CHROMEBIRD

That's pretty interesting. I can see how Olympic-style lifts are likely better for explosiveness, muscle endurance, and injury prevention and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm not aware of. It's a bit of a shift for me after having strength coaches focus on specific traditional exercises over and over for the benefit of wrestling.

Pretty cool that the staffer would focus specifically on outside NIL deals. I know some other schools have GMs for fb/bb (or the entire athletic dept), but that's more to manage the program's NIL/future salary budget and roster size rather than helping kids with their agreements. Outside NIL sponsorships won't count towards the salary limit under the House settlement, right?

I do love a good 5/12 upset

I think beach wrestling might be attractive to the Olympics because at appeals to younger audiences and has a format that the IOC prefers. Matches are pretty quick, which I guess works well with our modern attention spans, and the rules are easy to understand. Barriers to participation are very low for both genders, which is another plus. Don't get me wrong, I prefer freestyle any day, but it wouldn't be shocking to see beach succeed FS/Greco, or for us to get something like MFS, WFS, GR, and Women's Beach (probably less likely). I'd also like to see beach encourage more technique so it isn't just Sumo At the Shore. They also have their own weird version of criteria that's kind of weird, IIRC, and when there's a tie score at the end of the match the winner can be determined by last score, judge's decision, or whichever wrestler weighed-in the lightest(? maybe because there are only 4 weight classes?). I'm not sure what the official UWW rules are on tiebreakers or if the national federations have their own variants.

He held his own at 86 before, so he'll probably be fine. I also thought it was a little early in the cycle for such a big ascent, but maybe it's the smart move. Remember how much Taylor sucked when he first bumped up to 86kg? This will give Dake some time to grow and adjust to the new weight.

I know the assistance provided to athletes is extremely scattershot, but my impression is that it's not nearly enough because athletic departments don't have the resources or scale to provide meaningful guidance around the intricacies of every deal for every athlete under their roof. Fortunately, most deals are probably legit and transacted in good faith, but athletes are still easily outflanked by bad actors if they don't have the personal resources or draw to bring on an agent, lawyer, or some other professional advisor.

Yeah, going D3 to D1/Big Ten is quite a jump. Really looking forward to seeing what he brings and how he develops

Makes sense. KOT made some comments at Nationals that he really wanted to step away for a minute to heal, go on spring break, spend time with his wife, all the stuff that had been on the backburner during his college wrestling career. He also mentioned something about his involvement in the homebuilding business(?), so I originally thought his announcement would be that he'd be focusing on getting that going.

Solid take. Agreed on all points. Now that synchronized/artistic swimming is co-ed, I think Greco is the only sport without an analogue for men & women. Wrestling gets by for now because of tradition, but Pankration and chariot racing were also events in the ancient Olympics; and wrestling during the first modern games in the late 19th century probably bares little resemblance to Greco today. Similarly, beach wrestling may one day become the de facto "wrestling" in the Olympics. Not saying I support this, just that it's not too difficult to imagine it happening.

Kind of reminds me of the dudes in this video who had necks wider than their head and

Is that international competition only? IIRC Khuzin suggested at one point that Russian wrestlers get in more reps than we see reported from the UWW and Russian Nationals, with regional and club competitions and such. Dunno if it's still that way though with the war and transfers and what not.

There's likely consensus here on whether NIL deals should be taxable; the bigger issue is that without a national clearinghouse, it's all patchwork and unregulated. There are definitely athletes who take NIL money under the table, which is also a reason why some kids are saying they aren't getting paid for whatever deal they agreed to. Other athletes are persuaded into signing NIL deals structured as predatory loans or some illiquid financial instrument to avoid taxation (and for more money upfront). I don't blame BIGSPORT kids for signing with agents to navigate all this, but it can't imagine wrestlers or other non-revenue sport athletes giving up a cut of their meager NIL deals (or agents being interested enough), nor finding the minimal guidance most athletic departments provide to be adequate.

It's a trend goign around. I've been seeing the same sort of action figures of celebs, politicians, athletes, etc. floating around lately: "Creating a toy version of yourself or anyone else (that includes pets, yup), works like this: Log in to ChatGPT, upload a photo, add a text prompt describing your ideal action figure, and voila — you’re boxed and ready for toy-store shelves (or, more likely, Instagram)." https://www.forbes.com/sites/lesliekatz/2025/04/15/ai-action-figure-trend-explained---and-how-to-make-your-own/ I don't doubt that IndianaMat created the AI prompt, though. Looking forward to more figurinos from the wrestling community

Idk man, you might be overthinking it. Carl likes to keep things simple and he doesn't care about anything except for NCAAs (and trials/Worlds/Olympics on the RTC side). He doesn't care about duals or Big Tens, even though he's probably contractually incentivized by it, or preseason tournaments. It's all noise between him and postseason hardware. Bro has his guys so singularly focused on NCAAs (and probably religion and winning in life or something) that National Duals is just another distraction. Maybe there could be more attractive economic incentives or bigger implications for postseason seeding or something, but it doesn't seem like there are a lot of levers one could pull to sway his thinking. It's just how he is.

That's a really good point about the IOC wanting to keep sports distinct. Judo de-emphasized leg shots because the Olympic committees didn't want it to be too much like wrestling. Karate tried to focus on Kata and hand strikes to distinguish itself from Taekwondo. Grappling/BJJ would probably need to make changes to their sport, among other things, or have Judo and freestyle modify or de-emphasize takedowns, chokes, armlocks, and other aspects of their disciplines to be considered for inclusion in a future Olympics. Not that they would necessarily want to. There's a whole other discussion to be had about the way sports become watered-down due to whatever requirements are needed to be an Olympic sport vs. the benefits that the Olympics bring.