Wrestleknownothing

It's like you guys don't know who the president is.

True, but what he describes is a permanent inflationary effect for the US, too. If US companies are forced to abandon China to find the next best labor deal, it will still be the next best. So prices will still go higher. Worse for China, sure. But still very bad for the US. That said, China is the biggest culprit when it comes to unfair trade practices, and should be the target of hard negotiations. But I believe the tariffs need to be targeted at unfair trade practices, rather than the current across the board craziness of using a made up formula that equates any and all goods imbalances as unfair, while ignoring services imbalances that typically go in the other direction, and the fact that many imbalances are structural (i.e. China has cheaper labor, and nothing will change that). And a policy needs to be well thought out, rather than the willy nilly, reactionary, at the whim, set of "policies" Trump is currently pursuing.

Don't leave out her math skills as being off.

Playing around with the placement data and I noticed that while ISU averaged more than 7 national qualifiers per year from 2014 - 2025, they had only 1 in 2018 (Jarrett Degen went 3-2, scoring 3 team points). Followed by years of 9, 8, 9, 8, 9, 8 national qualifiers. What am I missing? What happened in 2018?

Good news / bad news? They had a rough 8 year stretch from 2016 - 2024 where they underperformed each year. But they snapped back nicely in 2025, beating their average seed by 1.1 spots. That also means Iowa now has the longest active streak of underperforming seed at 5 straight years.

Three days ago she said DEA has seized 21 million fentanyl pills, saving 21 million lives since Trump took office. Mind you in 2023 there were ~70,000 fentanyl deaths. Two days later she said it was 22 million pills, saving 119 million lives since January. Today she said it was 22 million pills, saving 258 million lives. Apparently 76% of us were this close to taking up fentanyl and dying from it. Sadly we were going to need to share those 22 million pills though.

I assume if there is scholarship money available they can, and they can definitely get NIL.

I think that is the loophole @Idaho referenced above.

There would need to be a change to how scholarships are typically funded. Schools do not like to rely on year to year funding as it is uncertain, making it impossible to do any long term planning. So they typically require the scholarship to be endowed. Depending on the assumptions the school makes about investment returns they may require a 20:1 (or more) ratio. So twenty scholarships at $50k each, or $1 million, would require an upfront, one-time contribution of at least $20 million.

Someone asked me about the broader trend. Using the past 11 tournaments, here is how teams who average at least 6 wrestlers per tournament have performed relative to their seeds.

I am always amused that when someone disagrees with an opinion, rather than producing an intelligent, reasoned response, they dust off a 2010 meme to try to sound cool.

But is it lawless if the law is there is no law?

Exactly. If he doesn't want to, they will not be able to.

But why would he want to? Giving $50k each to 20 non-starters does not achieve the goal.

Pretty crazy that in the land of free speech that is an accurate qualifier.

For teams that opt in, 30 roster spots, no scholarship limits. So effectively up to 30 scholarships. No one will be able to fund 30 scholarships though, so just a headline number, not reality.

Cael Sanderson has said they will not be anywhere near 30 scholarships. I imagine Iowa and Oklahoma State will also be well below 30 unless the NIL market value assessments are effective in decreasing deal sizes. Then, the three existing big donors may turn to endowing incremental scholarships. The one drawback to that approach is it doesn't allow for the current system of concentrating payments for big stars.

Financial engineers love a challenge. The one that they have mostly not yet cracked is the David Bowie trade. Bowie sold the right to his future royalties over a ten year period for a flat payment. It was structured as a bond, but that is essentially what it was. Others have tried to get into the business of paying students a flat fee in exchange for some percentage of their future earnings. Very few people have wanted to do this though because they fear what will happen if they hit it big, but have to give a big chunk to investors. The one I have heard of that has had success is Big League Advantage. They are an investment fund that pays minor league baseball players up front cash for a percentage of their future major league earnings. Because so few make the major leagues, more players are inclined to accept. BLA just needs a couple grand slams to compensate them for the strike outs (sorry). Probably the most famous deals they have done are Elly De La Cruz, who signed away 10% of all future MLB earnings for up front cash. They pay $50k per 1%, so De La Cruz got $500k at a time when he was making next to nothing. The other is Fernando Tatis Jr. who got $350k for 8% at a time he was making $10k per year. When Tatis Jr. signed his $340 million deal BLA was owed $27.2 over the life of the deal. They have done something like 500 deals with about 100 making the majors for some minimum amount of time. BLA has also been raising money to do NIL deals. So it is coming.

Congratulations. Great and exciting times for you.

Now I am the dummy. I missed the second part. Classic clueless take.

What point do you think you are making? So there is a verifiable fact, and many people read it and quote it. So?

I found a new visualization that I wanted to experiment with, so here goes. Looking at the 16 and 33 seed era (2014-2025) and filtering down to teams that qualified all ten wrestlers (35 teams), I took a look at what their average seed was (thin vertical black line to the far right in each row), and how they performed relative to that seed (red/green bars). No real surprise here. The higher the average seed, the easier it is to beat the seed. But there are no guarantees, as two of the worst performances came from teams in the bottom quarter.

No, Obama was not in his first 100 days in either 2008 or 2020. But then being wrong is your thing. During the worst of Obama's first 100 days the S&P 500 was +0.6% During Trump's first 100 days in office the S&P 500 is -7.3% That just is the way it is. I know you do not want to believe it. You want to focus on anecdotes like what Ionel claims his portfolio has done. But it is just a fact. The stock market is down more in Trump's first 100 days than any time in recent history. Certainly more so than any of the last 9 presidents. And it is a self-inflicted wound. Trump whipsawing from one tariff whim to the other based on an incorrect formula is the reason the market is down over 7%. There is no external shock, no virus, no housing crisis, no recession, just Trump shooting us in the foot.

What are normal highs. And, no, this has not been anything remotely close to expected fluctuation.