fishbane

Wait they picked Askren in the top spot?  Did they forget about Carter Starocci?  

This made me watch the announcement video.  They didn't even mention Greg Jones or Ed Ruth.  Jones beat two of the guys they did mention Koscheck and Pendleton.  The only other champs they didn't mention at all were Robbie Lawler, Matt Brown, Myles Martin, and Dean Hamiti.  Ruth and Jones should have been included.

1 hour ago, CHROMEBIRD said:

Wow! Have all the Sun Belt schools opted-in to revenue sharing? ESPN was saying that Fresno State would have to break up the mandatory athletic fee, which I assume is something they already do for internal accounting purposes, and eliminate or reallocate the line items that go towards D1 sports. Sounds like it'll be a pretty big hit to those schools either way, though if the legislation passes.

There used to be an 80/20 deduction rule where ticket buyers could deduct 80% of the "athletic contribution fees" on their taxes, but that went away under the first Trump administration. I think the only way they can still be tax-deductible is if there's no direct benefit to the buyer (i.e., doesn't give you priority access to preferential seating). 

I guess the upside, if it can even be called that, of the mandatory fees at massive D1 schools is that in theory the cost should be diluted across 50k+ or whatever students, but I get the feeling that it just furthers the Big Football/Big Basketball arms race and causes programs to spend more.

All Sun Belt teams have opted into or rather not opted out of revenue sharing.  The VA law limits mandatory student fees to 55% of the athletic budget.  JMU was way above that.  I think they got on some schedule to come into compliance after joining the Sun Belt Conference.  Not sure if that has happened, but if SCORE is a total prohibition then I'm sure they are nowhere near compliance.

Large fees to subsidize intercollegiate athletics is more of a Virginia thing than a Sun Belt conference thing.  Even some schools without FBS programs do it.  Below is a table from of the fee breakdown at VA public schools from a couple years ago.  The amount of athletic spending from student fees at UVA and VT are subject to a lower limit of something like 20 or 25%. 

You're right I was wrong about the deductibility of the mandatory contribution.  I suppose the only benefit to not just charging the ticket price would be to juke the the numbers for the revenue share.  Of the schools I looked at Wisconsin was unique in that they referred to it as a recommended contribution.  I wonder how likely you are to get tickets if you opt out of that recommendation and it the slightly different language would make it deductible. 

$1000 for parking for 7 dates is insane.  

Setting aside the implications for the revenue share calculation. I don't really think anyone should be able to deduct any portion of the price of a sports ticket on their taxes.  It is pretty clear that is what's happening with PSU pricing.  The worst ticket in the stadium and the best only have a price difference of less than $70/season.  The contribution is different by >$600.

On 7/18/2025 at 3:24 PM, CHROMEBIRD said:

SCORE Act (HR 4312). The proposed legislation would:

• Prohibit schools from charging mandatory student fees to subsidize athletics programs and NIL (e.g., Cleveland State's $90/yr "save wrestling" tuition fee, Clemson's $150 athletics fee, portions of Fresno State's $495 instructional activities fee; but not "talent fees" and similar add-ons that are tacked onto season ticket sales) 

One reason I looked at JMU when looking up season ticket prices is because their sports teams are most heavily subsidized by mandatory student fees.  I thought perhaps it might be a little different there.  Students at JMU pay mandatory fees of over $5000/year.  About half of the fee goes to funding athletic programs.  There are already state laws in VA that JMU are violating due to the size of the fee.

The two FBS schools that most heavily rely on their own students to fund football are VA public universities in the Sun Belt that dropped wrestling to focus on football.  JMU and ODU.  The Clemson/CSU/Fresno fees are a deal by comparison.

2 minutes ago, alex1fly said:

Though if you're going for who was the better wrestler during their time in D1, I have to go with Pendleton for the better fundamentals, a style that translates better to today, and winning 6/7 head to heads.

To me the thing that sets Askren apart overall is that he made the Olympic team.  Pendleton never represented the US at the World/Olympics. Though he also had 2 freestyle wins over Askren.

As far as NCAA career I don't think Askren would prefer Pendleton's or vice versa.  I am sure a lot of wrestlers would choose Pendleton's.  The biggest advantage for Askren are the two Hodges and the finals appearance as a freshman.  Pendleton was pulled out of redshirt as a freshman after Ty Wilcox's injury.  That isn't the kind of thing that would have happened to Askren at Missouri, but at OSU they are competing for the team title every year and it was all hands on deck.  He might have had closer NCAA and Big 12 placements to Askren if he had been able to redshirt as a freshman.  If you compare years 3-5 in college they are pretty close.  The trade off was being part of 3 NCAA championship teams including a champ on the 5 champ team - one of the best in NCAA history.  OSU also won 4 Big 12 team titles and 3 national dual titles during Pendleton's career.  For all Askren did at Missouri they never won a major title as a team.  Not NCAAs, Big 12s, or National Duals.  Their biggest team accomplishment was finishing 3rd at NCAAs.  I think a lot of people would pick Pendleton's career and a lot would prefer Askren's.

On 7/22/2025 at 9:58 PM, BruceyB said:

I want you to answer genuinely. Whose career would you rather have?

4x finalist with over 90 career pins, 2 undefeated championship seasons and two Hodge trophies. (How many 4x finalists were there in the history of college wrestling in 2007?)

2x finalist, 0 undefeated seasons, 0 Hodge trophies, but you beat the guy above 6 out of 7 times during his first two years of competition?

I think an important part you are leaving out are the three team championships OSU won with Pendleton on the team.

Perhaps another interesting way to look at this issue is through the career of Cael Sanderson since he is both the GOAT wrestler and a GOAT coach.  Was he closer to winning a team title as a wrestler or a head coach at ISU?  The same is true of Dan Gable, but he coached and wrestled at two different places so less variables are controlled.

At ISU with Sanderson as a wrestler they placed 4th, 2nd, 6th, 2nd.  They also had 6 national champs and 16 AAs.  In his three years as a head coach ISU was similarly good.  They finished 2nd, 5th, and 3rd with 2 national champs and 15 AAs.  That's more individual national titles/year with the Sanderson the wrestler and more AAs/year with Sanderson the coach.  Team finishes are very close.  The same best finish (2nd) and median (3rd) with a slightly better mean. 

The teams with Sanderson the wrestler were probably a little better with higher team point totals even accounting for scoring differences. His senior year they had three champs and his freshman year might have been the best.  They had 109.5 points and lost by only 6.5 team points.  Three ISU wrestlers lost overtime finals matches that year including one to an Iowa wrestler.  Iowa won the title so if that OT match had gone the other way ISU wins.  Still the closest to winning a title might have been 2007.  They finished 2nd to Minnesota 9.5 points back, but the Gophers only scored 98 team points.

Looking at Gable ISU finished 2nd, 1st, and 1st with him on the roster.  They had 20 AAs and 9 national champs those three years.  They year they finished 2nd they had three champs and were 2 points back.  In his first three years as the head coach at Iowa the Hawkeyes were similarly good.  Gable took over a team that had just won the team title and they went 3rd, 1st, 1st under him. They had 17 AAs and 3 national champs in that time frame.

It's unclear If the start of Sanderson and Gables coaching careers exceeded the team accomplishments when they were wrestlers.  Its more of a guess how this would go if they had wrestled/coached at a small program.

23 hours ago, CHROMEBIRD said:

Also, check out USC's pricing model from last season. It's pretty crazy to see since they have Big Ten money (but also a Big Ten schedule and Big Wallet alumni). 

The sad thing is that with these sort of numbers, USC could probably bring back wrestling if they wanted to. The budget would be a drop in the bucket. But, market forces and running the department like a business and such.

That is wild.  You could be paying 30x the ticket price in gifts at the highest tiers. On the other hand it looks like there are more no contribution tickets available at USC.  I checked a few other teams (Wisconsin, Ohio State, JMU) and they all seem to have a similar thing to PSU, but not as crazy as USC. 

The whole system is bizarre.  It's like Comcast is selling the tickets, but instead of junk fees it's junk gifts because they are non-profits.  In a lot of cases it is literally the government doing this nonsense. At least USC is a private corporation.

My understanding is that the house settlement allows teams to share up to $20.5 million with student athletes.  This was calculated by 22% of the average revenue of the teams in the Power 5.  I think ticket sales, but not donations are used in the revenue calculation. That makes some sense when you are getting one time gifts for a new wrestling room/stadium/whatever, but if tickets are sold at below market rates and 75% of the stadium is forced to donate 20-3,000% of the ticket price it fundamentally changes the meaning of the calculation.  How many of those people would donate the same amount of money without the ticket?

Small market teams might have a larger incentive to hide this income to limit the spending of the big market teams.  In the end if doesn't really matter because the rich teams are all spending more than that through NIL as it stands.  They are simultaneously hiding ticket revenue in donations and hiding player salaries in NIL payments.  It must be such a mess to coordinate vs just running a traditional professional sports team.

Joe Seay at OSU.

Recently saw the PSU football season ticket prices.  I was surprised to see a "mandatory contribution" for almost all season ticket prices that represents 20-50% of the total price. Is this standard practice in college football? 

My instinct is to think this is either a tactic to get fans to pay a higher price by making 20-50% of the purchase price tax deductible or it's an attempt to artificially move gameday ticket revenue to donations.  It is my understanding that under the house settlement ticket revenue is included in the revenue share, but not donations.

41 minutes ago, CHROMEBIRD said:

Awesome stuff. A recent example that comes to mind though is Gable Steveson. Not that Minny is a crummy program by any means, but Gable was a generational talent but I don't think he propelled the program into the mix with the big three (or maybe he did, Idk how much separation there was pointswise between UMN and the top schools while he was there).

It's probably not realistic to expect a generational talent to commit to a school without a great coach, but I hope one of the upcoming hs phenoms does it so we can see this play out.

Yeah I didn't pick him because MN is an AA factory of sorts.  Here are MN finishes under Eggum with teams featuring Steveson in bold 7th, 17th, 8th, COVID, 7th, 11th, 15th, 22nd, 5th.  Another heavyweight example might be Gwiz at NC State.  He transferred with his coach so it is a little difficult to isolate the two. 

Any given year there are probably 20 teams that are one Cael Sandreson/Gable Steveson/Ben Askren/Cary Kolat away from being a top ten team, because just getting one of them is a huge piece.  In all the examples of great coach to lesser program (Koll/Cornell/Stanford/UNC, Zalesky/Oregon State, Brands/VT, Flynn/WVU, Ryan/Hofstra) none had a top 10 team within 5 years though some left after only 2 years.  It seems likely that Brands would have had a top 10 team within 5 years at VT if he had stayed.  Slaton, LeClere, Metcalf, and Borschel had near 10th place points their first year wrestling for Iowa.  The question today would be if Brands could have landed those guys if Zalesky had access to Bob Nicolls $$ to make NIL deals.

On 7/17/2025 at 2:57 PM, CHROMEBIRD said:

Thanks for those takes, @fishbane - that's interesting stuff. My instinct tells me that, if given a choice, spending the money on a GOAT coach is a better investment than a GOAT wrestler because a coach can instill a long-term culture, build a deep recruiting pipeline, and develop talent. They may also have more leverage with the AD to keep the sport well-funded for the long haul. But you make good points for the value of superstar athletes. Look at how Caitlin Clark changed wbb at Iowa.

In pro sports, star players definitely fill seats and move merch, but I also think that there's less risk to splurging on "big pro sport" talent these days since we are in the moneyball era and unknowns about performance, fit within a system, etc. are mitigated to an extent; whereas in college wrestling we don't have similar quantifiable reassurances to fall back on. 

Imo though, a big reason for the salary disparity between the best players and coaches in the NBA comes down to basic supply & demand. Sports like basketball cast such a huge net that there are tons of great coaching candidates who could step in anytime and be very successful with whatever roster they are given. Maybe not so much with college wrestling, where the shortlist of elite coaches like Gable, Cael, maybe Taylor/JB/Dake/Nolf, etc. to choose from is a pretty small pool, esp relative to the # of teams. The market also prices coaches based on different metrics than players. Even under the CBA, athletes leverage their own stats and free agency to command premium salaries; opportunities for coaches, otoh, are tied more to overall team success (or the movement or firing of coaches elsewhere).

I can see how guys like Spencer and Taylor have created or reinforced a winning culture and opened new doors for recruiting and other stuff, but at the end of the day I think top wrestlers are still drawn to a program and a coach, not just a big bag. The converse might also be true, but in theory a top coach could take raw talent and develop a kid into something good, whereas star athletes don't really develop coaches.

I think if there is money in the budget for wrestlers too then the obvious choice is to get the coach first.  It will make everything easier.  If there isn't much money for wrestler acquisition on top of paying the coaching staff then a coach will only be able to do so much with a 4 year horizon.  On the other hand the GOAT wrestler will provide immediate success which could be built upon.  Cael Sanderson the wrestler was good for 27 team points at NCAAs.  That would have been good enough for 16th this year at NCAAs.  

Over the past 30 or so years there have been a handful of examples of a really great wrestler going to a less storied program.  Not to downplay the roll of the coaching staff at these institutions, but the exceptional wrestler made a huge impact in every situation.

1) Ben Askren to Missouri

Not Cael Sanderson, but a bonus point machine in his own right that made 4 NCAA finals and won 1 hodge trophies.  Before he arrived in Columbia coach Brian Smith had 1 AA in 4 seasons.  By the time Askren graduated that number had grown to 14.  Missouri had their first ever national champ and the best ever team finish at NCAAs (3rd).

2) Cary Kolat's transfer to Lock Haven

The year before Kolat transferred Lock Haven had 0 AAs and hadn't had a national champ in 25+ years.  The two seasons he was there they would have 3 AAs followed by 5 AAs, win the PSAC 2x, the EWL once, and achieve their best ever team finish at NCAAs (5th).

3) TJ Jaworsky transfer to UNC

Maybe a tier below the last two Jaworsky still won 3 NCAA titles and Hodge at UNC.  The year before Jawosrsky arrived UNC was 18th with 1 AA who was graduating.  He was their only AA in 1993 when they finished 15th.  The next two years they had 4AAs/season finishing 6th and 8th.  Two of only 5 top 10 finishes in program history.  Jaworsky accounted for 3 individual NCAA titles at a program that had only had 2 in their history before him.

4) Ricky Bonomo Bloomsburg

He won three titles for Bloomsburg from 1985-1987.  Aided by his brother Rocky this propelled Bloomsburg to finish 10th, 7th, and 5th at NCAAs.  These are the only top 10 finishes in program history.

5) Greg Jones West Virginia

Jones won individual titles in 2002, 2004, and 2005.  Though he wasn't the bonus point machine like the others he rarely lost (128-4) and WV finished 13th, 17th, 16th and 18th at NCAAs with him in the lineup.  Since he graduated WV wouldn't finish as high until the past two seasons (17th and 18th).

6) Jake Herbert Northwestern

Before Jake Herbert placed 3rd in 2005, Northwestern had not had an AA in 5 years.  With him in the lineup they would finished 14th, 13th, 4th, and 13th in the team standings.  The 4th place finish tied their best ever.  His Hodge Trophy was their first in program history and his two NCAA titles the first since 1990.  More would follow with Tsirtsis and Fox winning in subsequent years.

There are a few other examples of wrestlers of a similar level at a small program in the last 30 years.  Haslerig at Pitt-Johnstown and Abas at Fresno state.  I didn't look too deep into these two.  Haselrig was at a D2 program and it was hard to find information on the Fresno program history as they subsequently dropped the program.  The 6 in the list are probably the closest to Cael Sanderson the wrestler at a tier 2 D1 program.  The impact of Cael Sanderson the wrestler could be even bigger.

Looking at WV and UNC might give some insight into this question because they are two programs that recently got great coaches.  WV has Tim Flynn at the helm who did an outstanding job at Edinboro.  In his 6th year at WV they finally broke into the top 20 at NCAAs (17th).  With Greg Jones in the lineup this was all but guaranteed and Flynn has not equaled the best finish of the Jones years (13th) or produced a national champion through 7 seasons.   UNC now has Rob Koll as the head coach.  He's only been there two years, but with two years of TJ Jaworksy UNC was a top 10 team with a national champion.  It would be truly impressive in Koll is able to get them into the top 10 within 4 years.  They have not been in the top 10 since Jaworsky graduated and great coaches at less storied programs (Koll/Cornell/Stanford/UNC, Zalesky/Oregon State, Brands/VT, Flynn/WVU, Ryan/Hofstra) take time to find success.

7 minutes ago, Hilton Head Joe said:

That makes sense! Usually don't have a HC job in D1 wrestling immediately after being fired! Buffalo must be a tough place to coach. The school is nice and highly ranked in allot of academic areas. 

It was Stutzman's alma mater.  He also had success coaching at a former D2 school with less than ideal resources (Bloomsburg).  It made sense for him to leave Bloomsburg for it. 

11 hours ago, Hilton Head Joe said:

Last season? He is listed as the head coach at Bloomsburg this year. That was fast. Buffalo must have not to had a good reason to fire him since he got hired immediately as a D1 coach. Wondering what the story was there. 

Stutzman was the coach at Bloomsburg before taking the Buffalo job.  On reason he spent such a short time unemployed was his history at Bloomsburg and that there was an opening there.  No one after him as had as much success.  An easy decision for Bloomsburg urg to bring him back.

43 minutes ago, forkemaz said:

That guy is an idiot. If he had mutliple cartidges they can get him for intent to sell. Especially as he is bringing it into a state that doesnt allow recreational use. Bringing in cartridges in NOT any different than bringing in bricks except its physically smaller and can only be distributed in the amount of at least one cartridge as opposed to by weights. If Sammt had a bunch of cartridges he might get rail roaded hard.

PA is a patchwork of recreational use.  Nearly all the major cities have decriminalized recreational use.  Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Allentown, Bethlehem, York, Erie, Lancaster, State College, all of Delaware County have all decriminalized recreational use.  Maybe 25% of residents in the state live where recreational use has been decriminalized.  Some do not realize how different the consequences can be when crossing a county or municipal boundary.

1 hour ago, PortaJohn said:

Antitroll has the best theory so far.  PA and OH have reciprocity with certain conditions for PA

Pennsylvania's Perspective:

Pennsylvania has reciprocity agreements with Ohio, meaning a Pennsylvania resident with an Ohio license can carry in Pennsylvania. 

However, Pennsylvania requires its residents to have a Pennsylvania-issued license to carry concealed within the state, even if they have a valid license from another state with reciprocity, like Ohio. 

My point is that there could be wiggle room if that is the case.  What if someone has a a residence in both OH and PA?  What if he still had a residence in OH and is _in the process_ of moving to PA?  The announcement of his hiring was 19 days ago so it's possible.

And how would the police that pulled him over know that he is a resident of PA?  He had OH tags on the car that were expired.  Did he hand them a PA driver's license?  Or did he talk himself into trouble by saying he had moved to PA?  If the later then he may have just been imprecise in what he said.  If he still has a residence in OH and had been moving stuff to his parent's in preparate to relocate - staying there whilst looking for a place he may not be considered a PA resident yet.

If he doesn't beat the weapon and drug charges then his mistake will likely mean that he cannot get a PA concealed carry permit in the future.

21 hours ago, Antitroll2828 said:

Did the Northwestern guys quit in 2020 before they were fired?

I think they resigned, but weren't they all assistants?  Storniolo is still there.   Storniolo's predecessor Drew Pariano was fired in 2015.

1 hour ago, Antitroll2828 said:

You only have reciprocity with the Ohio permit if you still have an Ohio address , Sammy recently had moved back to PA making his Ohio CC invalid and PA like a lot of states the second a controlled substance is found the CC permit becomes invalid  

Are you sure of the address?  He was only announced to have been hired at Lehigh on 6/30.  When was his start date?   He may have paid rent in Ohio for July.  If he owned a house there it likely has not been sold yet.

If not having an Ohio address is the thing that resulted in the gun charge he likely talked himself into that.  He still had Ohio plates on the car.  If he didn't get around to taking care of the car then he likely still had an OH DL too.  Only way to know the concealed carry might not be good is if he told the officer he moved or he handed over a PA DL, but even that doesn't mean he doesn't he would be unsuccessful arguing otherwise.

You're right that even if he can fix the carry permit problem the drugs would be an issue and result in a gun charge all the same.  If the gun was the basis for the search that discovered the vape pen and it turns out his permit is valid then it might be possible to suppress.

https://jamesgmartin.center/2015/09/i-fought-political-correctness-and-correctness-won/

I think CD Mock was fired from UNC.  He was replaced by his assistant Coleman Scott.

2 hours ago, AgaveMaria said:

All the paranoia over firearms.

He had a carry permit - at least for where he was moving from.

The number of pistols? Nothing odd about it for many. Same if it had been rifles or shotguns. 

Some folks like shooting and have many different rifles, pistols and shotguns. Also ammunition for them. 

Others have firearms in the vehicles as a normal thing. We shoot coyotes, raccoons, skunks and whatnot and generally have a rifle or two in the vehicles. One by the barn has an /06 and the pickup by the grain shed has a good .223.  Jump in and go and you have the rifle with you. Wouldn't leave them in the vehicles if it were in town - at least not laying in the well & on the seat.

The drug stuff tho - Sounds as if Pennsylvania is hard on it - and it is still illegal on the Federal level. 

Expired registration - just stupidity. Does he have active car insurance? 

It's a fine line between some of what he didn't being totally legal or a felony.  Only medical marijuana has been decriminalized statewide.  Recreational marijuana use has been decriminalized in some counties/jurisdictions but not all.  Most of the largest cities have decriminalized it.  This happened in Nazareth.  If it had been in nearby Bethlehem or Allentown recreational quantities have been decriminalized in both of those cities.  Crossing a municipal or county boundary can make a big difference with this. 

In some places you will not get pulled over for an expired registration in PA.  Philadelphia police do not pull cars over for expired registration/inspections under their Driving Equality ordinance.  He'd have to be doing something else to get pulled over in Philly.

There is no requirement to register guns in PA and one can carry openly outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh without a permit.  Traveling with a gun in the car he'd either need a carry permit or it would have to be unloaded, separate from the ammo, and in a locked container/trunk.  Not sure if it's true that his Ohio permit is no good in PA.  There should be reciprocity...

https://triblive.com/sports/pitt-sues-former-wrestling-coach-claims-he-manufactured-discrimination-lawsuit/

Jason Peters.

11 minutes ago, Gene Mills Fan said:

maybe cops were running plates to check registrations.

Pulled over for a bad registration still doesn't explain how they found the drugs and gun.  Were they in plain view?

1 minute ago, wrestlingfan22 said:

who is his cousin?

The Tsarnaev brothers.

I believe his older siblings all went to the Air Force Academy. Better to be following in their footsteps than his cousin's I suppose.