CHROMEBIRD

Spencer could win it on raw strength and horsepower alone. I just don't think Lilledahl will be able to handle it. Will he have learned anything from Spencer's exhibition match with Ono? Because I expect it to play out the way Nico's match against Spencer did last year(?). IIRC, Mega got in on some clean shots/counter shots but couldn't finish anything.

Not Huck Hogan

In college, I believe there's an ongoing lawsuit between BLAF and the University of Florida football player, whose name slips my mind atm, who signed away a 15% cut of his pretax pro football earnings, including signing and incentive bonuses, for the next 25 years. He plays for the Chicago Bears now. Anyway, he sued BLAF because he didn't have any support or representation and just saw the upfront $$$ and signed without fulling realizing what he was getting himself into. Nilly is another agency that gives college athletes money upfront but I think they take a % of players' total promotion & sponsorship deals (rather than pro salary) for a fixed period of time.

Best option might be to earmark or donate directly to the wrestling program, as long as it doesn't take away from what the department allocates for wrestling. My guess is that once the dust settles, there won't be much of a difference between giving to the athletic dept vs. an NIL collective, as there's speculation that they'll all fall under one umbrella or that collectives will go away altogether.

I wonder what the weight classes will be with 8 weights for men and 4 for women. Zahid and Kennedy Blades are in (also Askren) but the event is scheduled less than 2 weeks before Worlds and a week before U20s, so the timing may be a little weird for a big debut

Yeah, I've heard that there's questions around whether market value will be determined by city/region, conference, age, or any number of factors; or maybe it'll be some sort of cumbersome weighted algorithm. I believe the intent of the clearinghouse though is to provide a centralized repository where anonymized data can be aggregated and eventually give revenue athletes and coaches a better idea of their worth. For big sports it's about bringing players back down to earth on their actual value (e.g., the basketball player who told Kelvin Sampson it'll cost him at least $2.5M to play for him), and it's making sure that non-revenue athletes get paid what they're worth. Since now we have PE, VC, hedge funds, and other institutional money getting involved I wonder if could one day create offerings with financial instruments or some other illiquid asset that circumvents the $600 limit.

Wrestling will still be an equivalency sport, and under the proposed rule programs can offer anywhere between zero and a full scholarship to athletes who make the roster cap. So, a school could hypothetically distribute zero scholarships across the board, or 30 full scholarships to the wrestling team, or anywhere in-between (like .20 scholarship to one guy, .90 to another, etc. like it is today). For some reason, a lot of folks assume that the roster cap system will be better than the 9.9 scholarship limit we have now because hypothetically everyone can get paid. But there's a huge difference between can and will. Take the $21M salary cap, allocate 75% to football, 20% to mbb & wbb, 3% to baseball, and then divide the remaining 2% (around $420K) across all the remaining sports in a program's portfolio. Say the AD divides it unequally among those sports and wrestling gets a generous 10% of that amount. That's still only $42K of scholarship money to distribute. It seems far more likely that the wrestling team will get less than the value of 9.9 scholarships under the new system. Of course, this doesn't include padding athlete compensation with NIL, but that's not what we're talking about here.

Pyles had it right, but was coming from the wrong angle. Dake lost in part because of the difference in size, but it wasn't the size difference with Valencia; it was the size difference with himself. I still chalk this one up to Dake adjusting to the weight. We thought Taylor looked like *I poop my pants, don't laugh at me* right after he moved up to 86, and even Sadz took a minute to adjust after bumping up. Dake may not be our rep this year, but he'll be our guy at 86 by the end of this Olympic cycle, bye-to-the-finals bitching be damned.

It would be pretty funny if somewhere out there there's a guy named Messenbrick who looks like this and is feeling all kinds of disrespected

If you think Dake's a huge complainer on the mat now, just wait until he's in a corner with bricks to throw

Sorry, wrong PSU guy. (facepalm)I meant Starocci

MM? I think Dake is still adjusting to the weight and will be our rep at 86. Would prefer Marsteller back at 79 or JB or KOT at the weight. Agree that we'd have a stronger lineup with Brooks at 92.

BB is very much epitomizes the prototypical Iowa recruit: tough, self-motivated, works his ass off. He'll get a lot of individualized attention from the coaches, but a lot of people have wondered if Iowa is falling behind on technique. It would be great if Brands could bring a technician on staff to really take BB's wrestling to the next level. Simply bullying opponents around will only get you so far these days. Imagine if they had someone like Nolf, JO, or Askren to fine tune their wrestlers' technique.

Ikr? Why can't we go back to an era with 0-0 scores culminating in arbitrary ball grab/clinches. Matches are too quick and there's just too much damn scoring these days. Make it less exciting!!

It's crazy how much of a toll wrestling takes on your body. Comparatively, top professional boxers have a much longer career span and are in their prime for a lot longer. Usyk and Terence Crawford are pushing 40; Canelo, Inoue, Teraji, Santiago and others are all around Dake's age and currently holding belts. They all cut weight, train, and peak for maybe 2-3 competitions per year, which is pretty similar to the way older Senior wrestlers load manage for 2-3 big tournaments. The Klitschkos, Lennox Lewis, Holyfield, Deontay Wilder were all in their prime and going toe-to-toe against top competition well into their 30s. I assume the big fight purses are a huge motivator and allows these top guys to actually focus 100% on their sport but it's wild that they're not unseated by younger talent like you see in wrestling and other sports.

No one likes the rule, it's just something houses do to keep from getting sued or having their charter pulled. It's also why a lot of parties happen "off the books" now at satellite houses, or why some chapters go rogue and break from their nationals and IFC. All that being said, it would've been a much more interesting story if the security didn't exist and we saw an 11 year old lookin kid like Braeden Davis take on the entire Teke house. I'd throw him an NIL deal after that!

Agree, also an interesting metric might be the # of AAs in each state as a % of the total # of wrestlers from that state. PA may not have a lot of D1 All-Americans this year, but I imagine there are a ton of PA kids competing in division I for one of the top eight spots in their weight.

It's a CYA thing mandated by the school/IFC and nationals for insurance and risk management purposes. We used to get around this by having pledges work the front door (and bartend) at parties; these days, chapters have to contract an outside firm from a list of approved vendors for all social events.

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