CHROMEBIRD

I just noticed in the sidebar that Nico DeSalvo committed to ASU. What happened with Minny? Big early pull for the Sun Devils.

I'm just catching up on the news myself since the reporting is a little scattered, but it looks like there's been a lot of misconduct: basketball coach arrested and charged with human trafficking/pimping, possession of illegal assault weapon, possession of meth for purposes of sale, multiple counts of possession of child pornography; softball assistant coach accused of SAing a player in the locker room; the softball head coach (wife of the accused assistant) knowing about it; the assaulted player allegedly in a relationship with the arrested basketball coach; AD out; CSUB president catching heat for not keeping his house in order... just a ton of drama. AJ was very well-behaved, considering the other stuff going on at CSUB. https://www.si.com/onsi/softball/college/scandal-at-csub-leaves-softball-team-in-shambles-felony-charges-for-basketball-coach-and-athletic-director-ousted

Looks like AJ was the least of CSUB's problems? Man's there's some wild news coming from that athletic dept

I can 100% see ADs shifting athletic funds to football if there's ever a deficit (although it's literally the job of GMs to manage exactly that). MBB is a distant #2 in funding, but I could see programs granting basketball coaches additional budget if they needed it, with the March Madness expansion to 76 cash grab and all. An eye-catching tidbit from the earlier article: "The befuddlement stems from the overwhelming majority of power-conference schools not going north of $4 million (and plenty not exceeding $3 million) [for men's basketball] in revenue sharing. Ergo, theoretically, no team with a projected budget under $5 million should be offering almost any freshman close to $2 million." which is interesting since Bruce Pearl, I think it was, mentioned last season that a player said he'd hop in the portal and transfer if he was offered a $5mil deal. I think the highest valuation (not actual NIL) was Lebron's kid at around $6mil. Just a crazy gap. Back to wrestling: if we take the $3-4mil mbb figure from the article and average it to $3.5mil, that already puts P4 programs above a 15-16% share of the $20.5mil cap. Dunno how credible this revenue sharing website is (it looks like it was compiled by some CPA in DC?), but it looks like wrestling is on the higher end, if you could even call it that, of non-revenue sports at 0.6% of programs' budget, or around $127k/yr. That's not a lot of revenue being shared to wrestling, and that number will likely be smaller if football, basketball, hockey, and baseball grab a bigger than expected piece of the pie. This doesn't include true NIL deals of course, but $127k allocated to the entire team is pretty far off from some the wild numbers we hear about individual wrestlers being offered.

Not to sully our fair and genteel discussion forum with b*sketball content, but an interesting thing is happening with bball recruiting & revenue sharing and it made me wonder if it had any downstream effect on wrestling. Previously, elite recruits could maximize their earning potential (at least in theory) by dragging out their commitment, building hype around their decision, and letting teams get into a bidding war for their services. But these days, kids who hold off on their recruitment for too long risk getting passed over when the transfer portal opens. A lot of coaches will hedge their roster-building with proven, experienced transfers over high schoolers who have zero college experience. So, more top recruits may be willing to sign earlier now. The problem? Coaches & ADs don't have a clear idea of what their recruiting budget is (in many cases, programs won't totally know how much money they have to play with until after football season is over), and elite high school players are expecting a lot more than what schools are willing to offer at the moment. Plus, agents believe players should still be getting big paychecks like in the gravy train days before the House settlement. Classic wage-labor gap. One coach predicts that programs may have to over-promise kids money and then figure things out if they find out later that they can't scrape together the dough. Like a recruit may be an early commit based on a $1mil offer and then a coach comes back in the spring like, "sorry, I just found out my salary cap and can only give you $250k max." So does this affect wrestling at all? I don't know, this is all new and maybe the college sports market needs a little time to settle on its equilibrium. But if I'm a hs wrestler or coach, I'd probably advise my wrestlers to jump on any good offer they receive and sign as soon as possible. In the above scenario, where a bball or football coach is needing more money than they are allotted to sign a superstar recruit, it's not hard to imagine an AD being persuaded to reallocate cash from wrestling or other non-revenue sports to basketball or football. I say sign a contract and secure the money while it's there. OTOH, I'm not sure if top wrestling recruits will feel as squeezed by the portal as basketball and football players. A lot of the top hs wrestlers are already in college wrestling rooms, competing internationally, and beating Senior level guys, so college coaches have a pretty good idea of exactly what they're getting. Either way, I do not envy coaches and programs having to sort this all out. https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/college-basketball-commitments-plummet-amid-big-changes-in-recruiting-nobody-knows-what-to-do-right-now/

Wow. That sounds kinda like HEW. Whatever caused him to step away, I hope he's all right

Huge get for both VT and the ACC. Pretty exciting stuff. I hope the Nebraska AXOs aren't too disappointed

Right after Vision Quest was released! IIRC Louden was in Eastern WA somewhere, like Spokane.

B1G media deal expires in 2030, so we can expect conference realignment rumors to ramp up in a couple of years. Speculation is that they'll pick up at least 2 more, probably from the Big12 or ACC if ND is a non-starter, so it could ripple downstream to the Pac.

Smart money might be on tOSU longer-term. Their president will be pushing for disproportional media splits in the next B1G contract. Some of that cash windfall would have to trickle down to wrestling, right? Right?

I agree that Cael is being stubborn, but I think it has more to do with his not wanting to be nudged into supporting National Duals than animosity towards Taylor. This might be a topic for a whole separate thread, but hypothetically if Cael decides to retire tomorrow, do you think DT would accept the PSU job? Would Cael push the AD into hiring Taylor as his successor?

This is a great idea. It's a preseason tournament, why not send a backup team? It would be fun as hell to see how they measure up

Tru dat

I hope the injury/surgery isn't as serious as I'm thinking it is, and if so, that Vito will prioritize his long-term health. It's tough enough for many of us to walk away from the sport when you've still got that itch, and I can only imagine how much more difficult it must be for someone with Arujau's talent to stay off the mat.

Yeah, exactly. Makes taking a loss that much tougher. See the recent posts about Spencer Lee, who also very rarely loses.