alex1fly

Lol. It’s my job not my hobby. Just get Jimmy in here to make a headline and call it good.

zero evidence to back it up. Folks are citing a couple of weak metrics and claiming they’re legit just because a real analysis hasn’t been done. As a data guy this bugs me but hey what can you do. I’m certainly not going to go gather participation data, look at trends over time, geographical spread, etc in order to settle a forum debate.

Most popular how. Number of wrestlers? Number of fans? Number of countries with x amount of wrestling clubs? Gotta define your metric. Personally I don’t buy “entries at worlds” as an actual way to measure popularity but people love a story.

You might be on to something there OP. Watch, Bassett will eliminate every school from his list lol

I was told nothing. So you may be right!

133 - Hughes or Witcraft 141 - Hughes or Young 149 - Young or Jamison 157 - Fish or Travis Wait, isn't this a Transfer Portal thread?

Google is currently under investigation for how they prioritize search results. Can’t trust em jk. I don’t really care. I mean they are under investigation. The faux outrage is the jk part

Omg right tOSU is what they call themselves so they can have that one Might just have to accept that OSU is both Oklahoma State and Oregon State.

Only what's said in the interview. Pretty vague.

It was a good interview. A bit painful as a lifelong Pokes fan but was good to hear what Coleman's thinking about all this. He's clearly very shaken by the rumors and I interpreted it as his lawyers are digging into the financial misconduct rumors and will be filing suit for slander/libel/defamation of character, that kind of thing. It makes sense because if he didn't do any of that stuff then the rumors have a real chance of making him unemployable. So they're tracking down the source of the rumors and will file suit or claim damages or whatever else. Hard to know when Coleman himself was silent on things for so long. Rumor mill runs strong esp in the offseason lol

Whining on social media must be part of his brand now. Pretty lame TBH, seems like he's lost the smart/humble/capable vibe that made him fun to follow in college.

Breaking news! Newsworthy news breaks in newsworthy breakable fashion.

Write that book. Do it! From what I can tell it was around the 10th chance. Maybe more. Just bits gleaned from media days, duals, and other pieces of being an over invested Cowboy fan. Consistent “if JW can get his head on straight” stuff for many years.

Just waiting for the Jimmy headline to come out of this one lol

This is funny for real lol This is a key piece. It's not just the two arrests. It's also failing to do what's required of you. If he didn't do the court ordered activities - which is honestly probably 4 days' worth of work - then what else isn't he doing? No knock on JW, I was young and got in trouble and didn't do stuff I was supposed to do too so I get it. I feel for the kid and have been rooting for him for several years now. It just finally caught up to him regarding his status on the team. Hopefully it's a wake up call to stop getting sloshed or at least reign it in while in public.

Totes. This is where I’m at. I would love to understand freestyle better. The emotional appeals (with zero backing data) are a bit much. If freestyle is about two athletes and a ref competing together, then that’s what it is lol A par terre clock makes a lot of sense to my folkstyle-influenced brain

TBH I need a freestyle buddy to watch with that can explain the ref behavior. Rules can be learned but with free (and Greco to an extent) I'm often wondering why the refs are doing what they're doing. They seem to be given a lot of say in not only who wins the match but with how the wrestlers interact with each other - set ups, TDs, tie ups, how much time par terre lasts, all of it. Some if it makes sense but sometimes it reads like favoritism.... which is acceptable/expected according to posts here.

There seems to be a fervent belief that switching from folk to free will somehow save American college wrestling from itself. Maybe, maybe not. Nobody has done that so anyone is just guessing. Freestyle wrestling isn't a top American or global sport. There are things that could be done, and have been done, to make NCAA wrestling more exciting. The improvement in production quality, good commentators, and wrestling media is a big one that's made following wrestling MORE exciting in the last couple of years. Y'all hate on Flo but they changed the game in getting wrestlers and wrestling fans together and plugged into a community. ESPN+ and BTN do a great job as well. Shorter matches, shorter review times, more duals and fewer tournaments, round robin duals, combining duals with high school teams, combining men's and women's wrestling events, and doing exhibition style events would be some other steps that IMO would make NCAA wrestling more exciting. Also if you want to attract casual fans, lose the singlets.

Great take. Love hearing from folks that have actually done the sport. Agreed on everything you wrote here. Freestyle is fun to watch for takedowns that's about it. And the refs get really involved which is weird. Folkstyle matches could be a minute or two shorter and I'd be fine with that. Also more double stall calls. Both of those things would increase the action, if that's the goal.

IME with competition or performance settings you can design a perfect system and still not achieve the results you want. Likewise you can have an imperfect system and achieve the results you want. There’s always a human/luck element to it. Long way of saying USA *should* be top competitors given the history, resources, and culture.

I mean that on the whole most par terre points seem to come from those two moves because they can be set up quick and chained together. I don’t see many arm bar tilts, halfs, etc in FS. Of course it doesn’t help that the top guy has only a few seconds to set something up, plus there’s no reset in FS like there is in folk. Just observing.

I kind of agree? There seem to be two moves in par terre, leg laces and guts. We would lose all the awesome tilts and pinning combinations.

Soccer is huge internationally but USA professional soccer has low viewership. Even though the USA women’s has won the World Cup and just won the Olympics. So I don’t think you can claim that switching to freestyle wrestling would increase viewership.

I worry a bit about the throws and kids health. Disagree that freestyle is a better product. Different. Would be an interesting switch though for sure. Curious what athletes think about it, they’re the ones actually doing it.

100 In my view Lee outperformed expectations. Zain, Parris, and Brooks were not expected to medal. “Six gold medals in MFS!” would’ve been awesome obviously but that was never realistic this round.