boconnell

Are you being serious here? You don't think professional sports agents are in contact with teams their clients don't play for? Most agencies represent players on dozens of teams and they can have legitimate talks with any team in the league with total deniability. In every pro sport guys will sign contracts in literally the first minute of free agency. Is it your opinion those contracts just happen with super fast negotiations?

I understand all of this. I think everybody does. Wrestling and non-revenue are not currently taking money from football in most cases. Football loses money at most universities. It is way more than 6-10 wrestling programs that are self funding. If it wasn't we'd be near 6-10 programs right now. Nothing is being exposed. It's been this way for a long time.

Sports losing money are already being cut. That's why programs in non-revenue sports have to grow an endowment. It's been a while since non-revenue sports just got to leech money from athletic programs. The change you are describing already happened.

I know it will change how they get paid. I meant how is being a business that cuts anything that doesn't produce be any different than how athletic departments have been operating for a long time?

I got to visit Oregon state and watch the PAC 12 tournament there this year. There was a decent crowd for that event too.

How would this make business different than what college athletics has been for over a decade?

How would this devalue wrestling? Is wrestling currently of value to these schools? If it's not of current financial value, then how would the schools getting more money make it of less value? The only current Big 12 schools with wrestling are OSU, ISU, ASU, and WV. Do you really think a bunch of extra football money and extra focus on football puts wrestling in trouble at those schools? I honestly don't even get what point you were trying to make? It reads like you saw a cool tweet and wanted to loop it into wrestling.

The sample size is tiny on true freshman champs and because of that it can't really tell you much statistically. I'd love to know a larger sample size like true freshman all-americans by weight class. That might be a large enough sample size to say something about how weight class affects a true freshman's ability to compete.

I'd definitely take Ferrari's NCAA title over anything on Downey's resume.

Nickal could win the UFC title in multiple weight classes and I still don't think he reaches the level of wealth that big donors have.

If you think accepting Brands 30 years ago is similar to accepting Ferarri now, then that's an opinion. I don't think Cael could get away with welcoming Long today. Someone will definitely take Ferrari, and I hope he grabs hold of that chance and succeeds. If he doesn't there will be plenty of accountability for plenty of people.

If they knowingly welcome someone with a sexual assault charge onto campus and anything like that happens again, things will go very ugly for everyone involved. That kind of thing lands your name in a lawsuit. That's very different than welcoming in Marstellar.

An individual champ is huge for many programs and coaches. But bringing him in is also the thing that gets you fired at a mid or lower D1 program. Most of those schools care more about the wrestling team not causing trouble than they do about the wrestling team winning. It's a big gamble for a coach.

TXUSA had a male coach convicted of assaulting a female athlete around 20 years back. A state wrestling website exposed the whole thing and the coach ended up convicted in federal court. https://www.espn.com/sports/news/story?id=2475764 This is from after that accusation. It's horrible to see that some things never change.

I would agree. I would also say that every AD has fully believed that more money equals more winning, and they have pursued money as a means of winning.

Do you think the Athletic Directors and athletic departments cared about the educational mission of the member schools? The people making decisions 20 years ago cared exactly as much about money as the people at Allstate do.

I think part of Steveson being so highly regarded is how he won his title. He crushed 2X world medalist Gwiz in two matches to make the team. Then he beat 4X Olympic and World champ Akgul in the semis 8-0. Then he beat 3X world reigning champ Petiashvili in the gold medal match. So that's the next best USA heavy of the past decade, and the two best international heavies of the past decade in a single gold medal run. Snyder has a comparable win over Sadulaev, but it didn't come while he was in college. He doesn't have a win on the level of Akgul or Petriashvilli while still in college. He also didn't have to beat anyone domestic at Gwiz' level. Steveson had probably the best couple month run of any college kid ever at any weight. And I agree Mocco is hanging around the top 5, but I can't put him over Konrad who had his way with him while both were at their peak.

I'd put Konrad in there. Mocco is probably near the top of these lists if Konrad doesn't exist. Nobody has ever had more usable size in the limited heavyweight era. It was impossible to hold the center of the mat against him, but it was impossible to attack him. So you just got walked backwards as inevitability set in.

And Brown AA Ophir Bernstein. And a few other guys who reached the college level. Allen has won like 15 straight team titles in Texas.

I didn't say anything about him overreaching when saying Hughes is good or will be good. I said it was bonkers to say Fix didn't know how to scramble and struggled against a bunch of guys he beat and a world champion he couldn't beat. I also said it was crazy to say Hughes is at Fix's level because both were 4Xers. I hope Hughes is great. I think he will be. I think there's a good chance he wins a title while Fix never did. But it's nuts to say Fix struggled late in his career because he couldn't beat RBY and Vito.

Then he should have said 'I'm excited about my guy and the future is bright'.

This is some bonkers stuff. Fix beat all of the guys you mentioned except Arujau. They didn't outscramble him. He didn't even touch Vito's leg for the most part. Vito scored clean off his own shots. And Vito's a world champ. He wasn't outscrambling Fix, he was just better at wrestling. Being a 4X Oklahoma champ doesn't mean they were similar in HS. There are tons of 4X Oklahoma champs, and most never come close to Fix's level. You are massively reaching to say Hughes is close to Fix, let alone better.

People love to talk about how misguided colleges focusing on sports is. I am not sure that what you learn in academics actually applies more to life than what you learn in athletics. I bet NCAA D1 athletes hit traditional success markers at a greater rate than those who obtain Bachelors of Arts or Sociology or similar degrees (and I say that as a holder of an English Literature degree).

You're crazy if you think most football and basketball teams make money.

That's a decent job completely explaining away a pretty solid AA run. I am pretty sure you could make a similar argument for most 5th place AAs if your goal was to explain them away.