Leaderboard

We're officially in the second half of the collegiate wrestling season and have a full schedule of DI duals this week. A total of 45 duals will be contested. Since it can be difficult to figure out where and when to watch all of these events, InterMat has put together a list of all of the live-streamed events occurring this week. Below are the dates/times and how to watch each match (with links). All times listed are Eastern. Friday, January 26: George Mason at Bloomsburg 7:00 PM PSAC Digital Network Ohio at Cleveland State 7:00 PM FloWrestling Virginia at Duke 7:00 PM ACC Network Extra Wisconsin at Michigan State 7:00 PM B1G+ Michigan at Ohio State 7:00 PM Big Ten Network NC State at PIttsburgh 7:00 PM ACC Network Columbia at Princeton 7:00 PM ESPN+ Lock Haven at Rider 7:00 PM ESPN+ North Carolina at Virginia Tech 7:00 PM ESPN+ Missouri at West Virginia 7:00 PM ESPN+ Wyoming at Northern Colorado 8:00 PM FloWrestling Nebraska at Northwestern 8:00 PM B1G+ Iowa State at Oklahoma 8:00 PM ESPN+ Northern Iowa at Oklahoma State 8:00 PM ESPN+ Air Force at South Dakota State 8:00 PM FloWrestling Iowa at Illinois 9:00 PM Big Ten Network Little Rock vs. Oregon State at Hillsboro, OR 9:00 PM Saturday, January 27: Appalachian State at Appalachian Open 9:00 AM Harvard at Cornell 12:00 PM ESPN+ LIU at Hofstra 1:00 PM Hofstra Pride YouTube Minnesota at Rutgers 1:00 PM B1G+ Brown at Cornell 2:00 PM ESPN+ Central Michigan at Northern Illinois 2:00 PM NIU All-Access Harvard at Binghamton 5:30 PM ESPN+ Army West Point at Bucknell 6:00 PM Bucknell Athletics YouTube Purdue at Indiana 7:00 PM B1G+ Iowa State at Oklahoma State 7:00 PM ESPN+ Franklin & Marshall at Sacred Heart 7:00 PM NEC Front Row Brown at Binghamton 7:30 PM ESPN+ Northern Iowa at Oklahoma 8:00 PM ESPN+ Sunday, January 28: Queens at Newberry Open 8:00 AM Lock Haven at Mat Town Open II, hosted by Lock Haven 9:30 AM Penn State at Maryland 12:00 PM Big Ten Network Virginia at American 1:00 PM ESPN+ Gardner-Webb at Bellarmine 1:00 PM ESPN+ Missouri at Cornell 1:00 PM ESPN+ Bucknell at Drexel 1:00 PM FloWrestling Clarion at Edinboro 1:00 PM FloWrestling Columbia at Penn 1:00 PM ESPN+ Air Force at North Dakota State 1:30 PM NDSU All-Access Davidson at Chattanooga 2:00 PM ESPN+ Bloomsburg at Rider 2:00 PM ESPN+ Central Michigan at SIU Edwardsville 2:00 PM ESPN+ VMI at The Citadel 2:00 PM ESPN+ Nebraska at Wisconsin 2:00 PM Big Ten Network West Virginia at Morgan State 3:00 PM Morgan State All-Access Navy at North Carolina 3:00 PM ESPN+ Iowa at Northwestern 3:00 PM B1G+ Little Rock at Stanford 6:00 PM Pac-12 Network

Welcome back, all. Sorry about missing last week but some things came up, so my crawl to 100 mailbags took a little pit stop. Some say I ducked but I assure you I was banged up and Earl needs to rest me for the stretch run. I only have so many words in me and it would be foolhardy to use them in the middle of January. But I managed to scrape some together this week like the grinder that I am and you can read them now. Such a strange thing that we live in a world of text now and nobody seems to actually speak to each other anymore. Yet we listen to podcasts and watch people play video games for some reason. Tell you what, growing up in my day when you had to watch your brother play a video game for however long and patiently wait your turn, you’d take umbrage with that whole industry like I do. But that’s neither here nor there. Let’s do some questions. Going weight by weight and seeing how many wrestlers each conference has in the top 10, how close would you say the B12 and others are to catching the B10? Is the gap closing? Jayson Hildreth Fine, I’ll crunch the numbers. Ok, numbers crunched. And I’m not exactly sure what to make of them. It seems the B12 has a pretty solid stronghold on the upper weights with four guys ranked in the top ten at 165, 184, and 285. Three at 197 and only two at 174 puts 17 out of 50 overall for the guys who wrestle after intermission. So just about one-third. That’s not bad. The lightweights only clock in with two at each weight, except 141, which has four. Since I have no other data to compare to, or don’t feel like searching for, it’s hard to tell if a gap has been closed. But it does seem like it. Missouri is as good as anybody in the non-PSU division, Iowa State has reemerged as a powerhouse, Oklahoma State is Oklahoma State, and UNI and South Dakota State are no one to be trifled with. It certainly feels like a more well-rounded conference right now than the Big Ten. I’ll admit that much. I also admit that a few Big Ten teams seem a bit down this year on account of injuries and transfers. Should be fun to see how things shake out in about two months. Who does wrestling Twitter hate the most: AJ Ferrari, Jimmy Cinnabon, or all the ducks? I'll hang up and quack now. Thicccholas Depends on the week. I actually don’t see much chatter on the X about Cinnabon, nor do I know if he’s out there somewhere. Jimmy certainly gets them riled up on the forum, though. If you know, you know. If you don’t, go check out the forum just a click away at the top of the page. But finish reading this first. I’m not doing Ferrari today. There’s just nothing more to discuss right now. We will go through the motions again next year. It’s definitely the ducking situation for lack of a better term. I try to give the benefit of the doubt when it happens but it seems to be getting tougher to justify. The good news is that the lack of marquee matchups during the regular season makes March just that much more exciting. Jags, my brilliant friend, it's been over 46 years since the last @RUWrestling vs Florida dual. When are those golf cart jockeys going to give us a chance to settle the score? Salty Walkon They’d have to get a team first. So…never? Shocking that I wasn’t alive when that happened since I’ve been alive for almost everything. But seriously, there’s no reason why the entire state of Florida can’t have a good three D1 teams at least. I bet they wouldn’t even have to travel. Every team would just want to go there instead. What is the significance of 712 to you? Are you actually representing western Iowa area code, 712? Best unorthodox bracket format for 125 this year? Best of 3 finals, round robin. Do we include feats of strength, Dance offs, or slam poetry readings to crown 125? Burger King of Kings No significance at all. But I dig that it’s an area code in Iowa. Many moons ago in the early days of the internet, I needed an email so I chose Jagger711. Jagger because I’d occasionally crush some Coors Lights and start doing Mick Jagger impressions. 711 was for our family’s race car number. Then for some reason, I needed another email and just went one number up. As the 21st century went on and we needed usernames for everything from online poker to Xbox, it just became my de facto name. That’s it. That’s the story. Truly exhilarating stuff. As far as 125 is concerned, there’s only one answer. Royal Rumble. 33 enter, one leaves with the belt. Speaking of which… How is anyone going to get Omos over the top rope?????? Rhino It’s Rumble weekend! Look, I know there's still some beef from the real wrestling crowd to the scripted stuff, but the Rumble is fun. It’s the only WWE event I even watch anymore. And we have a pool going! I dropped 30 Willie bucks for three lousy numbers where one will certainly be Omos. Then the announcers will act like he can win because he’s seven feet tall and I’ll get all excited before he inevitably gets eliminated by Rey Mysterio or a nostalgia entrant like The Sandman or something. I’ll still pop for it. 30 pops, baby! Go nuts for every guy no matter what! Don't want to talk about "hot seats", Some coaches are reaching retirement age. Gable retired at 50, Nichols at 68. Does John Smith (58), Brands (55), Manning (65?), Koll (58?), Dresser (61), Zeke (57), retire first? Burger King of Questions You would think Manning strictly by age but who knows. I just feel like it’s a new generation and these guys don’t feel as old as their age would indicate. I don’t feel as old as my age indicates. It’s just the times we live in. And do they want to retire anytime soon? Each one of them has put in a lifetime of work to get to where they are. It’s what they do. It’s how they’re programmed. Other than maybe John Smith, I can see all these guys doing it until they’re 70 and riding off into the sunset. Which is exactly what I’m going to do right now. Have a great weekend!