wrestle87

Ragusin is going to put himself in a position to potentially be the highest seed to 0-2 BBQ. I hope he gets his AA, but he plays it so close, he just backed up for 2 minutes straight. If he gets an unfriendly ref who forces him to engage, the ncaa tournament can be very unfriendly.

Williams should have stalled out. That was legitimately running for the OB line for a minute straight after taking a multi-minute breather.

Can you include entry spaces in here for referees?

This right here. The american system is certainly entertaining domestically, but my goodness does it create a lot of churn, friction, and wear and tear for athletes. It would be awesome if we could have something like the russian system, but we’re just not that deep. Russian nationals is so successful bc, frankly it’s way way harder than worlds or the olympics.

I was watching Jersey States yesterday, and was very surprised to see that the girl's tournament was ALSO folkstyle... But the NCAA tournament last I checked was freestyle. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone or something, somebody please help me. What's happening? Is every state just arbitrarily determining what style they will have their girls/women's wrestlers wrestle?

Do you think faculty will as tenure comes under further pressure?

Lol...laugh it up man...I'm assuming that you didn't go to school where most of the country's colleges are located...which is in the middle of nowhere...

Yup, you are not wrong. The potential knock-on effects of this are gigantic. Now, I'm not familiar with what sort of bargaining power a debate team or model-UN team could have at the college level at most schools, but for at least a few it will matter. Buuut...this is what happens when the winds of labor rights/legislation/change start smelling like they might dismantle one of the longest held strangle holds our economy and society has produced in almost a century. Previously service-oriented entities became veeeery profit oriented, tax status aside, and...eventually the universe pushes back. Schools not having a basketball or a football team is positively blasphemous though. This will be wrestling's primary area of struggle. How do you remain relevant enough that the school keeps your program despite impending headwinds.

Ok, that previous comment took me on a bit of a tangent. It all comes down to where and how the "product" that colleges provide of an education and the college experience ends, and where marketing, revenue generating, and alumni relations efforts begin. There are certainly a minority of non-athletes on campuses who do things for the college, but you can't logically say that all students attending a college, that they are paying for, which is what most students are doing, qualifies as being under the employ of the college. That is analogous to saying that a paying customer at a restaurant is employed by that restaurant. If you want to look at the students attending because of grants, heck yeah you can make the argument they are employees in some way, bc you bet your bottom dollar they are winding up in college marketing material in one way or another. College athletics play a major role in building and maintaining campus life, alumni interest and engagement, directly and indirectly supporting alumni donation drives, as well as simply getting the name and the school colors out there on regional and national stage in front of future prospective students and families. Though the thing they engage in is a highly specific activity, athletes are, even at a d3 level, no different from a student working in the admissions office from a long-term marketing perspective. And that's for schools that don't even have considerable ticket revenue, tv contract, and apparel sponsorship deals. It will sure be interesting. I don't have any munchkins of my own yet, but I know for a fact that the college sports environment I partook of will likely be looooong gone by the time I have kids looking at schools...if they even want to do that. I was reading how much kids can make as a merchant sailor, maybe I should've done that instead.

Uhhh...if this was actually what happened with the majority of students on the majority of universities, financial viability and cost-benefit analysis of post-secondary education would not be the hotly debated topic that it is. Not saying it doesn't happen...but the idea that the average student is refining anything other than their ability to empty a can into their face at lightning speed is a bit misguided.

Okie State's 125 Spratley. He started out the year with some mediocre performances. He has found a stride and is really starting to put "stomp on your head" energy into his matches.

This is a way that the Ivy gently sidesteps what they do. Ivy League colleges do give out athletic scholarships...they just call them something else. They can label them as academic or need-based scholarships, or they arrange tuition support from donors and alumni groups to be funneled in the direction of certain families rather than specifically naming funds athletic scholarships. The whole "no athletic scholarships" thing is meant to support the academic image of the ivy league, so they don't put it out there that they are "diluting" the academic abilities of their campuses with athletes. Those kids absolutely get compensation, and it could be argued that they are engaged in a form of barter, offering their athletic services in exchange for access to the future prestige of being an Ivy Grad. Ivy's do a better job than most of hiding what they do, but it's still pretty cut and dry that it's an exchange of services.

If Gable started camp today, and trained for a full "season" leading up to Paris, he is an olympic finalist if not champion again no problem. Nobody at Heavyweight has ever brought what he is physically capable of. Parris is a legit bronze medalist, and he looks like he has never wrestled before when he is out on the mat against Gable. It's the old brutal reality that there are levels to this thing, even at the highest echelons. Gable occupies the very highest of them. And...he hasn't beaten himself up chasing world medals. I'm DEFINITELY not saying he hasn't accrued injuries through WWE, but they are different. If he wanted to, he could be in an olympic final this summer.

Go for it, why not? You know their's just one guy who kinda has your number, go for it.

What are the NIL figures for football vs wrestling these days?

It will be interesting to see if this evolves on a sport by sport basis, an institution by institution basis. Higher Ed has been gradually turning the levers on always taking as much as they can, without budging an inch, for ~3 decades now. Them being put in their place and being forced to behave in a way that moderately resembles having to adhere to market forces will be interesting. Also, more unionization --> less wiggle room for NCAA shenanigans. Think about how much better this would have gone for the Iowa and ISU wrestlers if there were actually pre-arranged processes in place rather than just flip of a coin punishment.

That does the complexity of university finances a disservice. Determining which departments have which revenues attributed to them is the dance that CFO's play all year every year, and it is charitable to describe university accounting practices as misleading. I've spent a few years reading and dissecting and analyzing the financial statements of colleges large and small around the country. My computer currently has a few thousand audited financial statements in its download folder. If you care to do any digging yourself, just google "[Name of school] 990" which will pull up the Propublica form for each school. 99% of schools also file audited financial reports (hah), that show year over year fund flows and, primarily, serve to account for the way they use their endowments and contributions to pay for the operations of the school. Athletics is a major part of every school because, more often than not, even if the programs themselves don't do enough to get kids into the school, they do serve to cast a wider net to families who are interested in paying more for college. The Athletic departments, in this case, bolster the tuition revenue of the school. This is very common in small schools especially. The prospect of these schools in particular having to treat their athletes collectively as employees will break the back of most of them. It is a multi-million dollar reversal of direction of flow of funds annually. Considering that ~85% of schools ranked outside the top 30-40 nationally have run operating deficits since 2020, this trend will note reverse. The University model became entirely investment income dependent in the 2010's, what with rates being at historic lows and all, but now with rates going up and asset prices going down considerably, the tap is being shut off on the seemingly bottomless dividends that endowments could kick out to cover whatever costs needed to be covered. Endowment principal is now being used to cover the gap between tuition revenue and operating costs. Of all the many hundreds of schools I have looked at, I can think of less than ten that operate such that tuition revenue covers operating costs. Turning a significant source of revenue into an employment negotiation (making some assumptions here), will be very detrimental long term. Most schools have less than 5 years of operating costs in endowment reserves. Many have 3. Some like Drexel University, have less than 1. Broad spectrum unionization of athletics will likely lead to the closing of 20% of universities within the next 10 years if rates don't return to below 2%. Not that people came here for a High Ed Economics Market Report...

Another incomplete thought on my part, which has been a problem for me the past few days, my bad. Athletics plays an integral role in the financial viability of many institutions. Trouble with finance and athletics --> no more school

Ladies and gentlemen, this will be the financial end of many many Universities around the country. You heard it here first. This will be a very very interesting couple of pages in the history books that our grandchildren read.

Hard to beat James English in this category. https://medium.com/wrestling-stories/james-english-s-wrestling-story-56afbc7bebf

Sorry, I didn't finish my thought. He's got to put on 30% more muscle mass, not total body mass, that would be absolutely bananas.

This is true, but typically when somebody is that good, they start getting noise from the Football media. I gotta say, I haven't heard Football noise from FOOTBALL media about Keuter. I have heard noise from WRESTLING media about Keuter playing football, because that is rare and wrestling media is small, predictable and click-happy. And the BigTen Network will do ANYTHING it can to bring other sports in to try to create cross-sport interest. Hence the random over-focus on Hutmacher and Keuter this year despite their (understandably) very middling years.

This is so very true. The wrestling community really doesn't have a good understanding of how BIG football players are. With the exception of a few defensive ends aside, Linebackers are almost uniformly the scariest guys on the field, both physically and mentally. Keuter is a 30% away from filling into that size. That sort of size takes time, and it takes rest. Also, the amount of homework that football players do every week to be ready for game time is absolutely insane. If you ever listen to the top football guys start talking football with one another, it is another language. I'm not saying any of this to poopoo Keuter's chances. I hope he is able to attain his goals. But...considering that we live in an era where Freshman can come in and dominate at any weight class when they are of his caliber...and let's be clear he was high AA caliber coming out of High School just based on placement alone...his time with football has taken him from that down to a much more mediocre r16 kind of guy. He is good enough at football to get a roster spot on a Big10 team. That's impressive. But guaranteed that his wrestling is having a similar effect simply because he is splitting his year in two, and is not fully engaged in learning and honing his football craft. Football coaches always talk about wanting guys who wrestled. They mean in High School. How many college wrestlers have made it in the NFL in the past 20 years? I know there are more than Stephen Neal, but I can only think of Stephen Neal. I know Lesnar and Coon both bounced out. Keuter's not out there pulling a Gable Steveson in his first year. And last I checked, they didn't pull his redshirt in football so he could go hold down the defense with his unprecedented raw football ability. I just don't want a very hardworking and accomplished young man to fall victim to the whispers of the marketing machine in the Big10 and elsewhere to convince him to make short term decisions that detract from his ability to achieve his highest goals.

I did not know that. I'm rather surprised they didn't hype that up more. But...then again, NW may have just turned its nose up at the idea of athletics mattering at all.

Him being an "NFL Prospect" has been something that the WRESTLING community has talking about, frankly because we don't collectively understand the football side of things at all. Is Keuter really good enough to be on an NFL track? 1.6% of NCAA football players go on to play pro. After a (very) cursory perusal of a few football sites, sounds a lot like our boy is a better wrestler than a football player. Honestly, if he were that good at football, he wouldn't even consider wrestling. The economics for football success so outweigh what wrestling can offer, the fact that he's two sporting it kinda says everything. And, realistically, we are in a time when the two sport thing doesn't work. Two guys did it, and the BigTen network LOOOOVES the talking points, but Nutmasher and Keuter are extremely middle of the road right now. AND, they are giving up at least 50% of their bandwidth to pursue both sports. Now, maybe Hutmacher did it to slim down a bit as part of something strategic for football. But Keuter...this year at least, the dude is really a 197 who just isn't cutting weight. If he's going to do football and give it a shot, I hope he does. Because he's going to be missing out on a lot of skill development time, not just time in the room, but physical adaptation and CNS adaptation as well. It's also 50% of the year that he's not building relationships with the guys on his team and the coaches too.