boconnell

I'm sure they won't mind if you stop pretending.

I absolutely agree they are deserving of more college wrestling opportunities. I just strongly disagree that a big college is Texas would win much.

Bo moved to Texas for 9th grade. There are a handful of other AAs the last decade, and all are from the Dallas area. Most are from Allen HS (Nickal and others) or Martin HS (Mondays). The panhandle is good like you said, but there just aren't a lot of people up there. The rest of the state south of Dallas has 1 combined team state title back in like 2005. Good wrestling is definitely all from the part of the state that can take an easy drive to Oklahoma. The other 200+ schools try hard but don't really approach a national level. I say that as someone who lived and coached in Houston for a long time.

Little Rock is much closer to good wrestling than Texas is. They are also an enrollment driven university that was happy to oblige a big donor that wanted wrestling. The Texas schools you mentioned have zero need for more enrollment. They have huge enrollments and giant lists of students turned away. They also have far fewer alumni with wrestling experience because so few in the state wrestled in college. The odds of a big money donor propping up at a giant university with multiple millions a year for a men's and women's program is near zero. The University of Texas is a fantastic school with tons of wealthy alumni, but none of those alumni wrestled in college or have deep connection to the sport. If they did they'd be at a different university. Also look at the top 10 programs in the NCAAs and tell me how many current AAs are within 100/200/500/1000 miles of campus. Texas would be a distant last in a list like that. I'd love for a big Texas University to embrace wrestling. I finished my undergrad at University of Houston. It's just not happening.

There are about 300 High Schools in Texas with wrestling. There were like 20 Junior Highs as of a few years ago.

Why would a Texas school have immediate success? There is very little D1 talent in the state, and very little D1 talent in the surrounding states. The travel budget would be large and only a few schools in the state play in a conference with wrestling. There is also very little wrestling history in the state. It's hard to overstate how few older people there wrestled. There are near zero boosters at those schools who have a history with the sport. Most of the coaches in the state come from out of state and a good chunk of the refs never wrestled. It is just a very young sport there without much history. I think a big school would probably be terrible if they started wrestling (which is not going to happen).

There is a zero percent chance of USC or Texas adding wrestling. I'd also think there's a zero percent chance of Maryland having the money to make a huge hire. The DT hire just set a market place that very few schools can compete with. I think it's far more likely the big names you mention don't go into head coaching and try to earn outside of the head coaching ranks than it is they end up at Maryland.

Says the guy slinging insults on an internet discussion board in a thread about a social media post. The lack of self-awareness is staggering.

You're doing some serious mental gymnastics to make sure a tweet isn't wrong. I'll just leave it alone at this point because I should never have cared whether the tweet was right or wrong.

If he was offered more money elsewhere then he would be correct. I don't think he claimed that and I don't think anybody believes that happened. If it did I believe we'd have a report about it. We usually hear when huge numbers are thrown around.

Home and money over money elsewhere would be accurate. You can't claim home over money when home was more money. That's not how the english language works.

They can both be true if you acknowledge them. You can't claim to stay home for loyalty over money when you stayed home for loyalty and more money.

Yes. That is what I agreed with. PSU is the premiere program and nobody has the money to match them.

Cael already works for the team with the biggest warchest, but if you think someone has enough money to hire Cael away then good luck on that belief.

I would agree that PSU is now the premiere program and nobody in college wrestling has any hope of hiring Cael away.

I don't really root for Iowa, but it's funny to mention Austin Desantos not continuing to score on RBY in the context of not improving. Nobody in the country improved if the standard is whether they kept scoring on RBY. Especially for a guy a clear level (or more) below RBY's talent.

It's a dumb term that the sports world has applied to a really good prospect. By definition it should mean a guy who comes along once a generation (20+ years).

No way to justify Fix that low. He's got better FS credentials than every guy but #2 and better folkstyle credentials then all but 1-3 and 7 (and 7 hasn't outplaced him since 2019). It would be a stretch to put him at 5. 8 is dumb.

Great interview.

This is really what you're asking.

Yep. Messenbrink did nothing the whole match then got fake tough at the end. JB then got fake tough in retaliation. The ref awarded a penalty point. End of story.

It absolutely wouldn't have happened if it wasn't a PSU wrestler and it wasn't JB. But who cares that it happened. It's completely okay to root for one wrestler over another. If PSU fans booed JB in the olympics while he represented the USA, then I'd raise an eyebrow. But this? This is nothing. PSU fans cheered for their guy and against the opponent. That makes them like all other fans.

All-time stupid post to call JB a perpetual runner-up after a tournament where he wasn't even the runner-up.

Yep. The seeding was an issue. But the heavier half of the team went up in weight when Weigel got hurt. When Weigel came back in January there were no good decisions. He could have not allowed Weigel to come back, not let Nolan Boyd drop, not let Jacobe Smith drop, not let Joe Smith drop, or let them all go the weight they want and have a wrestle off. I think the decision that got made resulted in fewer points for the team, but I don't think it was even slightly unfair. I think the best lineup for the team probably squeezes out Boyd which would have been even more brutal.

If you are going to talk number of weight classes while comparing men's and women's wrestling, then you're not being serious. The number of weight classes argument has to do with number of competitors and countries being squeezed into smaller groupings. The number of competitors and countries in women's wrestling is far lower even if the men split into 20 weights instead of 10. It's an absurd argument you just tried to make.