CHROMEBIRD

Good stuff. Thanks for keeping us sane in the offseason, lol. That reminds me: @Wrestling Arena do you have plans to put your video collection up on Youtube? I imagine it would be a very popular channel.

Agree with both of this. The Hawks will be fine with Brands but it could do a lot better. I like TnT but honestly don't think they have the creativity or smarts to be really great coaches. They seem happy enough to ride Iowa's legacy and try to emulate Gable without adding much value. I'd like to see Lee get into coaching but I'm more excited to see how far Tony Ramos goes in his coaching career. He'll be ready for something bigger soon.

Let Clarissa run the show.

Nagao won't win an individual title.

It'll be interesting to see what happens. It's not an issue right now because a kid would lose eligibility and have to stay at a school for the year if they back out of their NLI and they don't get a release waiver. I guess an NIL could be so lucrative that someone with an NLI is poached, but I don't see that happening in wrestling and I don't see a sponsor buying a year of "nothing"

Help us all when TMZ is sharing Minnow's social media posts

I believe NILs are contracts, so it depends on the language of the agreement.

Exactly, the potential new rules will be trouble for Nagao. I have faith in Teskee and think he cashes in on the year he's banked in the Hawkeye room and finally settles into the weight. He's a lot better on his feet than we've seen, and better than Nagao from neutral. Just my 2 cents.

No respect for Shunk

I don't think it's a great buy, either. Will Nagao even win Big Tens? Mendez has more upside, imo.

Teskee this summer working for that grad transfer: I'm only slightly kidding, as I think he and Ayala beats Nagao in a wrestle-off.

I admit to bellyaching about PSU's lopsided dominance and would love to see more parity, but counterintuitively, dynasties are good for the sport, whether it's a team that wins every year or a wrestler who crushes everyone each season. When you have a team dynasty of or alpha individual(s), interest and viewership goes up. People want to see what the very best look like, and others want to see the very best get upset. Someone posted a link to a study about this on the old board. It's an ironic phenomenon.

It could simply be that... college wrestling is really hard. Especially Div.I wrestling. Some guys excel, but many don't develop to where they need to be, even highly recruited guys. For every guy like Cassar who Cael/Casey coached up you have guys like Manville, Gulibon, Berge, and Joe Lee who dont meet expectations. I think the best thing coaches can do is to recruit guys with the raw talent AND a style that fits their system. Then see how much they improve between their first (RS/GS) and second year to see how they are developing and if the training is sticking. Tony Ramos famously spent most of his RS season learning how to sprawl (and lifting). Turns out that he didn't even have that one basic mechanic right at the start, but look how his career turned out.

The ironic thing is the effect that portal poaching, especially for 1-2 season guys, will have on the program's culture longer term. RBY said that the current group doesn't really hang out like previous PSU teams did. They put in their work and then do their own thing. And yeah, "wrestling is an individual sport" blah blah, but RBY also noted that earlier teams had a different chemistry, like Nolf, Zain, Cenzo, those guys were all tight friends and actually had fun at PSU. Now it's more like a job. That's fine, but it's also where problems like HEW, not making sacrifices for the team, and other bad outcomes happen. Ironically, Iowa is ridiculed for being the least "fun" place to be, but the guys all seem to be close friends outside the room (the Ayala incident was just bizarre and sounded like a one-off) and have a stronger culture without all the religious stuff.

Sheesh

Having a large following doesn't mean a lot if a wrestler doesn't post much content or if people don't react, though. To get a fuller picture of a wrestler's Share of Voice (and maybe NIL potential), we should not only look at volume (followers), but also their reach (impressions) and engagement (likes, comments, shares, clickthroughs, etc.), among other analytics. Here's what the list looks like with those Instagram metrics added: Starocci - 61 posts ... 159k followers ... 5.98% AER Carr - 120 ... 113k ... 7.60% Bartlett - 178 ... 101k ... 5.80% Fix - 160 ... 89.7k ... 5.82% Brooks - 43 ... 35.9k ... 0.14% Woods - 95 ... 33.3k ... 12.54% Lewis - 61 ... 23.2k ... 16.75% Ramos - 63 ... 22.9k ... 11.55% KOT - 54 ... 22.7k ... 15.46% Cass - 49 ... 22.5k ... 22.65% Arujau - 86 ... 22.4k ... 14.83% Sasso - 131 ... 21.1k ... 15.84% (AER = Average Engagement Rate, defined as the % of followers who interact with the wrestler's posts. Higher is better, but note that a small percentage of a huge following is often better than a large percentage of a tiny # of followers) Just eyeballing it, Starocci has a lot of untapped influence and is not maximizing his NIL potential. He should post more to take advantage of what he has going and extend his reach, like Bartlett and Carr might be trying to do. Woods and Cass are undervalued based on volume alone and appear to have a very strong though small following, maybe good local or niche NIL potential. Brooks' IG clout is abysmal... doesn't post much and when he does, it's probably boring and no one cares. Not good material for a promotional NIL deal. For comparison, here are the basic IG influence metrics for some other popular wrestlers. Check out Gable's numbers. It's a little surprising to see mediocre numbers from Dake and Oliver after they did so much finger wagging about wrestlers needing to put in the work to build their online brand: Burroughs - 2099 ... 889k ... 1.81% Dake - 907 ... 250k ... 2.01% Taylor - 1753 ... 457k ... 1.92% JO - 79 ... 67.6k ... 0.97% Nolf - 408 ... 104k ... 5.41% Snyder - 672 ... 311k ... 1.00% Spencer - 114 ... 180k ... 12.87% Steveson - 94 ... 656k ... 16.34%

Aren't they experimenting with this in the G-League? It's actually not a bad idea, on top of adding more points to the scoreboard it alters floor spacing and creates new offensive opportunities of all types. Similarly, major rule changes in wrestling need to not only make the scores look better, but fundamentally improve the mechanics of the sport to create more action. It's a challenge for all sports though, our collective attention spans are growing shorter and we constantly expect games/matches to be a highlight reel of big moments, like it's a video game.

Portal season sucks.

Oh, television viewership has gone down since 2010, you say? What a surprise

Retherford had this great story some time back about how, during his recruitment, Cael was the only one who actually asked him what his goals were in wrestling, academics, life/post-wrestling. The other schools were more pitching to him, like here's why you should come wrestle for us... He said Cael sat and listened to what he had to say, then mapped a path to get there by wrestling at PSU. Same thing could very well have happened with Truax. Beyond NIL money, maybe he was sold on an opporunity and a vision.

If Truax's in-season walk around weight is 186, is there any chance that he cuts to 174 so Starocci and Brooks can both bump up? I thought there were rumors that Carter couldn't make 174, assuming he even returns next year. Would also give Starocci a chance to grow into 86kg with all his talk about winning Olympic gold.

Bull in the ring after every practice

Only a 3 hour commute each way to his internship. You think it's Max Rent is a bust? I don't think he has a RS available.

UCLA and USC were not a package deal for the Big Ten. The initial plan was to poach USC and Oregon (because football), but Fox believed the total LA tv market is bigger than Oregon + the Pacific Northwest, so they convinced the Big Ten to invite UCLA with USC. The VA/NC split would be for similar reasons sadly, to maximize viewership and media revenues.

Sure, but I don't get the impression he wants out of Div. I