dragit

Sorry - was just having a particularly exasperating day in my practice. But I would note that Shakespeare would have been exasperated by Telford, too.

Good points. But even in the earlier years, wouldn't you think that, for instance, the top 4 seeds in the first two rounds would have very high winning percentages? That's a lot of matches. Which I would think would skew the winning percentage above just 52%?

Like a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the proverbial ocean -- a start.

That's all matches over many years? Much lower than I would have thought. Just think about top 4 seeds in the first two rounds, and the 5-8 seeds in the first round, and the numbers you'd think they'd roll up.

I think this is well done. Though I'm not a ref so my ability to comment on the details only goes so far. I'm still skeptical that this can be done in a manner that inspires confidence so I would vote for no reaction time, automatic touch takedowns as the rule. But I'd settle for a pushout rule combined with your proposal. I think that the stalling problems are unaddressable without the pushout rule, whereas I think your proposal could possibly work.

I think if you asked the ref in that match he would still say McEneley didn't "retain control" because he never had control. Not trying to be difficult, I admire what you're trying to do. I just think that where you're going is going to have substantial subjectivity and I have zero confidence that can be applied by human refs in a satisfying way. That's why I prefer as much objectivity as possible. Push out rules to address the inconsistency (diplomatic way to put the current disaster) in stalling calls, and automatic touch/no reaction takedowns (because I think this is just too hard for even most good refs).

I'm concerned that this places the result into what "maintains" means, and that it essentially places that question in the referee's discretion, thus leaving us where we started, because asking the referee to determine whether the attacker has maintained takedown criteria is the same grey area that any non-touch-takedown (i.e., reaction time) system will suffer from.

I think the simplest explanation is found in what I think was an Askren post from 2014. Apologies in advance if I've got this or any of the details wrong, but I believe in trying to explain what has been the main problem for the last 15ish years (Iowa mainly handfighting and pushing but not attacking) he said that the problem is they don't know how to finish in the scrambles which had taken over the sport, so they aren't comfortable attacking in the old Iowa way, but rather just try to run clock with ties and hand fights and activity on the edge. In other words, videos of Casey Cunningham and David Taylor spending a whole practice starting in scramble situations and thinking their way through them are probably not a common sight at Iowa practices. Obviously this isn't every wrestler every year, but to me this rings true and is the clearest way to explain the steady general deterioration since the 2010 championship (somewhat interrupted by the tremendous recruiting haul that produced the 2021 championship despite Penn State winning the big finals matches). My guess is that if Gable were coaching today, he'd be on the cutting edge. He coached his Iowa style because it worked. He also showed great acuity in adapting to his individual wrestlers. He talked about how he was a wolf watching national teams and learning from them. He was known for always thinking, thinking, thinking about how to solve problems at a granular level with his athletes. I am quite sure that he would have adapted and succeeded as the sport changed and developed, and probably would have led a lot of that change. It's no knock on his former champion wrestler(s) that they aren't as good at coaching as he was. Only Sanderson can possibly be viewed as in that league as a coach.

Bravo. Top notch troll. Well done.

Very slow reaction in bringing back reactions. Better late than never, however.

That would require quite an imagination.

That is true there were complaints about that rule. Personally I think they need to go back to no reaction time. The ref's consistently show with this, as with stalling, that they can't provide any sort of consistent standards. For comity's sake I'll say that it's just because it's too hard. But the result I believe is that the only solution is a much more objective rule. That's why I favor no reaction time takedowns and a push out rule for edge wrestling.

Isn't Kevin Jackson a textbook example of a guy who is good at teaching people how to be good at wrestling but not at anything off the mat? My sense is he's been successful at making wrestlers better. His track record at anything management related, however, is not to be celebrated.

The two time finalist who actually tries to take people down during all three periods has a worse chance to win a national championship compared to two guys with apparent injury concerns who lack any sort of elite college record and who actively try to score for less than 30 seconds a match?

Yes the haters would go away and technically it's correct that "surprise" wouldn't be the right term for those three all winning, rather it would be stunning bordering on miraculous. There is no way those three are all winning. Two of them rarely attempt to score, which is kind of a threshold issue for winning national championships. It would be a surprise (less than 50% chance) if any of them won.

And Cassar beat a large and skilled gentleman from Minnesota twice in doing so.

This is a thoughtful take. Two new things Friday. The depth of the beating is now in humiliation territory. And a couple thousand empty seats. Both are well out of his previous comfort zones which prevented him from addressing staffing and style/training issues. These could finally lead to him making the assistant changes that many have found necessary for years.

Well put, sadly.

According to the announcers and Manning he is. Between their slobbering over him, and the traditional Ferrari Family Let's Stand Around For 7 Or 10 Minutes In The Middle Of What's Supposed To Be A Wrestling Match, that was hard to watch. I actually think he goes with the splits after the match as his peace offering to the Big Ten Network--people aren't going to turn off the boring wrestling and kill your ratings because they have to stick around to see if I might turn the crazy loose after my 2-1 hand raiser. Compare that to his brother, whose antics were only before the match, which left no promise of something exciting to look forward to after 10 minutes of crawling around the mat on one knee.

Conel AA'd. Took third place. Beat the number one seed twice. Absolutely lit up the arena. Injury kept him from doing it again.

he was so f'ing good

I can't find brackets on line. Interestingly, though, the Flo webpage says "registration is open through 12/29/2025," so maybe Jax Forrest and/or others might be there in a few hours this morning.

Well, as discussed, literally the only publicity put out by the organizers is a press release giving the schedule. Wrestling starts in 10 hours. So I'm doubtful that we'll see the addition of former national champs or number one ranked guys in half the weight classes as we might have had 15 years ago in those 10 hours. The only positive curveball I'd expect would be a top high schooler or Ono or something like that in a draw. Maybe some kind of separate challenge match, though Askren can't wrestle Herbert like they did years ago. Or as suggested a negative curveball like they're just gonna run the event one last time this year and call it a great run. Regardless thanks to Willie for adding some interest.

I congratulate you on your politeness and optimism while nicely explaining the problem. With respect to "a successful event," I think that they could have one in the manner of how Sean Connery described a successful day of policing to Kevin Costner in the bridge scene in the Untouchables -- everyone going home safe is probably about the best they can hope for.

A lot of stuff I think. Biggest issue probably is one that's out of their control -- with the NCAAs the only thing that people really care about, the in-season tournament is way, way down the priority list. Even CKLV, which had been the one recently worth planning around to watch, fell way down this year. Also it did seem like Midlands got complacent. When they didn't let Mark Hall wrestle his freshman year I thought that was a mistake. And then the Covid cancellation and moving it off campus to that brutally antiseptic arena an hour away. And ultimately, like Sterling Cooper in Mad Men, they were too dependent on one client -- Iowa, and you could feel their interest sapping every year. I'd walk through the parking lot and see all those Iowa plates and say to myself, when they bail out, the roof is going to cave in. All of which leads to that press release I started the thread with where they name not a single team or wrestler to entice the fans. Because they couldn't have done so and kept a straight face. It's really sad -- it was something to plan around back in the day.