fishbane

I meant 4th on the ladder. 3rd at the open is 4th on the ladder since Arujau was sitting at Final X. Open runner-up Seth Gross had beaten Blaze earlier in the tournament so there was no need for a true second/third at that weight. Unlike 57kg where the open runner up and 3rd place finisher did not meet in the tournament. So, Cronin and Provo wrestled for true third at 57kg at final x. 61KG ladder is 1 - TBD Forrest/Arujau 2- TBD Forrest/Arujau 3 - Seth Gross 4 - Marcus Blaze

PSU will have 2 senior world team members and 6 Senior national team members on their NCAA roster. When was the last time a team had as many? Additionally they have 4 other wresters on age group world teams: Blaze (61kg U20), Duke (70kg U20), Henckel (79kg U20), Connor Mirasola (92kg U20), Cole Mirasola (125kg, U20), Welsh (86kg U23) and Welsh is also on the senior ladder somewhere having finished 5th at senior nationals 86kg. They will also have 2024 61kg world champ Masanosuke Ono and Joe Sealy who was 3rd at the U20 trials in the room. A crazy accomplished team in freestyle. 57kg Lilledahl 2nd 61kg none (Blaze 4th) 65kg Marcus Blaze 3rd 70kg PJ Duke 1st 74kg Mesenbrink 2nd 79kg Haines 1st 86kg None (Welsh 5th at senior nationals) 92kg Barr 2nd 97kg None 125kg None

I really don't know about the dual. OSU and Fresno wrestled a dual on 1/31/1998 in Stillwater. OSU won 39-4. I couldn't find individual results for that match, but based on the team score it's theoretically possible either wrestler won though I reckon it's less likely Abas beat Moore by bonus to get 4 than Moore winning a regular decision. The All-Star match was on 2/2/1998 in Buffalo, NY. Perhaps neither wrestled in the dual electing to postpone the match two days?

It would be classless for someone to dunk on or say I told you so to a person in Askren's condition. I don't know what caused Askren's pneumonia. I don't what vaccines he may have taken. And I don't know what he has said one way or the other on the topic of vaccines. Regardless I hope he makes a full recovery. Pneumonia can be caused by ether a virus or bacteria. There are vaccines available for some of the viruses that cause it. There is also a vaccine available for the pneumococcus bacteria - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumococcal_vaccine

Did Abas lose to Moore in the Dual in January 1998? If so I think Abas lost 4 matches his redshirt freshman year. He also lost to Moore in the All Star Classic on 2/2/1998. I thought the all-star classic counted as an official match back then, but maybe not. 1998 All Star Classic 118 Teague Moore - Oklahoma State Defeated Stephen Abas - Fresno State 9-8 Abas had defeated Moore at CKLV in 1997, the 1999 All star classic, and the NCAA semis in 1999. They definitely didn't wrestle in the dual in the 1998-99 season - Abas went up and wrestled Guerrero. I don't know if they wrested at CKLV in 1998, but if they did Abas won. He was the first to win 4 CKLV titles. Logan Stieber was the second though it took him 5 attempts. That should cover all their folkstyle meetings in college. 1999 All Star Classic 125 Stephen Abas - Fresno State Defeated Teague Moore - Oklahoma State 5-4

Has it been definitively confirmed that Askren developed the pneumonia from staph or is that still a rumor? Though potentially not relevant to Askren's condition, pneumonia can be caused by viruses such as influenza and coronavirus. There are vaccines available for both of those viruses.

The reason for mentioning not wrestling Glory and the relatively weak competition Lee faced in 2020 and 2021 was two fold. It refutes the FRL presumption that Lee had a tougher schedule than Abas. It also brings into question how healthy and unaffected Lee was with a torn ACL. Looking dominant against lesser competition doesn't mean he wasn't limited by the injury. Lee wrestled his senior year in high school with a torn ACL. He was dominant and a prohibitive favorite when he lost to DeSanto in the state final.

You keep inventing things that I am not arguing to argue against. I never said Lee wasn't or shouldn't have been a big favorite to win in 2020. Lee has been the favorite in every match he has ever lost before 2024. I never said that Lee was afraid of Glory. I said you mischaracterized that Spencer Lee wrestled the whole season, was healthy, and was in peak shape. He was on a pitch count, had a torn acl, and though he looked great he didn't wrestle the top contenders in either folkstyle or freestyle.

Pitch count and defaulting out of Midlands != Wrestled full season Torn ACL, Knee brace, pitch count, and defaulting out of Midlands != healthy

Pitch count and skipping two matches at the Midlands does not sound like he wrestled the entire season. I am sure the story they were telling at the time was the pitch count to prepare for the Olympics and definitely not any injury. It wasn't until the after the 2021 NCAA final and having torn the other one that Lee disclosed the ACL tear in the 2019 NCAA finals. The fact that he had a torn ACL and was skipping matches both point to him being not fully fit. He was impressive at that Olympic Trials qualifier in December. I had forgotten the match with Vito. He was wearing something on that knee during the match, but it appeared to be soft - a very "light" brace. Maybe that was a bad idea or they had the pitch count too high because his next event was Midlands where he defaulted out and by the end of the season he was wearing the full blown knee brace in the Big Ten final. Ultimately one can only speculate on how Lee could have done at the Olympic Trials. Although he was impressive in winning that qualifier the favorites to make the team were not there as they had already qualified. Abas wrestled at the trials in 2000 and lost in the challenge tournament final finishing 3rd on the ladder. I am sure Spencer Lee was as unafraid of Pat Glory as Stephen Abas was unafraid of Jeremy Hunter (2000 NCAA Champ), Jody Stritmatter (2000 #1 seed NCAAs, 3rd place finisher, and Midlands runner-up) , and Teague Moore (2000 Midlands champ). Abas probably skipped Midlands because he was focusing on freestyle and his team was not attending. He also didn't have the same incentive to wrestle an NCAA season as Lee. Iowa had not won an NCAA team title in ten years and PSU was rebuilding that year. Lee could have been the difference between winning a team title. Indeed that would be the case in 2021. Had Lee skipped the 2020-21 season to try and prepare for the delayed Olympics Iowa would not have won NCAAs. Iowa's margin of victory was only 15.5 points. If Abas was potentially the difference between Fresno winning a team title in 2000 he may have tried to do both as well.

He defaulted out of Midlands twice. In 2020 he did it without losing. He also did it his freshman year after losing to Ronnie Bresser.

If you're referring to what I said, that wasn't it. I disagreed with your assessment that that season Lee "wrestled the entire season and was healthy and in prime shape." He wrestled with one ACL having torn the other one in the 2019 NCAA final. He defaulted out of the Midlands choosing not to wrestle Pat Glory. How is that healthier than 2019 where he wrestled the entire year save for part of one match with two ACLs. My suspicion is that is that Lee wasn't healthier or better in his Hodge winning seasons (2019-2020 and 2020-2021) than the others, but that he wrestled an abbreviated schedule against much weaker competition.

This is a bit of a mischaracterization of 2020. If I recall Lee had torn an ACL in the 2019 NCAA final with Jack Mueller, so he would have been wrestling with 1 ACL. He also medically defaulted out of Midlands where he would have faced Pat Glory. Glory finished the season undefeated and was the 2 seed that year. Which brings up the point that Lee was largely untested that year. The only wrestler he faced that season that AAed in 2018,2019, 2021, or 2022 was Nick Piccininni. This was in part because of all the guys that sat out with an Olympic redshirt (Suriano, Arujau) like Abas did in 2000, but even relative to the field that year he had a weak schedule. His only opponents that where seeded in the top 10 at NCAAs were Piccininni and Devin Schroder. This brings to mind Pyles's earlier point that the Big Ten schedule would be tougher than what Abas faced wrestling for Fresno State. The Big Ten was tough at 125 Lee's first two years (Lizak, Rivera, Suriano, and Tomasello), but 2020, 2021, and 2023 it was pretty weak. The top guys were Ramos, McKee, Barnett, DeAugustino, Cronin, Foley, and Schroder. The extra years with the older guys did not add much difficulty compared with the first two. I think Abas would have been untroubled by such a schedule.

Today on FRL Pyles briefly revisited 125/Spencer Lee and he said something like they should only evaluate Lee's "4 year window" which he regarded at 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. He reasoned Lee was as good as it gets during that time and it was before the injury redshirt. Often the current wrestlers will have extra years that need to be adjusted in some way when comparing past wrestlers who were largely on the same 4 in 5 track but surprisingly that isn't really necessary with Abas. Abas did the old school double redshirt using an Olympic year. After graduating high school, Abas's NCAA career went Redshirt-4-1-Olympic Redshirt-1-1 and Lee was 1-1-COVID-1-Redshirt-6. So they were both in their 6th year out of high school at their last NCAAs.

Additionally Abas made world teams whilst still in college. He was the rep in 2001 and 2002. 2002 was the year Abas graduated. The US didn't send a team to Iran in 2001. At the time I recall Abas wanting defy the boycott and travel on his own to the world champioships.

One point Pyles made on FRL regarding 125 was a perceived difficulty difference in the schedule Abas wrestled at Fresno vs Lee at Iowa. He didn't really look at it in depth but more took it as a given and I'm not sure that's the case. Abas was the first wrestler to win 4 CKLV titles. No one else did it until Logan Stieber. Spencer Lee's biggest regular season tournament wins are the UNI Open and the Soldier Salute. The years Lee went to Midlands he either lost or defaulted out. Abas also wrestled in the All Star classic 2x and the National Duals once. Iowa has largely opted out of these events during Spencer Lee's tenure. Abas also famously lost to Eric Guerrero at 133 in a dual, so they were wrestling some top teams in duals too. If Abas wrestled more matches and hit big events like CKLV, National Duals, and the NCWA All Star Classic it's probably a wash, no?

Illegal immigrants as a whole lean democrat. By how much and how large of an impact would that have an federal elections is the relevant question. Nationwide Harris won the latino vote by only a 51-46% margin and Trump had some degree of success winning over latino voters even in very blue states like NY, where he was able to get 36% of the vote. The illegal immigrant population has proportionally more men than the voting population and men more often vote republican than women. The path to citizenship and voting rights for illegal immigrants is a long one. The average voter that immigrated illegally is likely to be older and thus also more likely to vote Republican. If we imagine the population of illegal immigrants that eventually gain citizenship/voting rights Trump would probably do somewhat better than the 36% we saw in NY in 2024. Finally the states with the largest illegal immigrant populations are either border states or blue states with sanctuary cities. These are either solidly red or solidly blue making the impact to the electoral college vote less significant. I think there would be no advantage to pander to noncitizens hoping that in the future they might gain the right to vote. All things being equal such a plan would be at a disadvantage to a candidate pandering to current voters instead. A change in Republican policy would only happen if enough illegal immigrants became citizens/voters that it makes sense to change pandering. The impact of bad policies can far outlast a term, but this happens as things stands right now. Republicans will be blaming issues on Biden's disastrous policies for years. The eventuality of the theory that Democrats are importing voters is supposed to be much worse - Republicans will not be able to win a presidential election ever again. That doesn't seem sustainable. Voting for change when things are not going well is a powerful thing. I don't think it will happen either. It could be worth it for the country regardless of which party it benefits electorally. The US would be the largest country by area. There is a huge amount of natural resources in Canada.

This is an unserious suggestion. Why would Canada join if they weren't granted voting rights? Is a democracy with ~43M unable to vote in the presidential election and without meaningful representation in the legislature actually a democracy? The answer must be no.

It's a difficult task to estimate the number of illegal immigrants. I understand the border Tsar's skepticism that the number of illegal immigrants has been flat at 12 million for so long (since 2007), but I am perhaps more skeptical of his number. The Trump administration has at times decided to make up a number or misrepresent things when it suits them (2017 inauguration attendant, DOGE with the Social Security database, etc.) and the trend he cites was created by an independent agency over multiple different administrations. Nevertheless it could be more than 14M.

They briefly discussed Askren at the start of FRL today. If the FRL staff have some inside details on Askren's condition they did not share it. They simply reiterated what his wife said and asked for prayers. No mention of staph. Hope he pulls through.

This wouldn't be the first time Musk called someone a pedophile in an unrelated twitter spat. There was no truth to it the last time.

Elon Musk? I don't like him, don't care for him, never did. I would guess the BBB was made available to Musk before it was introduced in the house and just like most of the house reps that voted for it he didn't read the 1,000+ page tome. Now he knows what's in it and he isn't happy.

Probably hasn't changed much since March.

It should be something they take seriously. It's been a while since I organized a USAW chartered club, but the insurance coverage included with club membership used to include coverage for sexual abuse and molestation claims and a requirement of that coverage was that all club coach's had USAW coach's cards and background checks. If they have coaches/administrators working with the kids that didn't go through the back ground screening then they aren't covered.

Here is the section of the USAW background check policy where it says who needs them "USA Wrestling has mandatory background screening as an extension of USA Wrestling’s Safe Sport Policy for the purpose of determining eligibility for USA Wrestling member coaches, officials and state association national or regional team volunteer members, and anyone who is authorized to be in a position of authority over or has regular contact with athletes." It sounds like this individual would be required to get a background screening. Not all charges/offenses would make him/her ineligible to participate. Here is the section on that. Even if this person has one of these it may have popped up in the screening and went through the process to "determine the individual's level of access" whatever that is.