

[ExBSUfan]

Bo Jordan from Ohio State met or exceeded his seed in the 16 seed era.

[Wrestleknownothing]

26 minutes ago, ExBSUfan said:

Bo Jordan from Ohio State met or exceeded his seed in the 16 seed era.

Two down. One to go.

Edited Wednesday at 07:05 PM by Wrestleknownothing

[Wrestleknownothing]

2 hours ago, JimmyCinnabon said:

Bro you REALLY like numbers. Like REALLY like them. 

You gotta admit that is a pretty cool graph, though.

[ExBSUfan]

Ok. So my 3 for the 16 seed era are:

Cory Clark

Bo Jordan

Kyle Snyder

[Wrestleknownothing]

37 minutes ago, ExBSUfan said:

Ok. So my 3 for the 16 seed era are:

Cory Clark

Bo Jordan

Kyle Snyder

100%. Well done.

[ExBSUfan]

So for the 12 seed era you would have:

Cael Sanderson

Pat Smith

Kyle Dake

The 4th one will take some more research.

[bnwtwg]

 

4 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

n the 16 seed era (2014 - 2018) only 3 wrestlers exceeded their seed every year and finished on the podium four times. Who are they?

 

25 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

100%. Well done.

 

4 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Yianni would be eliminated even if his career was within an era because he was often a #1 seed, making it impossible to exceed his seed. So forget about anyone who was ever the favorite.

Snyder performed to seed. Twice.

ETA: I recognize you had to change the criteria and I appreciate bringing fun trivia to the board. I especially appreciate all that you do during the biggest week of your year [swimming worlds].

Edited Wednesday at 09:11 PM by bnwtwg

[Wrestleknownothing]

35 minutes ago, ExBSUfan said:

So for the 12 seed era you would have:

Cael Sanderson

Pat Smith

Kyle Dake

The 4th one will take some more research.

For the 12 seed era I will stick to the original criteria and go with exceed only. Oh, and there are only three. So no number 1's need apply. Sorry to flip and flop on you.

Edited Wednesday at 09:33 PM by Wrestleknownothing

[Wrestleknownothing]

26 minutes ago, bnwtwg said:

 

 

 

Snyder performed to seed. Twice.

ETA: I recognize you had to change the criteria and I appreciate bringing fun trivia to the board. I especially appreciate all that you do during the biggest week of your year [swimming worlds].

The beauty of having them half way around the world is I can trivialize while they sleep.

[ExBSUfan]

5 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

For the 12 seed era I will stick to the original criteria and go with exceed only. Oh, and there are only three. So no number 1's need apply. Sorry to flip and flop on you.

No worries, I’ll keep looking then. Thank you for the interesting topic.

[JimmyCinnabon]

15 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

You gotta admit that is a pretty cool graph, though.

Oh it's a sweet graph. 

[11986]

21 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

In the 12 seed era (1979 - 2013) only 4 wrestlers exceeded their seed every year and finished on the podium four times. Who are they?

 

I think Coleman Scott is one. 2005 through 2008. Seeded 9, 6, 4, 3; placed 8,5,2,1 

[Wrestleknownothing]

11 minutes ago, 11986 said:

I think Coleman Scott is one. 2005 through 2008. Seeded 9, 6, 4, 3; placed 8,5,2,1 

He is indeed. Nice work