666

That wasn't always the case. Back in the days of unlimited HWT it was very common for guys to both wrestle and play football in college. The 275 and later 285 weight limits on HWT killed wrestling getting the talented huge guys. Do you think Gable Steveson would've been able to beat all 450 pounds of Chris Taylor in an NCAA match? Forget about it!

Sumos don't have the endurance for football.

I don't even know when techfalls became a thing. Sometime after I was done with my wrestling career. There was no mercy on the mat when I wrestled

I've never seen a score that high before. I remember seeing a 34-6 score at the state tournament back in 1981. Back in those days any win by 12 points or more scored the same as a techfall today and was called a "superior decision", but there was no 15 point "mercy rule" like today. Seems to me if you can rack up 30 points on somebody that you probably could pin him if you wanted.

I had Branch near the top of the list of guys to replace John Smith, along with Coleman Scott. I was stunned when OSU hired David Taylor (but pleased).

Tom Ryan is wrong. CSU doesn't deserve a wrestling program, and soon they won't have one. My condolences to the kids who accepted scholarships to wrestle for such a rotten school.

I hated that dude. What an ego that guy had. I remember him talking between rounds at NCAAs about what cowards guys were who turtled up so he couldn't pin them.

I remember Cael beating that fat dude from OSU that went into MMA. Cormier!

If I was wrestling Starocci, I'd go upper body mode and try to throw him. I bet he'd freak out if somebody aggressively tried to get a bodylock on him and work for a throw.

You think "The Irishman" is dull? Go watch "Remains of the Day'. Go ahead, I f**k**g dare you!

My bad, I meant RTCs with world class wrestlers, not a bunch of R24 types. Buchanon left Wyoming a couple years back and he's still listed, btw

Just a straight across comparison across the weights.

Branch is doing pretty well considering what he's got to work with. Imagine his pitch to hot HS wrestlers: "yeah, we're within a thousand miles of an RTC and it's colder here than a witch's titty 90% of the time. Going outside is a pretty bad idea for 5 months of the year, so get used to some pasty-albino chubby chicks around the university swimming pool. There is nothing to do in the state of Wyoming if you don't plan on joining a white supremacist militia or herd cattle. We do have lots and lots of cold, open space".

Oh. Well I'm not looking at just the points, I'm looking at the wrestlers and how they match up. This year's PSU team would smoke the 79-80 NCAA champ Hawkeyes. I suspect it would probably look the same through all 7 years if I examined them.

I'm not sure if I ever saw the superior grappler lose a fight between 2 grapplers.

Well, we can parse this out logically. I'm not going to go through all 7 of those, but let's take a look at the 79-80 Hawkeyes and today's Nittany Lions. I'm just going to go straight across on these guys even though the weights don't match perfectly (no 118 pound or unlimited HWT classes today!). left column Iowa, right PSU, finish at NCAAs last tournament for PSU 118 Dan Glenn - 2nd no modern weight equiv 126 Kerber DNP 125 Luke Lilledahl TBD 134 Lewis 1st 133 Davis R12 142 Zalesky 4th 141 Bartlett 3rd 150 Mueller 3rd 149 Van Ness 3rd 158 Stevenson 7th 157 Kasak 3rd 167 Anderson DNP 165 Mesenbrink 2nd 177 Banach 1st 174 Haines 1st 190 no qualifier 184 Starocci 1st 197 Barr TBD HWT Phinney 3rd HWT Kerkvliet 1st Alright, let's score this like a dual. 118 Glenn forfeit PSU 6-0 125/126 Lilledahl MD Kerber 6-4 133/134 Lewis MD Davis 10-4 141/142 Bartlett dec Zalesky 10-7 149/150 Van Ness dec Mueller 10-10 157-158 Kasak dec Stevenson 10-13 165/167 Mesenbrink TF Anderson 10-18 174/177 Banach dec Haines 13-18 184/190/197 PSU TF "no qualifier" 13-23 HWT Kerkvliet MD Phinney 13-27 So I have this year's PSU squad beating the 79-80 Hawkeyes 27-13, and that's probably being a bit too generous to the Hawkeyes since I gifted them 6 points at 118 pounds.

Oh yeah, the gap between #1 and #2 is tremendous. Plus, and this will piss off some guys, the gap between #2 and #3 is pretty big as well. Iowa is a much stronger team than Oklahoma State.

I saw a ridiculous factoid on the screen during the dual. It showed this year that PSU wrestlers have 240 takedowns and given up only 15 (or so). That's ludicrous.

I forgot to mention, Steiber's medal was a gold, not silver, but it was at a non-Olympis weight (61 kg).

I don't remember Gable's teams ever being as dominant across all the weight classes like PSU today. Plus, and this may annoy some people, I think today's PSU teams would utterly dominate the best Gable teams if we could get a time machine and bring those teams together.