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So obviously I started a new topic for it.

You misspelled miserable.

USAW's attempts to "market" the sport are feeble at best. You can't do much marketing if you don't have a single marketing person on staff.

I could be very wrong but I interpreted this thread as being a jab at JC

He’s behind both KISS and Ozzy have done like 3.

@BobDoleMaybe the Zoo is the place for Bucks. I understand that he's new, but this would be a good early lesson.

Doesn't matter where you put this. No one will show up. The bid thing is about 90% legitimate. You don't just show up and put something someplace that doesn't want it. I'm trying to host an event and the sports commission here in St. Paul has moving parts, moving dates, other tenants and also adminstrative changover. That's in addition to the issues we have in the sport. Can you put something in a place where the CVB and sports commission doesn't bid? Sure, if you can find a venue that will take you, but you'll lose even more money. Iowa City's CVB puts effort into these events. But in the U.S., we are ALWAYS going to find an excuse not to show up. @BAC, your points are valid, but we STILL have to contend with ourselves. We are the most excuse-filled, complaint-ridden fanbase when it comes to these types of things. We show up to ONE event. I mean, there's only been 102 dual meets in the history of collegiate wrestling that have drawn over 10,000 people and of those 102, 77 have been in either Iowa City, Ames or Cedar Falls. What will WE finally do to show up? Every date one of us picks, another will have a problem with it. The 80 D1 coaches can't get on the same page about anything, so how do we expect thousands of fans from around the country. Let's also not confuse the fact Penn State wrestling fans are Penn State wrestling fans and not necessarily wrestling fans first. Iowa Hawkeye wrestling fans show out for Iowa Hawkeye wrestling, they don't for much of anything else. The Big Ten tournament gets good crowds, but that's again, tied to the best conference with the most success and the two most adoring fanbases from an attendance standpoint. There's zero team element in senior-level wrestling. No one "went" to Titan Mercury. If they aren't currently wearing the colors of said school, they might as well be sitting in the bar with the rest of us. Sorry, just venting - and it's not at you. I just get frustrated as much as everyone else does. I don't know the answer, but a lot of it is us. The diehards here aren't the issue. We want to go. We want to find ways to attend. Like many, I'm married with kids. I live and breathe this stuff, but I don't get to the U.S. Open in Vegas unless I'm hired to go. I lose money for a week-long event. Or even a weekend event. That's our reality too. Those who love this sport aren't flush with cash and we're usually in gyms locally. There's no perfect answer. I share your frustration. I also know from the other side of it - there is a lot of thought that goes into WHERE to host events. You take a chance by putting them in places you know wrestling fans ARE, but if they show up, that's another thing. ... now I'm ranting and off topic ... and frustrated still! Baku for the Greco World Cup was a small venue, but the place was full, loud and boisterous. On Sunday, there should have been a full arena in Coralville. There is zero high school wrestling going on. Bah.

Just to be clear, Minnow's first report was that Glory would be up at 133. I know he backtracked, but it couldn't possibly be funnier that he wrestled his very next possible match at 125.

https://wrestlingbypirate.wordpress.com/2022/12/13/december-12-2022-wrestlingbypirate-dual-impact-index/

FloTrack has great content

Holy hell man. Coaches match up athletes with similar abilities all the time. Especially if they trust the other coach to be honest about how good the kid is… I did it the other week. A coach I respect asked me to match up guys with similar experience and I had the Dual already when won on forfeits. He’s having a down year and almost every team in our area is devastated by kids getting sick. Throwing out my best guys to run over first year wrestlers in their first competition would have served no one… it seems pretty clear brooks isn’t hurt. Are you being deliberately obtuse

Nolf was assaulted in NJ. Close to weehawken Brooks is not injured. Maybe dial down the New Jersey to 8.5. You're running at 9.25 right now

Here's what kills me about that. If you scroll down, you get: Kenneth Allen is the 282nd ranked of 291 Who are the 9 guys ranked LOWER than this guy?

I said sportsmanship. If you don't get it, I can't help you.

wait ... Cael stepped down or fired?

Munoz is injured.... Coaches agree to wrestle back ups .... Brooks agrees to let backup Ball wrestle.... PSU back-up wins... PSU backup gets to wrestle in front of huge home crowd... fans loved it... announcers loved it and applauded the coaches for doing it and you say Brooks was ducking Jackson Mckinney. Gotcha.

For the record, I hate Ohio. Sorry. Normally I crap on Ohio every chance I get. But the wrestling population there is enormous, knowledgeable, passionate, and lets face it, there's not much else to do there other than sit at home and OD on fentanyl. Cleveland set an attendance record when NCAAs were there (as did Philly and Pittsburgh, two other places high on my list), its dirt cheap, and it borders on criminal that USA Wresting has ignored it as a venue for decades. I'm surprised Ohio folks still pay their USAW membership dues; they should've gone on payment strike a decade ago.

Yeah I think it’s definitely possible for next year since Heilmann is gone so it would actually work out nicely. 125: Peterson/Shawver 133: Peterson/Shawver 141: Oliveri 149: Alvarez 157: White

Love it lol

Agreed...didn't say it was. But he wasn't... he was wearing black and orange and was a back-up who was supposed to wrestle an extra match. No it's not. So.... there's always an exception...doesn't change anything. Are they wrestling another school's backups the rest of the year? This is what I actually said "A duck is when someone avoids wrestling someone who is in the same realm of ability and ranking that could upset you and therefore affect your seeding at conference or NCAA. " What is the real purpose of a duck? It's to avoid a potential upset in order to preserve your seed.... not avoiding a 2nd string wrestler. This does not qualify as a duck, especially when it was arranged and agreed upon by coaches and wrestlers.

I've seen sporadic attendance figures but not sure if they're collected anywhere. JB is right that none of them are going to be all that high. Some of the possible venues I mentioned would draw more. Some would draw less. But the point isn't as simple as maximizing attendance. It is spreading around events to various parts of the country to make sure everyone gets a fair chance to see good wresting, to make sure that travel costs aren't always borne by the same areas every single time, and to draw in new fans. For example, if the Coralville attendance was around 2K, how many of those were also at OTTs and the World Cup last year? Probably the vast majority. Put it somewhere else and you're drawing in new fans. I should also clarify that I'm not sure how the selection process works. I'm dumping on USAW, but the World Cup is UWW. But its a good guess that USAW played a significant role in convincing UWW that somehow the Iowa City area should host *another* major freestyle event. Sigh.

I was curious what other cities that have hosted drew/draw more. I like the fact that you said, Dude though. I could hear the tone in your writing.

JB, you know I like and respect you and your work. And I agree with much of what you wrote. But I strongly disagree on the venue issue, particularly as it pertains to USA Wrestling. There is no excuse whatsoever for USA Wrestling to shoehorn so many domestic wrestling events into Iowa, time and time again. Why does USA Wrestling exist? Yes it coordinates programming, but to what end? To make money, like a corporation that answers to shareholders? No. Their own mission statement gives the answer: "to create interest and participation in these programs." (https://www.teamusa.org/usa-wrestling/about-us/our-mission). You don't grow the sport when you jam wrestling events in the same 20-mile radius time and time again, with the same 70,000 people. That's how you kill a sport. You are gaining no new fans as almost all attendees have been there, done that. And that doesn't even address the basic fairness that USA Wrestling owes to its members, only a couple percent of which are based in Iowa. They have a duty to make these programs available to everyone, but it isn't even close. The west coast gets virtually nothing, virtually ever. The east coast virtually nothing, virtually ever. How many USAW events have there been in the entire states of California or Pennsylvania (the two biggest wrestling states, combined population: 52 million) in the past 25 years? Answer: Fewer than Iowa City area (population: 70,000) got in the last 2. USA Wrestling has over 200,000 members and it is blatantly shirking its duty of fairness to the vast majority. And that's to say nothing of the racial tone-deafness of jamming every almost wrestling event in an area that is virtually all white, despite "diversity" ostensibly being a USA Wrestling "core value" per the above link. Am I say its all self-dealing by USA Wrestling? No, though I need to bite my tongue here. But at best its gross negligence. I get that some of these remote venues make a more active, concerted effort to secure these events. Good for them. And they may offer a better financial deal. Again, great. And some venues in preferred areas may not respond to RFPs. Rut-row. So if you don't care about your job or mission, its easy to just take the deal you get from the guy you know and move on. But USA Wrestling's job isn't to just to take the best financial deal, from those who push hardest. That's just lazy, and will only land us in the most remote regions of the country, time and time again -- which is EXACTLY what has happened. They need to get off their butts, think about where wrestlers actually are, aggressively and actively solicit bids from those areas, and put events there -- fairly and evenly distributed among the USAW constituency, with additional outreach to targeted growth areas. (A good albeit rare example: Bout at the Ballpark dual in Arlington TX in Feb this year.) I'm not saying this sort of branching out is easy to execute, and I'm not saying attendance will suddenly explode if we do. But we must end these years of jamming events into Iowa (and occasionally other forlorn places). If we branch out more, sometimes the attendance figures will be higher, sometimes lower, but at least it is fair to the membership and reaches a new audience. Sometimes the revenue will be lower, or venue cost higher -- sometimes much higher -- but again, USAW's charge isn't to send dividend checks to shareholders, but to grow the sport. And it is an investment in the growth of the sport: more new viewers and participants means more USAW members and more money. Reasonable people can differ on which venues are ideal, but this much is evident: dragging the same 500 lookalike Iowans to the same events in the same slingshot radius, year after year, is the EXACT OPPOSITE of the growth, fairness and outreach that USAW must do. End of shout into the void, and sorry to hijack a college-oriented topic.

Dumb stuff.

We've been here before. mspart

Ask the Ironman refs!

This assumes that the reaction can be controlled, but, on another note, it ought to be something to watch our energy companies, always looking out for us, mind you, cook up their propaganda machines to tell us why we mustn't use this form of energy. Just as how wind and solar energy are devils in a woodpile.

True. I think the biggest threat to this is Congress, though. There’s going to be a LOT of people who are going to be getting paid to try to stop this. Any mention of “green energy” results in a apoplectic fit. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My man. Exxon and BP don't want fusion. They need scarcity and capex heavy extraction as barriers to entry for their business models to work.

@SetonHallPirate three enhancement requests: As a viewer I would like to see which wrestler has the highest SOS when viewing P4P tab. As a viewer I would like to see a sort-filter option added to all tabs for School, Rating, SOS (pending), and Weight. As a viewer I would like to see Name and School column headers added; this will increase capability of drill-downs if #2 request is implemented.

Asian...

Well the guy you were speaking to is an actual Irani, so his point of view from behind the lines should go further than what you read on CNN or whatever other 'western' news sources you are getting your stereotype(s) from. Also, Turkey is lovely. I haven't gone recently since 'rona, but went there some 17 summers in a row? Beautiful country and beautiful people. I might also suggest folks check out Florida here in the US as well. The 'Florida Man' stereotypes floating around aren't how most of us are - just 15-20% of the men, so ~7.5-10% of the actual people? Not all of West Virginia enjoys sleeping with their sisters. California is lame. Canadians actually have the capability to be rude. Brits do know what seasoning is. Frenchies don't actually have frog throats. Not all Russians are tall Caucasians. Not all orientals are 5'0" tall. Aborigines don't breed with Dingos or Kangaroos. The middle east isn't all sand. Not all Congo soldiers are cannibals. Ethiopia isn't just starving, malnourished children with no parents. There is beauty everywhere. Believing negative stereotypes for everyone will paint the world a very ugly place.

I'd encourage you to read up a little more on Iranian history then if that's what your belief is. Post 1980 Iran does not define the other near 3000 years of Iranian history. I do agree that Iranians are currently being repressed by an evil regime and I hope for a change but this is nowhere near "Iranian culture*. In fact very little of the regime is Iranian.

Guys I’m just stupid cut me some slack.

Prata made the blood round last year , Moore made the R12 2 seasons ago , Henson is just a freshman with a lot of AA potential

And you call yourself a PSU fan? The original plan was for Munoz to wrestle Brooks in the dual and have McKinney wrestle Ball in an extra match. But Munoz was hurt so they agreed to make McKinney/Ball the dual match and sit Brooks.

This thread is more than I've learned about the US Greco program in the last 5 years, and it still isn't much. Why is everyone so quiet? Certainly USA Wrestling should say more. They fire Lindland without explanation, then force out (I assume) Ivanov without explanation. Then they drop this doozy last week, buried in an article about Herb House: "At this time, the organization is not seeking a General Manager, Greco-Roman Programs, nor a National Greco-Roman Head Coach." See https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Wrestling/Features/2022/December/05/Herb-House-hired-as-Assistant-National-Coach Why? They won't say. OK, so how about the wrestling media step up? Every single article I've seen about Lindland and Ivanov's departures merely states the fact of their leaving, and parrots the press releases -- without asking a single question, nor making a single observation, nor securing a single third-party comment. And as for the biggest Greco story of the year -- G'Angelo Hancock dropping out of Worlds just before it started, in purported "retirement" -- I'm aware of a single article (from flowrestling.com), and I couldn't help but laugh at Flo's penetrating expose: Hancock, 25, was only getting better. Now he’s gone. And no one seems to care. When was the last time a high-level athlete retired weeks before the biggest competition of the year? . . . . It just doesn’t happen. If it did, the media would analyze it for weeks. Bye-bye, G’Angelo. Hope you enjoyed your stay in Greco. See https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/7965845-gangelo-hancocks-departure-from-greco-left-many-questions That's Flo's hard-hitting piece: gee, how come the media isn't analyzing this. No interviews, no attempts to reach out to G'Angelo or any coaches or teammates or anyone at USA Wrestling for comment. Just "Bye-bye, G'Angelo." You'd think that flowrestling doesn't consider itself, you know... wrestling media. Apparently not, since they dropped the question just as quickly as they raised it. OK, so the media won't do its job -- TimmyHands excepted. But here we are, with a new forum, no longer under the thumb of USA Wrestling with its censor-button at the ready. I'm pretty sure Willie couldn't give a crap if people air USA Wrestling's dirty laundry here. Yet even with many of the posts here, while more than I knew before, are just so... cryptic. Doing something "a bit unethical"? What's that all about? What's with the constant coaching turnover, the sudden retirement, the refusal to hire a new head coach? I realize most commenters are as out-of-the-know as I am, but I'm sure there are also people in the know who read this. Make an account under a pseudonym and spill the beans. What's going on and how can it be fixed? I get that Greco has bigger problems than secrecy -- e.g. limited interest, limited exposure, minimal funding, USAW indifference. But if you're a bright young Greco prospect or his parent, and you see all these secretive behind-the-door machinations with no one talking -- the sort of stuff you see at a university right before it drops its wrestling program -- would you continue to pursue that interest or move to something else?

Encouragingly enough, before Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby (a former wrestling coach from Iowa) retired earlier this year, he impressively managed to help keep wrestling a conference-sanctioned sport in the Big 12. He achieved this despite having just 3 teams (IA St., Oklahoma and Ok. State)...plus Big 12 newcomer West Virginia. Maybe West Va. U. was recruited to join the Big 12 in part to help keep wrestling a conference sanctioned sport. It's an example of how small changes can make major differences. Men's soccer isn't even sanctioned in the Big 12, to help put things in perspective. Can you believe that? Sure, we nevertheless lament that Commissioner Bowlsby didn't manage to get a Big 12 college wrestling team added in Texas. But progress continues to be made at the NAIA, D2 and D3 levels in Texas in part because he helped keep wrestling strong in a neighboring Big 12 state (Oklahoma). That also helped inspire neighboring Arkansas to make such dramatic progress these past 15 years. (The Cowboys' 4x NCAA champion Pat Smith teamed up with insurance great Greg Hatcher in Arkansas.) Anyow, Texas still lacks a D1 wrestling team (even as it had a few as recently as the 1980s) but hopefully that can change. For the latest news on college wrestling in the Lone Star state: http://www.Facebook.com/TexasCollegiateWrestling Meanwhile, happy retirement to Commissioner Bowlsby. Thanks for having done what you could. 15 years ago, Texas had NO NAIA or NCAA college wrestling programs, and for either gender for that matter. The same can be said of neighboring Arkansas. College wrestling established valuable momentum in Texas and Arkansas during Commissioner Bowlsby's tenure heading up the Big 12. Now if only more of us can help influence other organizations to help wrestling too...

Sigh, it amazes me how awkwardly and stubbornly people cling to being the angry chip on shoulder wrestling people. For a sport like wrestling to be added to a major university. Even if you get a looser interpretation of Title IX.. if you don’t approach adding a program it from presenting the equity aspect and women’s wrestling. You just tanked any chance of it succeeding in adding a wrestling team. People can squawk and whine all they want. That’s the reality. Schalles put it perfect on his blog. Wrestling coaches need to stop acting like “playing politics” is something dirty. Besides a good chunk of the problems are wrestlings fault. Football and Basketball coaches became ADs principals and on the NCAA and state associations. Outside what are very clearly exceptions not the norm… Wrestling coaches stayed in their classroom and called everyone soft. Even if the court rules how you want.. it won’t do what you seem to think it will

I think we can win 125 and hopefully pull an upset somewhere else. Interested to see how the Lumberjack does against Dean today if anything, we won the thread font.

Some further Minnow thoughts/observations: 1. He recently claimed that he intentionally puts out fake news regarding Iowa in order to get a rise out of Hawks fans. Great journalist! 2. Believes that his report that Kemmerer was "done for the year" actually was what sparked Kem's return. Sorry, not that important. 3. Thinks Brands was referring to him as a "paid hater." Sorry, you run a facebook group. Not that important. For the record, I don't think Brands was that paranoid when referring to "paid haters." He was probably referring to someone like Basch. Basch has the occasional Hawkeye on, but would certainly fall into most definitions of "Iowa hater" and is admittedly paid by the NLWC and also does work for several NLWC coaches and athletes. I enjoy his show, but think he is a "paid hater.'

As an FYI to those who've been to the West Gym, it is no longer the home of UNI rasslin. Due to its age, it's not up to building and safety code, looks to be too costly to get to code, so the McLeod Center is the new/ old home of UNI rasslin. Many may recall that we were rasslin in the McLeod, just after it opened during the Penrith years.

Here's my total ILLINI homer preview of 125 to 157. I only discuss top fifty wrestlestat.com rated wrestlers. I'm a ranking snob. Here's 165 to 285. This tournament was the tits last year. You get the starters, reserves and true freshmen. Nonstop action. Don't **** it up, Flo. Cheers!