wrestle87

My guy realized pretty quickly but a season too late that he had it really really good up at Cornell.

Okie State will vie for a title out of the gate

I would go back and watch/listen to burroughs when he was putting it on dake and taylor before they turned the corner. He is very much in the old school J Smith style crush 'em and forget about 'em sort of camp, it may not have been what got him through, but he was definitely very big on buying into his own story (I'm trying to phrase it politely). He's never been immensely disrespectful, but he's also never been one to hide it when he had something to say about somebody either. Nature of competition certainly, but he has a strong "bitter competitor" muscle. He, J Smith, the Brands, Gable, are all cut from the same cloth. Massive respect to all of them, but when you become the type of dude who foams at the mouth when things get heated or who yells, mopes and pouts when you don't win, you often miss or lose the ability to give yourself a gentle farewell. Being pissed about losing clouds the ability to have the perspective to craft such a moment. It makes great winners, but great winners never want to be done winning.

Nearing the end of his 30's, I have to think we would have seen more involvement in the careers of others from JB if coaching was really on his mind. I could be completely incorrect, but he has always struck me as a very self-driven self-oriented lone wolf type of wrestler, much more like Sammy Henson or Cary Kolat more than DT or some of the other more team, group, room oriented wrestlers. Again, I could be very off base on this, but to me JB has always come across as being about JB and doing what is necessary to make JB successful. This is in no way bad, just an observation of personality types that succeed on certain paths vs others post competition.

Put another way, is competing really the highest and best use of his talents and experiences? Dude is a very experienced competitor, but the sport has clearly moved on. He is, however, an amazing voice and ambassador for the sport. I'm sure the fire will always be there, but he has the ability to be the actual face of the sport for the next many decades. We should definitely be actively encouraging of that, his is one of the top handful of wrestling minds to come out of our country in the past 50 years.

Well, good feeling's gone.

100% This is a really great move for Zahid. Show’s a maturity and openness I admit I would not have expected from him. Really tough for ASU, they just went down a solid two rungs, and this looks like an actual exodus now. Teemer, Parco and Zahid all bouncing in the same year? Bad news bears.

The math on Ivy educations for athletes is going to change a GREAT deal unless ivies throw actual NIL at their kids. So many kids can walk away from their career with enough scratch to become entrepreneurs, that it saves them 5-7 years professionally. Unless you are dead set on becoming so and so lawyer or business person, it really doesn't matter anymore. A quarter to half a yard invested and cashflowing makes for a much more enjoyable 20's, 30's and 40's.

I understand that sort of a feeling, but at the same time, being a college athlete has real monetary market value. It is an adjustment period, but I think the net positives for the athletes a far outweigh the negatives. We’re not used to it, and I do not mean to dismiss the notion that this has brought out new levels of sliminess, but those sorts of gross people have always been in the sport (I was def coached by a few of them.) It is weird to have wrestling be setting down its mantle as the “working man’s unsung rewardless gladiator sport”, which is an ethos it has carried for a century, but now kids can actually change their lives by being good at wrestling, instead of just getting injured, abused in the room, and having nothing to show for it. Things will adjust, and some rules are probably warranted, but at the same time our memories of the vision of the sport are from a made up marketing pipe dream peddled by the NCAA to line their own pockets. I love this sport dearly, and always will, but I have a hard time siding with NCAA institutions (the teams themselves) over individual athletes getting their fair and due at a market rate.

Yianni is from a different era. Kids get paid nowadays, this is change your life money for many of these kids, and will completely overhaul the old narrative for what it meant to be a college athlete (broken and retired coaching at a high school because your dreams didn't pan out.) Now it can be independent small landlord and entrepreneur...that's an amazing shift. Go pursue the kids coaches, do your thing!

The fascinating trend of wrestlers adopting the mannerisms of their coaches continues in fascinating fashion, Plott sounds an AWFUL LOT like DT and Cael in his most recent interview. I find this trend so amusing. So many Okie State guys used to sound like angry short cowboys (J Smith), ditto for iowa guys using the highly idiosyncratic cadence of the brands bros. Now it continues in the DT era. What are some other notable coach speaking styles that get passed onto athletes that I'm forgetting?

The major hindrance to US wrestling is that currently, we structurally subordinate ourselves to an established system which we have seen is terribly corrupt. This kneecaps 99% of the talent and experience that comes out of US college wrestling, and just leaves it to wither and die on the side of the road. YET...folkstyle is the heart and soul of American wrestling. We should establish, monetize and elevate folkstyle beyond college. Folkstyle is the #1 grappling style for MMA, and is overly structurally limited at present. Folkstyle is the best, most creative form of wrestling that exists currently, and it deserves better. We should change this somehow. Other countries do a far better job of celebrating their domestic grappling style. We should as well. Because, frankly...the Olympics is dead. The shine is off it the concept. Not to mentioned current NIL money makes pursuit of olympic medals once again a comparative pauper's pursuit. The US has an ENORMOUS pool of wrestlers to pull from to keep folkstyle going further. This should happen.

As it turns out, the coaches and organizations giving out that NIL money care about those very results. I don’t disagree that the spirit of that stuff is in rather bad faith, but it's what is allowed.

Except that athletes completely forego the ability to accumulate better high school accolades as a result of getting that year of training/growth in earlier on.

This entire argument of “he should just teach techniques, he has no business giving life advice” is just out of date. Mediocre coaches teach technique. Great coaches show you the path objectively. As long as these are the rules in place, it behooves athletes to make the most of the ruleset. If a 19 year old can compete in high school, that kid will also be a year closer to physical preparedness to compete. NIL has effectively removed the viability of redshirt years, so it makes sense that the deferred year for physical maturation would still get worked in somewhere.

There are some club coaches who will give advice that is meaningfully practical for their athlete’s success, and some who will just teach techniques. The two are allowed, and go hand-in-hand. From a physical development and technique development perspective, a whole year makes an enormous difference, especially when you don’t have to spend that whole year just sitting in middle school classes, basically big group babysitting with some reading lessons. The coach is giving practical advice, if these athletes get good, they can make far more from NIL than they will with whatever “degree” they will earn. AA status—> half a mil—>investible assets and a property portfolio before you graduate college. What’s wrong with raising your kids to be smart entrepreneurs?

Getting held back is market standard for competitive athletes in wrestling, and has been for a long time now. They spend some time talking about that in the RBY documentary Flo did.

Gomez has the body of an 80 year old. I love watching him wrestle, but he doesn't have much left in him. His knees just can't take the torsion anymore.

I'm still seeing a lot of discussion elsewhere about why people are mad at all the transfers, and something occurred to me about why I get worried about high reliance on transfers. Transfers are good, but they also have a way of hollowing out a program. It turns into a revolving door of just purchasing wrestlers, as opposed to actually recruiting and developing. It never really occurred to me until earlier today, transfers aren't anything new, and I don't recoil at the concept of early-career transfers, but I do recoil at the concept of filling a roster with late stage transfers who have limited eligibility left, because I worry about the innate ability for the Iowa program to sustain itself and develop nationally competitive wrestlers. There are certain stalwart programs that are a bellwether of health of the sport overall, and Iowa running on transfers to me looks like the wheels starting to wobble because in-house development isn't going well. Ultimately, our sport is one that runs on healthy, competitive rooms. Reliance on transfers feels like an NFL lineman just pounding Toradol ignoring issues that are cropping up. The bill comes due eventually, just a matter of when you pay it, and how large it is.

No idea, just a reflex I have when I hear that somebody has moved to Michigan/Cliff Keen, they must have access to another passport somehow.

I just assumed that bc Woods went to Cliff Keen that he would be going the "mercenary" root and competing for another country this next cycle. And honestly, good for him, the US system I would say is #2 behind the russian system in terms of being an absolute meat grinder for making the team. If he can sidestep that, make some teams AND be relatively healthy, more power to him.

Would be fascinating, but that’s gotta be close to the big dinner in Godfather Part I at this point. I’d be extra impressed if Nolf knows the story to the split. It’s out there on the internet somewhere I’m sure, but that is a loooong row to hoe. Let’s just say that the OG DDS wasn’t exactly a Glory to God type of environment.

Thanks for listening @Husker_Du. Ads seem to kind of overwhelm the new mobile browser setup, at least for Safari. I have had a pages reload themselves on me a few times while typing out posts. The frequency of them in scrolling setups is also between doubled and tripled, and some encroach on the columns of the web page in a pulsing fashion. At times it’s a lot of moving parts for the eyes to take in.

This right here, what @Interviewed_at_Weehawken said is spot on. Colleges, Universities, and the NCAA asymmetrically benefitted from a contrived moniker of "amateur" for many decades, using this to pretend that the education they weren't giving their athletes was actually worth something. That entire era was hot garbage for athletes. Schools could and did behave any way they wanted towards their athletes. Administrators weren't and still aren't held to any moral standards or codes, they just get paid to keep the money machine running. Being an AD is really an in-house tv negotiations and PR exec position at the big schools. Maurice Clarett is a perfect example. He didn't play ball with the Ohio State AD, got railroaded out of a very lucrative career bc he wouldn't kiss the ring. Kids are finally getting what they are worth in the market, and institutions which have done everything in their power to arrange asymmetric agreements with everyone they do business with throughout history (hello student loans being resilient to bankruptcy) are just salty they have lost hold of power they once had. TV and the NCAA did a great snow job on us, and yes old school games and matches were fun to watch, but let's not pretend that just bc we like watching college sports that it was any sort of fair and equitable arrangement for the athletes. Our enjoyment and pleasure on saturday evenings in front of the television came at the expense of thousands of young people's health and futures. NIL, while different, does right by the people creating the entertainment product and putting their bodies and their health on the line. That is 100% the way it should be.

I’d like to bid you all a great year and a great farewell, so long as this format keeps up I’m gone. This is practically giving me a seizure just looking at the screen. My brain feels so scrambled looking at this. @Husker_Du I hope this let’s you buy a nice house, bc this is too rough for my dainty eyes. In the meantime, bye everybody.