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Bo Nickal is pro-Trump? No way!

I was honestly curious, not saying any of them were against Trump. I’ll put Starocci in the pro column. But I wouldn’t say simply taking a picture with him means they’re “pro-Trump,” I would expect most of them to not try to get too political, such as Mesenbrink’s in the link you shared. I also thought we were talking about this year’s Champions, so so far I’m seeing Hendrickson and Starocci.

Here was the article from when the initial rumors started. According to Ryan, he could wrestle off for 174 but not until December because Kharchla was injured. https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/13272402-tom-ryan-clears-the-air-on-rocco-welsh-transfer-speculation

Ha true

I wonder if the 3 Mesenbrink voters were PSU guys, I guess they didn’t get the memo that the PSU vote should go to Starocci

Do you get 2 votes if you win twice?

Who of the champs besides Hendrickson?

You’re assuming Ryder doesn’t beat out Welsh?

Well apparently he’s not there (Columbus) at all, although may have just been for the weekend. I believe he did say that he’d probably be in State College in a few weeks though (not sure if “a few” is ~6 or so when most semesters are over, or less than that).

If we are to assume Barr is staying at 197, it’s been mentioned that the smaller Mirasola is going to have a tough time getting in the lineup for a few years. So if there is any chatter about that causing them both to leave, that’s where a guy like Feldman would make sense.

Yes he is a huge PSU homer. But even as not a PSU fan, I particularly enjoy his podcasts with Willie (and Cenzo before that), you just have to ignore his predictions because he will pick PSU guys in every tossup, but he doesn’t pretend to be an expert. He also loves to name drop his marketing clients (I believe that was how he first became a fan, he was working with a bunch of wrestling people particularly from PSU with his marketing company then started following them, so I wouldn’t say he was necessarily a “bandwagon” fan, and I think you can never have enough people making wrestling content). The interviews are hit or miss though, and he’s now done a few live commitments but pretty sure every single one has been to PSU.

He seems to be implying he doesn’t think it was so voluntary. Don’t know the whole story

OK that’s what I thought you meant. The kids probably wouldn’t quit, but many coaches and refs would. And a lot of the ones that would remain wouldn’t be that knowledgeable about it.

So just change college to freestyle?

What are you suggesting? Get rid of folkstyle completely at all levels? We would lose probably 50% or more of our youth coaches and referees.

No, I just find it odd multiple people have commented something along the lines of “are you calling Welsh a liar,” when he probably did not lie about anything, but what he said doesn’t rule out that there could have been some shadiness happening from the PSU side. Honestly the only thing that surprised me was that he specifically said what he’s getting paid to go to PSU was “a lot” less than he was offered by other schools. I feel like most likely (but who really knows) in other situations such as Nagao they may be paying less but not “a lot” less.

How about one year like Teemer and Buchanan?

Did Welsh say he had no contact with PSU prior to entering the portal? Obviously he’s not going to admit it, but he probably doesn’t want to lie either. I thought he just said he hadn’t officially decided. If he was club teammates with some of the guys on the team I’m guessing he at least mentioned to them that he was thinking about it in the beginning of this season when the earlier rumors started, and then word of that likely spread elsewhere. No clue if that would include the coaching staff or the PSU version of Nicolls.

Basch really needs to have someone commit to a school other than PSU on his show so that there’s actually some suspense

I have a bad memory so maybe it happened, but I don’t recall that either. I could certainly see saying Welsh would need to be a TBD. But the total argument doesn’t really make sense anyway, since Kemerer is one of the best to never win a title, and Mekhi did win one. Labriola I guess may not have the best resume of finalists but he was a 4x AA.

Yup, even guys that prefer freestyle like Vito (on recent Mike Mal podcast for example) have said nothing is changing now, basically we’d have to go back in time if we really wanted to change it.

I don’t remember this, most people were talking about the top half of that bracket being stacked with Starocci/Mekhi/Griffith

You’re probably right in that they only really need to figure out one year with Welsh/Ryder. I’m guessing the loser of the wrestleoff gets “injured” and gets a medical RS

Small NIL collective lol. I’m confident PSU pays very well in general, although I’d believe it if they didn’t offer Welsh in particular a whole lot since they don’t really need him.