CHROMEBIRD

Looks just like him. I didn't know Kyle was a legacy. RIP Pop Dake.

My impression is that wrestling is in far better shape to avoid the chopping block (plus, no more corrupt Pentathlon voting), but adding weights seems like a stretch. If you look at the IOC's voting criteria wrestling has done a pretty good job in competition format, governance, representation, and legacy but I don't know if the needle has moved significantly in the one criteria that matters most to the IOC, popularity. UWW would really need to to improve ticket sales, attendance, TV & digital viewership, and revenue to justify more weight classes. The IOC also considers the popularity of a sport in the hosting country. Wrestling might be OK for LA 2028 but might have some work to do before Brisbane in 2032. UWW has time though, and I think MMA and maybe some of the other styles are popular in Australia.

That's pretty big news. Sunkist Kids has probably been around for about 50 years now and helped develop tons of top level talent before RTCs were a thing. End of an era.

33 years is a hell of a run. Just think of all the changes in the sport over the last 33 years, some which arguably made the job of coaching much harder. From stylistic changes in wrestling to weight management, the RTC model, youth club system, AD changes, academic reporting, compliance, scholarship count, conference realignment, programs getting cut, pressers, social media, and now the transfer portal and NIL. The most exhausting to me would be recruiting. When ol' Johnnie started out, coaches would hit the recruiting trail and did their thing. Then came the internet & mobile phone age and fan hype over recruiting, kids building brands and verbaling/decommitting, new contact channels etc. which made the job a bit more complicated. Now with NIL and the portal coaches have to go out and recruit a new class of kids AND re-recruit their current guys to stay on for another year. I can't blame John Smith if he's had enough of that.

I seem to remember folks saying it's more likely that we see the Olympics add beach wrestling before adding any more weights

P&R in wrestling would be boring. It would be very Big Ten/Big 12-heavy anyway and wouldn't do anything to loosen PSU's vice grip at the very top. I don't think relegation matches would draw much interest, esp at the lower tiers.

Hopefully the half hour discussion isn't "no" followed by 29 minutes 59 seconds of awkward silence

Vito wasn't walking into the season banged up or coming off of double knee surgery

He and Yianni are bros, so he may have chosen to cut rather than bump up this cycle out of respect. If Yianni's concussions hold him out from competing, I'd like to see Vito fill into a fullsized 65. I hope his recovery goes well. This really sucks.

Isn't it the other way around? Dake is supposed to look like a 13 year old. Maybe in a few years.

Aw, damn. Hope it isn't true.

There's two sides to a peak!

Schools will also sometimes name an interim head coach as a gesture of goodwill if there are big alumni boosters who want to weigh in on a replacement. I don't know if OSU is like that, but it does happen.

He beat Tsargush but that was ages ago and I think around the time he was about to retire, so I don't kno whow quality of a win that is. Dake also beat Hasanov and Gadzhi. Idk if he's been scouted and figured out or if he's just past his peak. Folks mentioned previously that he looks too hard for Dake bomb opportunities rather than wrestling smartly. It could be catching up with him.

This is bananas. Just wow.

Let's not overread a "like".

Chamizo is respectful towards guys he's lost to. He's ever wrestled Dake (I think). Hope he he doesn't feel silly a month from now for training in those Paris 2024 shorts.

I believe he will have to watch it on Pavone in Italy

Back to the topic at hand: one big thing that WBB does NOT do well with is parity. Every year, the women's basketball brackets go more or less chalk with few surprising upsets. Cinderella teams don't really exist like they do on the men's side. There's plenty of athletic and coaching talent spread around, but the tournaments are dominated by just a handful of programs winning the titles. Sounds familiar, right? Ironically, people say WBB will continue to be that way unless there's more NIL and transfer portal activity. Neither has been very disruptive to their sport so far.

That's pretty wild. I'm glad these kids have these opportunities and resources. For wrestling specifically, I am wondering if there are kids who might want to reclassify and start their college careers ASAP while NIL is still in its Wild West phase, and before the schools/states, the NCAA, or congress puts further regulations on deals.

Looked like he was jobbed. Luckily we have 74kg qualified. I wonder what the OGLCQ field is looking like at that weight. This might be Chamizo's last Olympic cycle, no?

It's unreal how damn good high school kids are these days. It'll be wild if we start seeing wrestlers reclassify up (instead of down) and entering college early to get some of that NIL coin while the getting is good and get a jump on their career in MMA, Olympic wrestling, whatever. I wonder if this has happened in any of the non-revenue sports.

Do schools still teach wrestling in PE nowadays? We did wrestling in middle and high school PE, and it was a good way to create interest and knowledge in the sport. All of a sudden kids who were too short for basketball, too small or football, or too athletic for baseball (ha ha) had a sport they could be great at. But my kid's schools didn't teach wrestling in PE and when my wife was in high school, PE wasn't required after freshman year. So, perhaps some opportunities were lost. One difference between kids taking up BJJ/MMA is that many might be there to learn self-defense rather than a sport. I don't know how well that translates into a longer term interest, esp when they move on from it.

False. WBB now is nothing like it was in the 90s/00s when it was a bunch of players standing around the perimeter and passing the ball around until the one tall player got open under the hoop for a layup (basketball's version of playing the edge and top riding). It's way more fast paced and physical now. Tbf, I think the college wrestling today is far more technical and skilled than it was 20 years ago. It's just that casual fans don't understand the sport beyond seeing pins, clean shots, and big mat returns. Within the wrestling community, the same can be said for why a lot of people don't watch Greco.

Is that the sport's doing? We prioritize the accomplishments of individuals over teams.