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Coach left

Agree to disagree, at least for wrestling (I’ve heard there’s much more craziness in football and basketball). I don’t think kids (which most are when they commit) should be forced to lose 25% of their eligibility if they don’t like the school, or even if they can’t make the lineup. Especially when coaches aren’t held to the same standard. It will be interesting to see how many less transfers there are after the Covid year guys are gone. And even outside of grad transfers, I think most big name transfers have spent 3 postseasons at their original school. Outside of circumstances like your coach leaving or your program getting cut, I may be forgetting someone but I literally can’t think of one guy that was at a small school, had a breakout year in the NCAA as a freshman or sophomore and then portaled. Closest would be Mesenbrink but his breakout wasn’t in the NCAA and IIRC it really started before he was even a student at Cal Baptist. Some may say Nagao but Minnesota isn’t a small school.

But again, the original comment Pyles was responding to was talking about “buying” guys. I think it’s fair to interpret that as being what the conversation as a whole was referring to. Ryan wanted to make clear he hadn’t “bought” any transfers (even though he’s tried to, and has also “bought” recruits).

To my earlier point, this seems like more of an argument against (the current version of) NIL than the portal. IMO, it’s moreso the money that is causing guys to jump ship and I think we’d see less transfers without that (and yes I know the free Covid year has also caused a surge in grad transfers that wouldn’t have transferred if not for the free year). Also as has been pointed out, there has been a pretty good number of guys use the portal to go from bigger schools to smaller ones.

It doesn’t really “hinge on Ryan accusing Pyles of making a demonstrably false statement” though, assuming you’re referring to what started it. It started with Pyles replying to someone talking about Michigan “buying” guys. Ryan’s first comment was just making a statement, and didn’t really accuse Pyles of anything other than being “silly.” It wasn’t until later that Ryan “accused Pyles of making a demonstrably false statement” that he never made. However I probably should have also included this tweet, where Pyles claims “he never once said NIL.” But the tweet he was quoting was replying to a post where he said NIL! The post was accurate, but Pyles did say NIL. But again, it is a bit odd that Ryan wants to make it known they “haven’t had any transfers in the NIL area,” when he readily admits they’ve gone after them they just haven’t gotten them. Probably what @pokemonster said that he didn’t want the current guys to think they were getting recruited over, since he also made a point to say he tells his team about any portal guys they go after.

Are you able to view the tweet/post I linked? It’s in there.

Ryan did assign statements to Pyles that he never said later on (which I mentioned in my post as well), but the original post that Pyle responded to was talking about Michigan “buying”guys. I think it’s reasonable to assume the overall conversation was implying recent years. However, it was odd to me that Ryan would go out of his way to say they haven’t had any transfers in the portal error (while he was on vacation even), when he acknowledged they’ve gone after portal guys they just haven’t succeeded in getting them.

Why is the portal a bad thing? The portal in itself is a good thing IMO, it’s only when it’s combined with the current iteration of NIL that it becomes “bad.” NIL as it was intended is not bad, but it’s mostly become “collectives” paying guys to go to certain schools, which is pretty much the opposite of what NIL is supposed to be. I do think Ryan was basically saying NIL in its current form is bad, because it means you have to pay specific guys to get them to stay (not really based on their NIL) and that money could have otherwise went to support the program as a whole.

It was a good discussion overall, but seemed contradictory at times and they were kinda arguing past each other and repeating what they said on x/twitter. They were both partly wrong. I was expecting them to apologize to each other but they were kinda still making the 2 different arguments on the show. The original story is Ryan got mad because he thought Pyles was equating “going after transfers” with NIL/portal. Pyles technically never said NIL, but the original post he was replying to talked about Michigan “buying” guys (probably why on FRL Ryan said something about “go read the original tweet”). Advantage Ryan. However Ryan followed up by saying “your post said McKenna & Tate were in NIL era,” which it didn’t. Advantage Pyle. On the show Ryan did acknowledge they go after guys in the portal, and that any team should, but for the most part denied that they reach out to any guys not in the portal, but made a point to say that wasn’t against the rules as long as it wasn’t a coach. Here was most of the original convo:

The interim coach thing is weird though IMO. Why would they even need an interim in the off-season (assuming they won’t take forever to hire someone)?

His tweet can easily be interpreted as “someone on the staff is running amok.” But I agree that’s probably not what he meant

Yeah Willie definitely worded that poorly. But seems like he tweeted that before the Smith announcement

Hmm that’s weird, wrestlestat only shows 1 match (I thought they usually still show the non-D1 matches in the results, just not the record)

How did Erik Gibson wrestle only 1 match (and win) at the National Collegiate Open without MFF’ing? Couldn’t find brackets after a quick search

Maybe it was $$$ which they offered trying to get Mason as well

EIWA with the Ivies leaving?

Mason was also originally “committed to the admissions process” for Cornell, right?

It was “liked” by Tom Ryan… But, also both liked and “reposted” by Liam Cronin, so who knows

To me that suggests that he’s not actually leaving. But it is a FSBO, so needs all the eyes he can get. Nice house though.

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/12/04/2790027/0/en/ABR-Dynamic-Funds-LLC-Expands-Team-with-World-Champion-Zain-Retherford.html

Bassett to Rutgers?

Not rumblings. But yeah, could be leaving or could just be moving to a different one

I don’t think it will be. I believe Bassett has a legitimate NIL deal with Rudis, but it seems like the real money comes with being affiliated with a school (which of course is the opposite of what NIL is supposed to be…)