fishbane

Pretty sure Estrada doesn't have any dates left so he would need to burn his shirt to do this. This was discussed on FRL ahead of the Ohio State match and they said he was out of dates and predicted we'd see Teemer, which turned out to be the case.

He will answer this question pretty definitively in less than a week.

The question was which team benefited most from the transfer portal. Kerk used the transfer portal. PSU benefited. This seems like it would be on topic to me.

Yeah I don't know why the NWCA National Duals Championship Series or whatever they called it back in 2016 and 2017 died. I suspect it was all the other largely irrelevant matchups didn't generate interest. I think Iowa wrestled Edinboro in it one year and Edinboro were far off their 2015 peak by that point. Pretty sure Lugo upset Sorenson in that dual. Had no issues streaming that on Flo which was far different than the OSU-PSU streaming fiasco. It was pretty much PSU vs OSU both years.

Though he's never really given a direct reason why they don't do it, I think this might be why Sanderson did National Duals at ISU and hasn't at PSU. In the Big Ten PSU wrestles nearly all the top teams anyway. When the NWCA did the bowl style matchups in 2016 and 2017 they wrestled OSU who was ranked 2nd one year and 3rd the other year. It was the highest ranked team PSU had not yet wrestled. He probably sees having a 16 team tournament to at the end possibly get one quality dual that they wouldn't wrestle anyway as a waste of time. All the national title contenders are either in the Big Ten or the Big 12 anyway, but have the two team champs wrestle.

I don't think growing the sport is a good argument for National Duals. To me it's more about choosing a team champion in a more easily understood way. Most wrestlers couldn't tell you the exact scoring. Of the sports that you mentioned UFC, Boxing, and PGA Golf only the last one is contested in a tournament format. The first two have cards with a handful of select bouts that are much closer to duals than tournaments. How much would you estimate Bassett's social media presence has grown the sport? 20%, 10%, 5%, 1%?

I agree with all of this expect the part about national duals not producing a better definition of best team. Their NCAA has the advantage of all teams participating and a lot of matches to rank the teams, but I think there is a large element of randomness and draw dependency in the outcome. If two teams are close in team points I don't feel that confident in saying one team is better than the other. Last year 12.5 team points separated 2nd place Cornell from 8th place Ohio State. How confident would you be that the ranking Cornell>Michigan>Iowa State>Iowa>Arizona State>Virginia Tech>Ohio State is accurate? From a fan perspective having two teams wrestle a dual settles things in a more straightforward and satisfying manner. Take the 1998-1999 season as an example. Iowa won NCAAs with 100.5 team points. Minnesota was 2nd with 98.5. Iowa had three wrestlers in the final with 2 champs (Doug Schwab and T.J. Williams). Their 3rd finalist Lee Fullhart lost to Minnesota's Tim Hartung. What ultimately sealed the championship for Iowa was Stephen Neal beating Minnesota's Brock Lesnar in the final bout of the tournament, but you could just as easily point to T.J. Williams pinning UNC-Greensboro's Melvin Saunders in the first round of the tournament as the difference in team scores. Is Iowa a better team? They lost two duals to Minnesota that season. Once at the National Duals and the other a Big Ten dual in Iowa City. Edit - NWCA National duals were in Iowa City in 1999. MInnestora beat Iowa 2x in duals in their home gym.

The NCAA isn't that interested in wrestling as an institution. The outside entity that is trying to get a piece of the pie is the NWCA the coaches association. It was literally a majority of NCAA wresting coaches that voted for this back in 2012.

I attended the Big Ten tournament last year. There were open seats even in the finals. My group had extra tickets we couldn't give away. Not that many hardcore wrestling fans aren't flying across the country to watch Big Tens like NCAAs. Last year it was in MD a relatively easy trip from State College, PA where PSU sells out every home dual. And the Big Ten tournament is the exception of conference tournaments. The EIWA is set to be less compelling this year than last year with the split of the Ivy League.

Perhaps, but with at large bids and the increasing number of forfeits not only in the consolations but also the finals they may not be laughing a few years from now. Fans would only really miss one tournament. The rest are lightly attended and likely lose money. The Big Ten is the only conference that really needs a tournament. The Big 12 and ACC are small enough that they wrestle all the other teams already. An end of season tournament is superfluous as all these matches should have happened already. Back when the Big 12 only had 5 teams they would wrestle home and away duals to make a conference dual schedule with 8 duals. Why even have an individual tournament? Everyone should have wrestled everyone else 2x already - just use those results to pick the national qualifiers. To round out this proposal teams would wrestle a round robin of conference duals and wrestlers would qualify to NCAAs based on individual standings for each weight from the record in conference duals and an allocation to each conference. At large selections would be made. Participation in a min number of conference duals at the weight would be required. Since regular season duals would be in effect the NCAA qualifier this would incentive wrestlers to wrestle in duals so big matchups would be more likely to actually happen.

Yes the tournament later this year in Tulsa is way too early. On the Basch and the Brain podcast last week they discussed how to make national duals work ahead of the announcement. Willie seemed to think that the split season like the tennis pilot program is the answer. Wrestle a dual season in the first half of the year oct-dec and have national duals in Dec. Then move all the opens, invitationals and various individual tournaments to January and February and keep the individual post season unchanged in March. I don't think this is the answer. It's a pretty radical schedule adjustment and I think it would change the flow of the season too much. Everything kind of builds to March currently. There are a lot of big duals later in the year which leads into conferences and then NCAAs. Teams just don't wrestle tournaments in the second semester. I think this would create a lull in the schedule where the top teams pretty much sit their starters until the post season. Getting teams to wrestle tournaments after CKLV would be trying to convince OSU, ISU, ASU, Missouri, PSU, Michigan, Illinois, Lehigh, Cornell, VT, ect to change what they did this year. Sanderson at PSU was the only consistent hold out of the old formats. From a fan perspective this should happen mid to late February at the end of the season before conferences. If that can't happen then my choice would be to have it two weeks after NCAAs with the top 4 or 8 teams in the NCAA standings qualifying or eliminate the conference tournaments and have it two weeks before NCAAs.

I disagree. Having a National Duals in November makes no sense as Goodale points out. At least not with the current schedule. If this tournament in Tulsa is happening the middle of November how can you even pick the teams to invite? What is that based on? The first competition of the year was Oct. 31st this year. Presumable teams need some notice to make plans and set their schedule. Ideally a national dual meet championship would be the culmination of the season and the final dual of the year. Each team would have a chance to qualify assuming they win all their duals. By January you have some idea of where teams sit and who to invite. An up and coming team would have a chance to do something to get invited. If you are inviting teams in early November then you can't be basing that on any relevant results at all.

They held the Olympics without the top team this year. It worked okay. The thing is that the Olympics is a big event and has been or years. Can this get started or perhaps restart? without the top team? If I recall correctly the thing that sunk the national duals was back in 2011 when Iowa didn't participate. The tournament had bounced around the country, but had been at UNI for 5-6 straight years and wasn't losing money there. Then Iowa didn't attend and I'm sure it lost money. PSU didn't attend either, but Iowa was probably the bigger absence at the time. A series of format changes ensued and the tournament struggled to either break even or attract the top teams. The prize money might attract more top teams, but maybe not PSU. PSU's absence and the timing in November might struggle to grab fans attention. Those things and offering $1M in prize money might make it difficult to sustain.

Lol. Everyone looking out for themselves and no one with the authority to make everyone do anything. I suspect this format change will not fix the problems with the national duals.

Have Stevenson and Kerkvliet been relegated to "someone else?" I would think whoever wins between them would have a strong case. Win over an NCAA champion. The only thing that could really eliminate them both is if they split.