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WOW. congrats seabass

It was disappointing, but worst in 50+ years seems like a stretch. I’ll take this output over 2008 (1 gold + 6 other guys no higher than 7th).

1. Did you consider it “parity” when only 3 different teams won titles between 1989 & 2010? 2. This makes no sense. As I said earlier the majority of US fans come from the NCAA, and that is where the athletes can become “marquee” to use your word from a different post. If college and the Olympics were the same style we might get more people to watch the Olympics, but you have it backwards. Besides, we ARE competitive on the Olympic stage. Yes, several guys didn’t do as well as we hoped this year. But Tokyo was the MFS team’s best medal output since 1996 when there were 10 weights. In 2008 with 7 wrestlers we only had 1 medal and only 1 guy even wrestling for a medal - https://www.themat.com/team-usa/olympic-team-history 3. Disagree. As I said earlier, freestyle may be marginally more exciting but not by much, and I think a big reason it is is because of criteria, which IMO would be confusing to casual fans. And folkstyle IS evolving to incentive action - neutral danger, 4 point nearfall, 3 point takedown, top stalling rules, etc. There can certainly be more changes made but they’re trying. 4. Agree that a dual championship would be great. But there wasn’t a dual championship 10-15 years ago. And actually, if you look at the biggest duals, most of the teams do send out their top guys. The main change vs 10-15 years ago is the number of matches scheduled to begin with, with I believe the decline largely coming from tournaments (and that’s also where we see the most “ducking” IMO). But 1) nothing changed to “incentivize” this other than coaches thinking too many matches might actually be harmful (the guy leading the charge with this of course wrestled 159 matches in college), and I believe part of the reason in recent years was also to allow guys to compete in some freestyle. And 2) I doubt the fact that Midlands and Scuffle aren’t that good anymore (although CKLV is) has any impact on NCAA viewership. If anything “NCAA’s being the only thing that matters” might help its viewership.

I’m not saying there is nothing wrong. I’m saying the same things were wrong 15 years ago, heck with some of the recent rule changes less may be “wrong” now vs 15 year ago. What are you saying has changed to cause this alleged decline in popularity?

Maybe if he was in the semis, but even then I’m not so sure

I doubt Snyder is done. I thought Dake would be done but Pyles in their recap video today said he thinks he might not be. Lee seems 50/50 to me. We have lots of young guys that could be ready to step in though. Sure I’m forgetting some but off the top of my head guys like Blaze, Forrest, Lilledahl, Mendez, Alirez, Mesenbrink, O’Toole, Carr, Mirasola could be good replacements

If your metric is TV ratings, seems like it is if you compare to the number of TV subscribers. Don’t get me wrong I wish wrestling was more popular, but I don’t think it’s really any less popular than it was 15 years ago.

Do you think the current exposure rules are ideal? Maybe it’s my folkstyle bias but the way points can swing based on the slightest movement of who “initiated the move” is not great IMO. I believe today alone there were multiple times where a move was initially scored as 4 for one wrestler but then changed to the other. An 8 point swing from a challenge is crazy. I don’t hate exposure as a whole but I feel like you shouldn’t get points if the sequence ends with your opponent on top.

I wonder if Higuchi is still considering going to Penn State

Alliseeissomeonethatfailedmathclass

What do you mean “it”? Elor and Blades don’t wrestle in college, and the rest have been out of college 5+ years (and 2 of them went to college in Canada).

Serious question…was Cael (or Cunningham for that matter) in Paris? I wasn’t paying super close attention to who was in the corner (except for the awkward Dake challenge), but I only saw Cody and Varner.

Freestyle may be marginally more exciting, but not enough to make a “major” difference IMO. I also think criteria is one of the main reasons it is more exciting but it’s not something that casual fans would easily understand IMO. Definitely disagree about the “marquee athlete” thing. The fans are in the NCAA, so the athletes become “marquee” due to their NCAA success. And keep in mind there are events like the Bill Farrell where we’ve got tons of “marquee” wrestlers competing yet hardly any fans. So I assume your opinion is that if we switched to freestyle at all levels that we would “regularly” have World and Olympic champs competing in college?

Who said it was a great performance? Pretty much everything I’ve seen is that it was disappointing. Which IMO just shows how good we are if a silver and 2+ bronzes out of 6 weights is disappointing. I wish #1 happens, but it’s not like NLWC having all the best guys was intentional on the part of anyone but NLWC. And I’m sure guys would/will leave if they feel it’s not the best place for them. #2 sounds good too. What time of year are some of the main tournaments that would be good for them to enter and how does that conflict with the college season? I know many have been clamoring for NCAA wrestling to be a 1 semester sport maybe that could go along with guys wrestling more internationally. But you lose me on #3, especially if you think it will help NCAA ratings/attendance. I know the school affiliation is why folkstyle has more fans, but I don’t buy that switching to free which most casual fans have hardly ever watched would actually help. And honestly I’m not sure folk really hurts free performance as we’ve had several guys win Olympics or worlds during or shortly after college. It does certainly seem like we need to develop better par terre, but I’m not sure that’s a folkstyle problem. Snyder has zero par terre offense and he’s been full time freestyle for like 6 years.

What changes do you think need to be made?

Well considering Dake couldn’t beat what most would consider prime Burroughs, I don’t think many people thought that. Many probably thought he was still better than everyone in the world though.

I don’t think anything is wrong with the qualifying system. I think the only question of “did we send the best guy” is Taylor and seemed like he had a case of HEW anyway. With the RTC’s there isn’t really a training “system” for the national team anymore, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing either as even with this “disappointment” it’s still better than most prior years. IMO the only guys who didn’t wrestle all that well were Dake and Parris. Dake came back for bronze and Parris is young. Brooks was a second away from the finals and Spencer, Snyder and Zain just got beat by better guys IMO.

Did you mean to say Terry Steiner?

Interesting. I know Ayres is a big proponent of women’s wrestling, so seems like not an impossibility.

Sounds like a good opportunity for Penn State to start a women’s team

How has he done against Amine?

If they’re representing other countries, I’m surprised that Russia doesn’t make them leave…

Yeah I have that same question. I wouldn’t agree with this, but one argument I’ve seen for the US ones is that American resources/facilities shouldn’t be used to train foreign athletes, so maybe some Russians feel the same way? Although I guess for them it’s probably more about coaches and training partners where in the US many are training at publicly funded universities (although I moreso have an issue with the entanglement of RTC’s and universities than “foreign” athletes training at the RTC’s).

Kadi was one and I think there was one at 65 as well?

Curious, do we know how many of them actually live in those other countries? (Not that there’s anything wrong with it if they don’t as obviously the American ones don’t) Also curious how many of the transfers happened after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (I know many happened before, and maybe even some of the ones that happened after it it may not have been the main reason)