BAC

I'd argue that the 2020 (aka 2021) men's freestyle Olympic team was our best in modern memory. Six weights, five medals: Gold (Taylor, Gable), Silver (Snyder), Bronze (Gilman, Dake). That's a medal in over 83% the weights, and that's with Russia completing (under the Olympic banner) along with all the former Soviet republics. That's a far higher percentage than the '72 team (83% vs 60%), and even a higher percentage of gold medals (33% vs 30%), and that's with only a single Soviet bloc competitor. The '92 team had the same percentages as the '72 team, so the same comments apply. And remember we didn't even qualify 65kg in '20, so of the actual competitors, we were 5-for-5 in medals.

NLWC is obviously the top club in the US, and proved it by their international success over the years, by attracting so much top talent from other clubs, and by putting so many guys in the Olympics. But everyone can't be an Olympic Champion. The NLWC medal haul (2) was more than any other club. It was short of their goals, no doubt, but there's no one you can look at and say "NLWC didn't have him prepared." The guys who lost fought hard and came up short, and there's no reason to think they'd have fared better with another club.

I thought Burroughs was excellent. Had a good beat on the rules and often knew the outcome of challenges before they happened. Talked about himself less. I was worried we might see a hint of sour grapes with Dake or the PSU guys, but not a whiff. And he called it down the middle; without an overly-US bias. I miss Smith but the truth is he has lost a bit of his passion in recent years. JB hasn’t. I don’t know much about Knapp’s background but he did his homework very well. Maybe not a wrestling guy but solid announcer and knew when to defer to JB. Couldn’t hear the arena announcer from the Peacock video but from what I heard Jason Bryant was outstanding as usual. The Scottish dudes (or Irish or English) on the other Peacock feed were a train wreck as usual. WTF, why do they keep bringing those guys back, it’s like watching wrestling at a pub and overhearing drunk Englishmen who have never seen the sport before commenting on it (“oooh she did a ‘body press’ to end the ‘fight’”)

Best wrestling move in the Olympics. Even Dake, with his bomb against Tsabalov, would have to agree that Blades’ 5 was technically prettier.

Honestly I was happy to see Geno get it back. He looked broken after his loss to Gable, and Zare was absolutely gifted his finals berth when they put Akgul in the clock about 10 uneventful seconds after Zare got off the clock.

I have little doubt the weight cut plays a big role here. If it didn’t, then I’d expect he would weigh in tomorrow and make a game-day decision about on how he feels. I assume it’s also true that the concussion symptoms are what makes it too hard for him to safely make the day 2 cut. But I also think if he were at 70kg, where the cut is easier, we would see him weighing in tomorrow and deciding then about whether he can go. If I’m right, I wish Zain would be more open about the weight cut issue, since it’s another arrow in the quiver to fight to get the 4 lost weight classes back. With the Indian wrestler not making weight against Hildebrant, I think the time is right for UWW to make a hard push. The way only negative PR that wrestling took this Olympics was the horrors of the Indian weight cut, even having blood drawn to try to get down, and I think UWW has a chance to turn that blemish into a positive: there is too much of a gap between weights which is resulting in unsafe weight cuts. Though the Indian is an obvious example, I highly suspect Zain is one too. It’s a 70kg guy going down to 65, and basically he needs to be in perfect health after day 1 to safely be able to make the arduous cut for day 2. That won’t happen all the time, and didn’t with Zain. Really hope Zain comes clean on his weight cut (if my assumption is on point) and that UWW brass seizes on these news stories to make a hard push to reinstate lost weights for 2028.

Dake would like a word about this topic.

Did anyone else notice a pretty big disconnect between Kyle and his coaches? Cody seemed as confused what Kyle was talking about as the refs.

I thought the same thing. I liked Snyder's strategy: be cautious, since being overly-aggressive last time burned him, and use his conditioning to pour it in at the end. Unfortunately he got turned and the 6-1 gap was a bit much to overcome, and Snyder's conditioning wasn't quite as on point as it usually is. But I still think it's the right strategy as Taz pretty much collapsed at the end. A fitter Snyder would've taken him.

Amouzad has always been like that. Just for kicks, go back and look at his match against Poulin at the Cadet level:

Yeah I know. But let's face it, Lee especially has reeked of HEW for the last 2 years. Couldn't be more proud and excited about his renaissance over the past 6 months, but if he won gold, do you really think he'd be competing next year? I'd give it a coin flip at best. The knees would make for an easy scapegoat. But now? He knows full well he's right there with the best in the world. I don't see him moving on until his knees keep him from winning, and clearly that isn't the case. I'm heartbroken for the kid, but give me silver + 4 more years over gold + one-and-done. Here's to hoping the next 4 years are gold.

As bummed as I am to see Lee and Brooks not take gold, the following positive thought washed over me after seeing each's loss: At least this means they won't be one-quad-and-done. Olympic Gold is the pinnacle of the sport, and it's tempting to rest on your laurels when you win it. Some, like JB, Kyle and Taylor, come back for more. Others, like Cael, Cejudo and Gable (both of 'em), are satisfied, and hang it up. As Taylor recently admitted, it is really hard to keep yourself motivated after achieving his lifelong goal. But what you pretty much NEVER see is someone as young as Lee and Brooks hang it up after earning an Olympic medal but not a gold one. Usually it just makes them hungrier. Here's to hoping that getting a taste of their goal, but falling slightly short, means we get to see another 4 more years (at least) of them working to get even better and mowing over their international competition.

I agree having an actual gold medal match is a good thing, but I think there's more to the rationale than that. It helps discourage extreme weight cutting to tell all athletes you only get a chance at a medal if you make weight BOTH days. That's good for the sport, and helps ensure everyone's at the right weight, and not one where they will struggle on Day 2 to make weight. Also, the current rule discourages athletes from eating a ton after Day 1 weigh-ins and having a huge weight advantage over your opponents. It keeps everyone at about the same level. To use an extreme example, imagine you know you have zero chance of beating your opponent on the opposite end of your bracket, so your best case scenario is silver. In that scenario, if the rule were otherwise, it could actually make sense to eat liberally after Day 1 weigh-ins so you have as big a size advantage as possible in the quarters and semis. Then if you win, who cares if you don't make weight on Day 2 (and maybe you don't even try), since had no shot beyond silver anyway. I'd be surprised if that last scenario ever played out, but I do think it's good for the sport to remove that risk, and to incentivize healthy weight cutting. I think the NCAA does the same thing and I think it's the right call for the sport.

That's worth a Bob.

Thanks, I learned something new today! At some point the events blend in together... :]

If you're a fish maybe.

I agree on the first part, with different take on the second part. On the first point, there's just too many swimming events IMO, which leads to over-coverage. You couldn't pay me to go watch a swim meet, and I literally don't know a single person who voluntarily went to a swim meet. Yet swimming seems to occupy about 40% of NBC's time. Why? Yes, we do well in swimming, which partially explains the coverage. But we do well in other sports too and I don't see them getting coverage. I honestly think the explanation lies in the fact that the same person can pile up medals by competing in multiple highly-similar events. That drives the media coverage of them being the "most decorated" Olympians, and claims of them being the "best Olympians ever," when in fact it is mostly driven by the number of events they're given. Someone who wins the 50m backstroke is probably a good bet to win the 100m backstroke, and maybe the 200m too. Someone who wins the 200m backstroke will be a good bet for the 200m IM too. If I were to analogize it to wrestling, I'd say it's like having 3 different freestyle medal events: a 3 minute match, a 6 minute match, and a 9 minute match. Or, alternatively, having different weight classes that are just 2kg apart, and allowing the same wrestler to compete for more than one weight class. If wrestling had that, we'd have lots of wrestlers with stacks of gold medals. But I don't favor those solutions, because it would be ridiculous -- it's the same event with a modest difference. I'd rather see the number of swimming events slimmed down for the Olympics. Instead of the 50, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1500 in a given stroke, I'd pare it down to 100, 400, and 1500. If they want to keep the other distances for the swimming world championships, go for it. Having all those events (and therefore all those medals) takes the spotlight off of some amazing sports (not just wrestling) and artificially shines it on swimming. Just as I don't favor separate medals for slight differences in match duration, or for tiny weight variations, I don't see how you can do it for best skill. It isn't like gymnastics where you could separate it out as its own event (e.g. vault vs all-around). You could have a guy get teched in his first match but still get a gold because he had a nice double before getting streamrolled. But if we really wanted to go the multiple medal route, imagine for a moment that the Olympics had freestyle, greco and beach wrestling -- and each country was required to send only a single competitor for each weight. That single competitor would then have a chance to win up to 3 golds. I'm not saying I would implement that idea, or that I even like it (I don't) but just saying it might drive up the focus on wrestling by creating opportunities to have multi-medal athletes. My own preference is to just kill a few swimming events and use those athletic opportunities to add the missing weight classes back into Olympic wrestling.

Bassett is a hammer. The thing Bassett I see is he may need to physically develop more to be in the hunt for a D1 title. You can see it in his match against Santaniello at the Clarion Open (a win, but got pancaked twice), and against Kolodzik at Last Chance (got moved around easily). I won't mention the Zepeda match as that was a big size difference, but right now I can see the top D1 guys controlling positions and wearing him down. He's probably already good enough to AA (see Ashnault win, despite being freestyle). And I actually like the fact that he's seemingly put off weight training to focus on technique, and is consistently testing himself against bigger guys. He's years away from having to endure a D1 grind so there's plenty of time for that to develop. But if he doesn't physically develop much beyond where he is now, I can see that being an obstacle his first couple years.

Shoot, I thought you were going to say she got a synchronized swimming scholarship. Lax and Volleyball are legit. Women's wrestling's participation numbers are way behind volleyball and only about half of lacrosse's. Your kid must be a heck of an athlete to get a lax scholarship without having played before.

I don't think Coleman's roots run deep enough at tOSU for him to be much involved in recruiting. I'm thinking Coleman is biding his time at the RTC until another top head coaching position opens up. I'm sure tOSU knows that too, it's RTC only. It isn't like he's threatening the post-Ryan pecking order. But I have no doubt he's going to do excellent work while he's there. Guys like Mendez should benefit a ton.

Yes, letters (a)-(c) are the 3 alternative compliance prongs. I agree with you that, as worded, they are on equal footing. But I suspect that if you spoke with someone in the compliance branch of the Dept. of Education's Office of Civil Rights, they'd tell you that proportionality (1(a)) is the real goal, and you're just buying time if you're reliant on prong (b) or (c). That's the consistent complaint of ADs over the years and that's been my experience having litigated in this area. That's why I worded it as I did ("out of compliance in proportionality terms" and avoiding lawsuits via the interests/abilities prong). If tOSU is now compliant with the proportionality prong (50-50, you say), that does pose an obstacle to adding a new women's team, since they're playing a zero sum game. Probably the easiest fix is to ease the roster caps they no doubt have on some of the men's teams. But if they claim they lack the funds, I wouldn't shed many tears if they dumped one of those women's sports teams to make room for wrestling. I'm not usually a fan of cannibalizing, but let's face it, some of those teams exist solely for Title IX compliance purposes. As of 2022-23, women's wrestling had twice more high school participants than did women's synchronized swimming, rowing, fencing, ice hockey and gymnastics, combined. (See https://www.nfhs.org/media/7212351/2022-23_participation_survey.pdf). Some I'd genuinely hate to see go (e.g. gymnastics) but some of the others... come on. Club sports at best. Maybe tOSU (and other B1G/Power 5 schools) should try actually servicing the needs and wants of their applicants and students, rather than just cynically creating fake scholarship opportunities for sports that barely exist at the high school level to stay out of court.

*facepalm* See, that's what I'm talking about. All these fake sports that colleges have been forced to create out of nothing to avoid getting sued, but then a REAL sport with REAL interest comes along, and they do nothing.

Just remember that Title IX compliance isn't measured by the number of teams, but by the total number of participants in athletics university-wide. In theory, a school could have only one men's team -- say, a football team with 150 participants -- and 5 women's teams with 25 participants in each -- and still get sued for discrimination against women (150 total participants vs 125). One defense against that (under Title IX's 3-prong regulatory standard) is to show that, despite the imbalance, they've fully accommodated female athletic interest. That used to be pretty easy to do, since women are, on average, less interested in athletics than men, and once you have a critical mass of women's teams it becomes hard to show there's sufficient interest to create a new women's team in a new sport. I suspect if you look up the B1G schools' Title IX numbers, you'll find that most are out of compliance in proportionality terms (too many men), and are avoiding lawsuits by claiming they fully accommodated women's sports interests. But that's going to be harder and harder for them to do as interest in women's wrestling continues to skyrocket.

Agreed. I think PSU has a team in their Altoona campus (DIII) starting next year (too little, too late), while it's still club level at UM and tOSU. Sad. It's especially hard to justify Penn State's head being deep in the sand, not just because of the success of their men's team, but because women's wresting is thriving as much in PA as anywhere in the country, save CA. In fact, per this breakdown of Fargo numbers, all the B1G states (with the ironic exception of Iowa) had strong women's wrestling performances: https://www.themat.com/news/2024/july/21/pennsylvania-wins-overall-fargo2024-team-standings-with-california-and-illinois-in-the-top-three. I'm sure money will get cited as a factor. I'm guessing we'll also hear universities bellyache that sports growth needs to be put on pause now that they have to pay their athletes, per the NCAA deal with Power 5 conferences from a few months back. Even so, with so many D1 programs backed by big donors, it's hard for me to believe that these schools couldn't send out an APB to their benefactors and tap into that largesse. Even if they aren't huge fans, a D1 women's program helps the men's program too, as they help build each others' fan (and revenue) bases, it's a recruiting boon (there's a TON of brother-sister wrestling combos these days), and there's no serious question that having a women's team is an added safeguard against the men's team being cut. And on that note, I just don't see how this isn't a gift from the Title IX compliance gods. Not just in terms of proportionality, but in not having to manufacture nonexistent interest in women's college sports teams that have zero high school pedigree. I'm looking at you, women's rowing. (High school participants: 2100. D1 schools with women's rowing: 89.) Heck, women's wrestling recently passed women's field hockey in high school participation, and 79 D1 schools field a field hockey team. These universities need to decide if they're going to get on the train or get left behind.

Not an Iowa fan but give credit where it is due: Iowa has really stepped up on women's wrestling. There's a whole bunch of other D1 programs that should be out there doing what Iowa's doing but there isn't. Can anyone give me a good reason why the rest of the B1G isn't starting up women's teams? In 2022-23, there were 256,466 boys and 49,127 girls competing in high school wrestling. I'm sure those women's numbers are much higher now, as it is by far the fastest growing sport (see https://apnews.com/article/wrestling-girls-high-school-c1e18531cf36831e158282ea08ca9775). But assuming it's the same, that's about a 5:1 ratio. There's 77 men's D1 programs... by that ratio, there's easily numbers to support 15+ D1 teams. So why are all the women's opportunities buried in NAIA programs? This should be such a no-brainer. Not only is there an enormous unmet need/demand, it also is extremely low-cost for D1 programs. Wrestling is a low-expense sport as it is, but the wrestling infrastructure is already there! It's also an easy way to goose your Title IX numbers. For years, colleges had to avoid getting sued by doing ridiculous things like building a lake in a desert somewhere, in an effort to create a women's crew team for which there was no demonstrated interest (see https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/opinion/wrestling-with-title-ix.html). But now it's right there in front of their noses: women who want to wrestle, and just need major colleges to step up. Why are they being ushered off to Life U, McKendree, or Menlo? And getting a team out there early, as Iowa has wisely done, establishes you as a pre-eminent destination for the top women's wrestlers. It's definitely going to happen, it's just a matter of when -- and if a given D1 school is going to be a leader or on the outside looking in. I'm picking on the B1G schools since they're the pre-eminent wrestling conference and Iowa has shown the other schools the way. Time for them to get off their lazy rears and get in the game.