1032004

I was lol’ing because the guys we sent had already proven to be elite. Snyder Olympic champ, Brooks had to beat an Olympic champ to make the team, Zain and Dake world champs, Parris world medalist. I’m not sure why they didn’t wrestle up to their potential, but the only one that wrestled “bad” IMO was Parris. Lee wrestled well but Higuchi wrestled better. Brooks was a second away from the finals, and Zain got beat by a buzzsaw. There could be some slowing down of Dake and Snyder due to age. Amine didn’t even medal, seems odd that you are praising his performance but criticizing the US guys’. There could be something to be said for the US trials being so daunting that the transfers have an advantage by not having to deal with that, but that’s evidence of how strong we are which is contrary to your claims.

Lol c’mon. We didn’t have a good tournament, but our men’s FS team is still elite. Doesn’t Amine train at the same place Parris does? How did RBY look?

I think the answer to the title of the thread depends what the goal is. If the goal is to improve our international performance, there is probably some benefit to switching to freestyle from folkstyle. How much, I’m not sure. If the goal is to increase viewership, I don’t see how it would help. I agree that the tribe aspect would mean we shouldn’t lose many of the existing fans, but I’m not sure where new ones would come from unless colleges recruit a bunch of guys from India or something. Continuing on my last point, isn’t the fact that NCAA swimming doesn’t have many fans evidence that switching college to freestyle wouldn’t mean more viewers?

The gold medalist Ramazanov from Bulgaria that beat Brooks represented Russia until 2019 (seems you acknowledged that one). The guy Brooks beat in the bronze medal match from Uzbekistan represented Russia until 2015 - https://uww.org/athletes-results/javrail-shapiev-20647-profile The guy Brooks beat in the first round from Kazakhstan may actually be from there best I can tell. So Brooks wrestled 2 Russians.

Is there any chance Snyder goes up to heavyweight? If not and Brooks goes to 97, does one of them leave NLWC?

The field would have been even tougher with guys that actually represent Russia, but I think most would agree that all the Russian transfers make the field as is tougher than it was in most prior years

How did Musukaev get an extra 2 after the challenge?

Seems even more subjective than stalling to me, don’t like it. I guess we need @LJB here to enlighten us all about it being about “keeping your butt in the center.” I like the shot clock in theory but seems like most guys just concede the point (maybe because they know it’s likely the other guy will get put on the clock later).

I didn’t realize Rivera had such a good gut wrench. Saved him in his last 2 matches

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.