CHROMEBIRD

It sounds like the school is cutting scholarships to 3 starting next school year, but will be grandfathering-in the current 6.9 scholarship recipients with the condition that they won't be able to compete if they accept it. Which is bananas. Regarding finances, the school itself has a decent reserves in its endowment, compared to the other CAA schools. The athletic budget is another story. Imo, Campbell fans & alums should be calling for the AD's resignation for two incredibly stupid moves: the first, was joining the CAA as if it would bring in more revenue or raise Campbell's profile relative to increases in travel, facilities, etc. Sorry, but most sports fans don't even know that Campbell has a football or basketball team, let alone one that could become an FBS program or big dance basketball team. The second is opting-in to revenue sharing and paying athletes, which introduces roster caps and cost-cutting. I guess the AD thinks having salaried football & basketball players will produce winning programs, while pushing the funding of non-revenue sports to fans & NIL. Which is crazy. Despite its successes, Campbell Wrestling is in a particularly bad spot, as someone pointed out earlier that it's the only one of its sports that the CAA doesn't compete in. But all sports except for baseball/softball, mens & womens track & cross country, cheer, and women's lacrosse & swimming (for Title IX compliance) will be facing cuts. Bazemore needs to get her priorities straight.

You mean the wisest starting lineup...

Right? It's insane that scholarship athletes will not be allowed to compete. Wtf?

Isn't that what happened in the movie? IIRC they showed Mark packing it up and leaving Foxcatcher Farm, then DuPont murders Dave a few scenes later. The film definitely takes some creative liberties, but Mark was also a script & story consultant.

That's interesting, did they mean the school or the AD has eyes on a bigger conference? I don't know anything about Hannah Bazemore but she doesn't read like that type of climber on paper. Campbell alumna, undergrad and grad; 12 years with the athletics dept, AD for less than 2 years. Maybe she's getting pressed by a donor.

O damn, Big Byrd in the house! I hope Lucas is as salty as ever. He'll be fun to watch.

This completely sucks, but why is it happening? No offense to the Fightin' Camels but their football team is an FCS-level team that has only been around since 2008 with a .365 record, and has only had 3 winning seasons under their 11th year head coach. Last year, they finished 9th in their conference. And their men's basketball team has only played in the NCAA tournament once and that was over 30 years ago. They lost in the first round. Is Campbell really diverting athletics money into its abysmal football and basketball programs? Big plans for the CAA? Pushy donor? Financial trouble (though the school has a decent endowment relative to its conference peers)? Weird AD? Could the wrestling program scrape by on outside (NIL) money? I hear Buies Creek is a sports town. Maybe some local sponsors will step up.

Thanks for pulling this together. What would you put the O/U on Illini AAs at right now? Maybe 3.5? I'm looking forward to seeing Byrd back on the mat and hopefully his tall queen Ellie matside.

Was there a lot of overlap between Bakersfield and Fresno in recruiting? Being in fairly close proximity to one another, have a lot of the hs and club kids that Fresno State would've gone after ended up at CSUB? I guess I'm thinking of the pool of talent in Clovis, Gilroy, Modesto, and other nearby places we often hear about.

I hope Terry sees it and boos the screen

It was def on Messenbrink's shortlist

Smol worlds

Nice. As long as Taylor takes the match seriously and doesn't come out of pseudo-retirement underestimating Sadulaev's athleticism. It would be the worst to see DT turn his training camp into a circus and later boogie down to the mat to James Brown's "Living in America" with dancing showgirls, only to have Sadz smoke him. Because then Brooks would have to train in the snow with primitive farm equipment next year to avenge Taylor's loss. I've seen Rocky IV enough times to know how it goes.

As of now, it looks like Sheriev is going. I thought it was a bit of a surprise that Sidakov went last year since we thought Russian military stuff would hold him out.

GTL, bro. Gym, tanning, laundry. Every day. The rest is extracurricular!

All pink with white eyes?

I feel like there's already a lot of excuses for Sadz before this hypothetical, which diminishes the excitement of the match to an extent... He's old, he hasn't looked like himself lately, he's distracted with Russian military stuff, etc. etc. Don't get me wrong, it'll be an extremely hyped matchup if it happens, just too bad it didn't take place 4 years ago when both guys were firmly atop their respective mountains.

That's 1% better than someone flunking outta school there

Right, get some floor seating in there. It looks bizarre with that setback, assuming that the rendering is to scale. They could even push the two rows of mats a little closer together to accommodate more seating

I wonder if Vegas could be enticed to host Nationals. There's a lot going on in LV at that time of the year with basketball and conventions and what not, but USAW has had several events there. Not sure if there's enough space for NCAAs though.

Paralympics ended less than a month ago, and NBC has been promoting the OGs and PGs as a bundle, so I guess the content is still somewhat "new"

Age cheating is weird. I get that Russian wrestling is so deep that they may have to resort to age cheating to give good wrestlers a chance to compete at a younger division at Cadets/Juniors/Uxx, but I would expect it to slow down development of legit age level Russians or even increase attrition. Intuitively, you'd eventually see this catch up to them when they can no longer age cheat but we don't really see them getting owned by other countries at the Senior level.

It would be pretty wild if D1 wrestling grew out West because of AJ Ferrari, but I'd love to see it happen.

Agreed. My hypothesis is that most wrestling fans will travel-in to whatever city Nationals is held at anyway. Drawing local interest and exposing non-fans to college wrestling's biggest event would then be gravy and good for the sport. I'm all for seeing NCAAs in the South, West, PNW as long as there's a suitable venue and incentives for the cities to submit a proposal to host the event. Imo, fanbase and location are big challenges in planning NCAAs, but the biggest hurdle is that wrestling is essentially an individual-based championship tournament across 10 weight classes, and many wrestlers managing their weight for multiple consecutive days. I love love love the individual tournament as it is, but must admit that a dual-based championship format would offer much more flexibility with the format, scheduling, and location/venues for Nationals. For example, under a dual championship format we could have geographically-dispersed group stages that go into a knockout round like soccer, or have "regional" early rounds or pods across the country, like basketball or the CWS, with the finals in an arena that can host a dual championship. That would be dope as hell, but I have a tough time imagining it working in an individual championship format.

Thanks. That would make more sense. It was a hell of a visual seeing them standing side by side!