BAC

I'm all for leaving it up to the athlete, but asking for their hometown isn't the same asking for their state of wrestling origin. If you asked me for mind, I'd give a different state for each, as what I call my hometown isn't the state that I'd say produced me as a wrestler. Regardless, your points are well taken, especially when you're in the wrestling media as you are -- that is, you need to have an approach which, despite its potential inaccuracies, can't be said to be borne of bias. And, as you mention, you're paid by your output, not by the hour. For me, though, since I don't have to answer to anyone besides online hecklers and angry Arizonans as I bask in anonymity, I'll stick to my way. :]

This has been a topic of debate on this forum and its predecessor for 20 years. It was especially contentious when Blair was tops and Sem wasn't a factor, as the NJ folks would want to take credit for every kid who ever wore a Blair singlet, no matter how short the duration, while Blair haters wanted to deny them credit for anyone who ever lived outside of NJ, no matter how much Blair developed them. Examples: Was Mark Perry from OK, where he trained under the Smith family, or from NJ, for spending 4 years at Blair? Was Mocco from NJ, from his Blair years, or MD, where he was thru his freshman year? How about Jordan Oliver, who was in NJ junior high stud before moving to PA for high school? Heck, the Wyoming crowd (such as it was) thought David Taylor should be considered a WY kid as he only moved to OH somewhere in junior high when he was already a killer and wanted better competition. I understand and respect your approach, and that of @Jason Bryant , to just look at what hometown the kid lists, as that has the benefit of simplicity, removes the bias, and takes the question out of the hands of squabbling fans. But I still don't like it. My main issue is the whole idea of looking at state of origin is to try to measure which state "produces" the best wrestlers, not which state happens to have the most number of kids who once lived there. If, say, Luke Lilledahl moved from Missouri to PA his senior year, and his family did too, such that his hometown is now PA, should PA take credit for him? No way, and I'd side with the Missouri folks balking at that. I think everyone would. I think that's a built-in flaw with the hometown approach. At minimum I think you need to make exceptions for those situations. But it works the other way too. A kid can list his hometown as a place where he didn't do squat as a wrestler, and was coached up elsewhere. I don't see why the hometown should get "credit" there. Lets say 2 kids from Hawaii, who are good but far from great, go to a Blair type boarding school as freshmen, where both become elite wrestlers. Both kids love NJ, and compete on NJ's squad in state/freestyle duals/Fargo. Kid 1's family moves with him, so now his "hometown" is NJ. Kid 2's dad has a job in Hawaii he can't leave, so the family never moves, such that their "hometown" is still HI. Does it make sense to say that, just because of kid 2's dad's job, one's from NJ and the other HI? Over the years, an uneasy consensus sort of developed on the boards that if a kid spent 4 years at a given school, *and* chose to compete for that school's state team (e.g. Fargo) during that time, then he's "produced" by that school for purposes of these calculations. So by the same standard that everyone grudgingly agreed, say, Mark Perry should be treated as a "NJ kid" for these purposes (despite his legit OK roots), Bartlett would be a "PA kid" (despite his legit AZ roots). I'd readily admit that's still imperfect, since these days, kids start crazy early, and the top kids are already killers by the time they hit 9th grade. Bartlett, for example, trained under Beloglazov out west, and did win preps as a freshman, so I can't get too huffy about PA not getting "credit" for him. But you could say the same about any of these other guys I mentioned who excelled elsewhere before finding a new high school, whose state takes credit for their accomplishments. You have to draw the line somewhere. Am I overthinking this? Yeah, probably, but I'd use the "4 years HS + competing for that state" test over the "what they say their hometown is" approach.

6 AAs in D1 is more than a down year for PA. It's easily their all-time worst over the last several decades. It's rare for PA to dip below 10, and I can't a recall a time they had fewer than 9. To be sure, some of the counting is a bit suspect. (Lilledahl I get, but Bartlett? Usually, spending all 4 years of high school at a given state makes you "from" that state for counting purposes.) But mostly it is just bad luck. PA lost a bunch of guys in the blood round. They also had a bunch of hammers redshirting/injured (e.g. Arrington, Welsh, Crookham, Watters), not to mention Sasso getting shot. They only lose Starocci, so I expect they'll be back in double digits next year.

Yeah... I'm not seeing it, and I doubt you are either. I see a lot of people whining about PSU fans not wanting to go, but I don't see any actual PSU fan saying "we shouldn't go." I'm sure there's a couple if you hunt around long enough, but the "Locked On" people want them to go, Byers wants them to go (see video here (here), every PSU fan I know wants them to go. I don't even see any PSU wrestlers saying they don't want to go. But it's Cael's call, and dissent aside, no one's gonna stage a coup over this. There's always a few saying "it's not a real national dual championship if PSU isn't there," but that's also what the fans of pretty much every other school are saying too, which is why everyone wants PSU to go. I guess it sounds self-important when PSU people say it, but they aren't wrong. It's amazing how jealousy has turned so many non-PSU fans into such whiny little b*tches.

I'm hard pressed to see why what Cael's beef is here. I get that he's a traditionalist who doesn't want to see March's significance diluted, but this is a private invitational, not an NCAA sanctioned event. The only rationale I can come up with for PSU/Cael's refusal is that if they go, and the event is popular, then its legitimacy may carry over to a renewal of demands that there be two separate NCAA championships (dual and individual) and/or that the National Duals results factor into the March individual NCAAs. But that's probably not it, as I think Cael's opposition to National Duals predates the efforts to get it NCAA sanctioned. Besides, other coaches that were opposed to a NCAA-sanctioned dual championship are participating. So... I dunno. I do wonder how long they can hold out, though. If this ends up being a big and popular event, with all the top teams, then PSU will be even further behind than they already are in the number of competitions their guys get. It could be a tiebreaker in recruiting too. Can't imagine the guys on the team are thrilled about being left out either. Hopefully the event's a big success and Cael gives in next year.

Not gonna lie, I'm still pretty bummed about Roper leaving. In the NIL/portal era, it's getting harder and harder for a small market team to excel, but Northern Iowa has been able to do it. No top-20 recruiting classes, no NIL to spend, and yet whoops the likes of Nebraska 24-9. Everything I've heard is that Roper is a bit part of why that is. It'll be hard for Schwab to replace him but I hope he's able to.

That was my read too. Not because I know anything negative about Kennedy, but just process of elimination. It seemed like the conflict wasn't with Taylor, but Taylor wasn't making it go away either -- and didn't make it to Gilman's 2-person-long "list of reasons to stay" (Troy/Roman). I've got to think if it were anyone but Kennedy, Taylor would go to bat for him, but Taylor's hands are sort of tied with Kennedy. Gilman's such an interesting cat. Stubborn, hotheaded, abrasive... but also loyal, self-aware, driven, honest to a fault. I find it hard not to like him. I can see how he'd have a personality conflict with someone, but I also see why PSU would want to have him back.

Isn't Stanich entering his third year at Lehigh this fall? How is he under 20?

On a serious note, I can't help but think that the direct payments are going to result in more program cuts. I'm all for getting the NIL reporting under control, but as I understand it, the $20.5 million cap does NOT apply to third-party donors to NIL. That means donors will continue to make their payments outside that $20.5 million, so as to maximize the college's overall buying power, and the schools themselves will need to come up with that $20.5 million. But where will they get the money? It's coming straight from their revenue stream -- the same revenue stream that funds the colleges' athletic departments. I sort of doubt the administrators are going to take a 22% pay cut. Maybe part will come in the form of increased tuition. But surely at least part will come from AD cuts. And I'd think they'd start with the non-revenue-generating sports. And, if I'm understanding the settlement correctly, cutting non-revenue-generating sports has another benefit too: the less they have to pay the athletes in non-revenue sports, the more they can pay athletes in revenue-generating sports. So if you cut wrestling, you can apply the payments they would have received to make a more competitive offer to top recruits in revenue generating sports. If there were some sort of mechanism that guaranteed equal treatment of sports, or at least pre-allocated what percentage of that $20.5 million each sport could receive, then there'd be a safeguard against it. But as best as I can tell, there isn't. The 5% allocated to non-revenue sports is for past payments, not future. Hopefully I'm wrong here, and I may well be as I haven't studied the settlement in detail. But this whole thing is a mess. Congress really should have stepped in here and legislated the moment the NCAA lost its mini-monopoly, but they didn't, so now everyone sort of muddles through.

Curiously, as soon as Livvy finished testifying and left, the packed crowd thinned out to just 4 or 5 court watchers.

Sigh. I know, you're right, I need to let it go. Although I confess I'm struggling to see how F&M can be two tiers above *anyone* including Bloom. Side note: I remember a similar topic here many years ago, pre-Cael, where everyone was marveling how PSU was only 4th/5th best in PA. (Behind, I think, Edinboro, Lehigh and Pitt, and arguably Penn/Bloom.) How times change.

It kind of defeats the point of having tiers if the second best school is third tier, you need 9 tiers for 11 schools, and some tiers are nonexistent. Does it really simplify anything? Maybe just do groupings. PSU is tops of course. Next level/grouping is Lehigh, Penn and Pitt, all roughly interchangeable. Next is Drexel, Lock Haven, Bucknell, Edinboro. Then F&M and Clarion. Then Bloom.

Ferrari's always going to be Ferrari, but I respect that he's trying to dial it back and at least stay out of trouble. He had all season to implode, and it didn't happen. At NCAAs, won and lost with class. Hope it works out at UNC.

A little off-topic, but can I ask... what on earth is Gary Steen thinking? From the outside, his transfer to OSU makes exactly zero sense. He has no hope of starting at PSU ever again, save an injury or two, but he also has no hope of starting at OSU. Talk about going out of the frying pan and into the fire: instead of getting routinely worked in practice by Luke/Ono/Nagao/Davis, now he gets routinely worked by Spratley/Figs/Sakamoto. What's the point? If this is just about making the 30-man roster cut, I'm not sure it'll be any easier at OSU than PSU. Why not go somewhere where you have a chance of starting? After four years of paying his dues in the PSU room, you'd think he'd want to go someplace where they're actually in need of a 125lb'er.

If it's true, my guess is it's to continue competing. He's been clear that he never retired. I remember he gave an interview a couple months ago (here?) where he was self-critical of how he'd left PSU, sort of leaving coach Cody hanging about going on overseas trip as the Olympic alternate. Said it was on him, and that he'd since patched it up. Didn't sound like he burned any bridges there. I wouldn't be very surprised if he left Ok State in any event. I think it was the same interview where he was surprisingly open about not being particularly committed to OSU. It isn't like he was looking for assistant gigs, went interviewing around, and chose OSU. It was more that his buddy Taylor got the head coaching gig just before the season started, needed to fill out his staff on short notice, and asked Gilman. It gave me the sense that he agreed more to help out Taylor than because he really wanted to move on. I suppose he could be coaching at PSU/NLWC too, if he decided OSU wasn't for him. But whatever's going on, I'm guessing it's less drama-filled than people will make it out to be.