Pucillo, who won the 2008 national title as a member of the Ohio State Buckeyes, became the first former champion to broadcast his preference of men. To come out in any sport is a bold proclamation, but the revelation from within the sport of a wrestling -- one drenched in the verbiage and imagery of masculinity -- is almost unparalleled.
While Pucillo's sexual preference is of little concern to most individuals, it's unique in that it comes from within a highly closeted combat sports community, which tends to entertain less-than-progressive views on what happens in the bedroom.
Ohio State's Mike Pucillo defeated Iowa State's Jake Varner to win the NCAA title in 2008 (Photo/Danielle Hobeika)My hope is that Pucillo's leadership will prompt more young men to face anti-gay discrimination on and off the mats. Sexual preference has nothing to do with physical toughness and that you happen to be gay should in no way affect teammates. It certainly doesn't affect the athlete. Mike Pucillo is one of the baddest men on the planet. Period.
Congrats to Mike Pucillo on the announcement. We are all looking forward to witnessing the positive changes he will no doubt inspire in our community.
To your questions ...
Q: I thought the announcers during the Division I tournament were circumspect and somewhat reticent about criticizing the NCAA in the aftermath of the 157-quarterfinal bout. Are announcers asked or contracted not to be critical? I can imagine such might be the case, since it is an NCAA-hosted event.
-- Charles W.
Foley: I was hired this year to work on ESPN's "Off the Mat" program and at no time was asked to avoid the Ian Miller-Brian Realbuto controversy. In fact, the talking heads discussed the situation before the broadcast and wondered aloud to each other if it had been overdone by the earlier coverage. Everyone agreed that if it came up in any way we'd talk about it as long as necessary. As I recall we were critical of the NCAA for not having better procedures in place, but we didn't want to distract from the action and the incredible performance of Isaiah Martinez.
Censorship isn't a non-issue. There are certainly ties between broadcast networks and the companies with which they have distribution agreements. As you might recall, ESPN killed "Playmakers," a show about the dark home lives of NFL football players after the league quietly threatened their contracts. When asked directly about pulling the show then-president of ESPN George Bodenheimer said that they must respect the wishes of their partners.
He also said, "We don't do anything if it doesn't make money. If wrestling is on TV more it's because we are making money."
That was 2008. The sport is doing well for ESPN and the NCAA.
Q: Do you think the fact that California only has one class hurts the sport of wrestling? I think wrestling is missing out on a huge possible fan base. California is the biggest market in the country with 38.8 million people. Yet the attendance at the 2014 CIF state tournament was only 18,887. Nebraska has only has 1.8 million people but had a three-day attendance of over 50,000. There are 896 kids that make it to the Nebraska state tournament. Those 896 kids are followed by family and friends who create a huge buzz, which attracts the media. These family and friends also bring a lot of money to Omaha. It's a huge moneymaker for the NSAA and the City of Omaha. Universities and businesses look at the attendance and financial numbers at the Nebraska state tournament and they see opportunity to gain more students and more customers. Because of this Nebraska has a total eight four-year institutions that offer wrestling to California's seven. I think if you have 2-3 classes in California the sport's popularity would grow there by leaps and bounds. Just think what kind of buzz having a 2-3 class tournament at the Staples Center would create.
-- Mark B.
Foley: I'd always assumed that having one state championship made the tournament more spectacular and the winner all that much more unique. However, I think you changed my mind.
For just a moment let's put aside the attendance and the media buzz of three California state tournaments and look at the theory of grade inflation. Duke University famously inflates grades as part of their desire to look prestigious. For whatever reason when someone looks at a resume that includes a good school they likewise want to see a good GPA. It reinforces the idea of the school being exemplary. For example, all other things being equal, what is more attractive, the Princeton grad with a 3.5 or the Duke grad with a 3.9?
California is respected as one of the top wrestling states in the country. If they can produce 28 more state champions that will mean 28 more kids being recruited from California as state champions. No, not all will be equal, but given the opportunity to make the march to the highest tournament, I don't think there would be a significant drop off in talent between divisions, but there would be an increase in recruited athletes.
#MoreCaliChamps
Q: With Michigan State ending up with negative team points at the NCAAs, has that happened before? I just don't remember that happening.
-- Jim R.
Foley: Michigan State is the first Big Ten wrestling program to ever finish with negative points at the NCAA tournament. Nothing more profound can be written than simply seeing that score at the end of three days. Not good for the old guard at Michigan State.
Q: You were correct! It's pretty simple. If you don't give Ian Miller an escape, you can't give Brian Realbuto a takedown. Argue all you want about the one point ... doesn't matter! The argument should be over the two-point takedown! (You can't get back points without first getting control, one follows the other.) You cannot award a takedown if you don't award an escape first! Miller wins 9-7 (without escape) or 10-9 (with escape). This is not debatable. No escape given, then you can't give a takedown! Terrible situation but the NCAA had given themselves a way to make it right! They didn't! I don't get it!
-- Dana B.
Foley: Your frustration is understandable. This doesn't make sense because it can't make sense. Numbers are numbers, and for an organization so hell bent on the objectivity of numbers in the seeding process, you'd think they'd honor the objectivity of numbers when used in scoring.
But, then you'd be wrong?
Q: What were your thoughts on finals at 174 pounds? I have two issues. First, while I agree with the shot clock, it appeared to me that Tyler Wilps was attempting to work up and did back around the waist both times he was called for stalling. With the abundance of non-action, fleeing the mat and general backing up that goes uncalled, I get a little upset when calls like that are made, just because the refs feel they have to. Secondly, I would never want to win a match on a penalty point like that. If it is called it's called but to challenge to get it seems cheap. Especially considering it was a flurry of action and Matt Brown came to his feet then was brought back down. The slow motion replay shows locked hands with one second left. Isn't he allowed any reaction time? When you watch it full speed he barely has his hands locked before time expires and Brown has both feet under him at the two-second mark. I think Brown would have won in overtime, but to get those last two points the way he did seems cheap. While I would love to win a national title, I don't think I would be showing that highlight reel to my friends.
-- Nick K.
Foley: Fair enough point. Matt Brown's highlight film might not have made for a personal highlight reel, but it did make the front page of Deadspin, though mostly because of the lunacy you mentioned.
Brown can't really be blamed for the calls and I disagree that they shouldn't have been called. Wilps was stalling and had he not he would have given up the escape point. That's clear. I wish there was a cleaner finish to the match, but once the challenge was called the referees had no choice but to make the correct call.
Unlike the NCAA, they can't just engineer outcomes for PR purposes.
Q: With Cleveland State announcing they are no longer funding wrestling, how many schools do you think need to drop the sport before the NCAA has to adjust the 330 individuals making the tournament? At some point you can't take everyone, can you? Eliminating the pigtails should be the first to go. And just an observation, on the cover of the bout sheet this year it still shows Boston as having wrestling, I love the attention to detail.
-- Jim R.
Foley: They should adjust the tournament this year. Pigtails serve no purpose.
Q: Last year I asked a question that you addressed in your April 4 mailbag, which I will ask again this year. Less than week after the 2015 NCAAs have wrapped up, who are your 2015 NCAA finalists at each weight class and your top five team finishers?
-- Nick M.
Foley:
125: Nathan Tomasello (Ohio State) vs. Thomas Gilman (Iowa)
133: Cody Brewer (Oklahoma) vs. Cory Clark (Iowa)
141: Dean Heil (Oklahoma State) vs. Brandon Sorensen (Iowa)
149: Jason Tsirtsis (Northwestern) vs. Hunter Stieber (Ohio State)
157: Isaiah Martinez (Illinois) vs. Ian Miller (Kent State)
165: Alex Dieringer (Oklahoma State) vs. Bo Jordan (Ohio State)
174: Taylor Massa (Michigan) vs. Zach Epperly (Virginia Tech)
184: Gabe Dean (Cornell) vs. Blake Stauffer (Arizona State)
197: J'den Cox (Missouri) vs. Kyle Snyder (Ohio State)
285: Nick Gwiazdowski (North Carolina State) vs. Adam Coon (Michigan)
Top five teams: 1. Iowa 2. Ohio State 3. Ohlahoma State 4. Penn State 5. Cornell
Q: Was NCAAs in Philadelphia considered a success? What are the chances it returns?
-- @HezekiahWilcox?ack
Foley: Tough to know what the overall financial success might have been, but from a fan's perspective there were some big positives in terms of transportation, hotels and nightlife.
Overall, I think it's unlikely that the NCAA will continue to float the tournament around the USA. The next bidding cycle will likely be for a ten-year chunk or more now that gate revenues have stabilized. If that is the case, I don't see Philly being as attractive as St. Louis.
Q: I know it's early, but looking ahead, Cael has a passel of redshirt freshmen coming in, plus Nico Megaludis and Zain Retherford coming back after redshirt seasons. Looks like one year of laying low has PSU poised to move back up, especially in those weight classes where top Big Ten competition graduates. What are your thoughts?
-- FoxWit99
Foley: I'm not sure what will happen with his class of studs. There is a bevy of talent in State College, but very little of it has been proven on the mat. Should the recruits and redshirts pan out -- and I tend to think a higher-than-normal percentage will -- then the NCAA title could head back to Pennsylvania.
The larger issue at play is just how talented Iowa and Ohio State will be at those same lower weights. Other schools will have incredible lineups as well. Cael is the best coach in the nation, but even he will have a lot of work to do if he's to recapture the NCAA title in 2016.
MULTIMEDIA HALFTIME
Link: Cleveland State AD John Parry talks to Jason Bryant
Q: What did you think of the FloWrestling Radio Live Episode 18 with Jason Borrelli explaining the seeding process? The Flo guys also said coaches panel rankings don't matter and shouldn't even exist, and basically someone from Flo should be on the seeding committee because they are plunged into the national landscape. Your thoughts?
-- Frank C.
Foley: Well, of course nobody from Flo should be on the seeding committee since they are broadcast partners with the NCAA. That would be a major conflict of interest. However, they are correct that some outside minds, those that aren't marching lock-step to the beat of Oz, need to be part of the process.
While every outlet would claim that theirs are the best rankings, I think that taking a look over the past several years you would find the InterMat's rankings are the most accurate in depicting the week-to-week landscape. They never seem tilted toward anything wildly subjective, largely because they are done by committee, but also because there is a long institutional memory of how to rank wrestlers.
That's the issue the NCAA faces -- a lack of know-how about the sport which directly affects their outcomes. If we can stymie that, or limit the bleed of incompetence with someone entrenched in the sport itself, then we have chance to avoid the disaster that was the 2015 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships.
Q: In the course of checking the Dapper Dan's website I came across an interesting note on Carlton Haselrig. Apparently he is the only six-time (yes, six-time) NCAA champion (three in Division II) and a two-time PA state champ but with no regular season record. How are these feats even possible? Why is he not a bigger deal in college wrestling history? Side note: tons of awesome matchups if you browse the yearly results on that website. Think they'd ever be able to do an alumni-style dual meet? Some of those matches would make for great post-college rematches
-- Ryan P.
Foley: Wrestling is hard!
We once had an alumni match at the University of Virginia and one of the alumni tore his patella tendon. Old and fat does not always make for fun, or safe, matchups!
Q: How much money did Ohio State's athletic director make when Logan Stieber won his fourth national title?
-- Nick
Foley: Yes! I looked for this answer but came up bupkis. Comments section?!
Q: Is there some unwritten rule in Iowa, Oklahoma and Minnesota that says that high school wrestlers in those states are never to wrestle at Pennsylvania colleges and universities? Pennsylvania kids do their college wrestling in every state you can imagine, but I can't think of any kids from the aforementioned states who attend and wrestle at any Pennsylvania colleges. Do high school coaches in those states intentionally discourage their kids from attending PA colleges?
-- Brian J.
Foley: The in-state competition to make it onto one of those collegiate programs is so intense that there leaves little room to recruit out-of-state student-athletes. Tuition prices in state affect the wrestling programs. Money is money, so to pay $35k in full scholarship to a kid from Oklahoma is instead spent on a couple of $15k scholarships.
Also, because Pennsylvania does produce so many of the nation's best wrestlers it keeps recruiting cost at bay to keep your eyes in state. Less coaches travel and less chance that your favorite blue chipper misses Mom's casserole and banks the plane left to make it home in time for supper, forever.
Q: After watching the NCAAs, it would appear that St. Paris Graham produces wrestlers that are most likely to be successful in college. They had a number of All-Americans and by my observations, way more than any other high school (even Blair, whose kids continually seem to disappoint.) Is SPG's success a trend or just something whacky that happened this year? And why does this happen?
-- Tyler H.
Foley: It's tough to nail down exactly what leads one high school's alumni to do better at the NCAA level than another high school's alumni, but I imagine a lot has to do with the success of Ohio State and the talent of the Jordans and the leadership they showed in their prep days. All are factors, but at the core, yes, Jeff Jordan is an exceptional coach who creates All-American-caliber wrestlers at St. Paris Graham.
Re: Cleveland State
By Ronald M.
I'm as disappointed as everyone else about the Cleveland State decision. But let's not be too hard on the AD. He's on the record: Parry said lacrosse would be part of a plan to attract "particularly more students from suburban, private schools that CSU doesn't normally have access to," he said.
He's doing it for the same reason so many other schools are doing it: universities need affluent "full pay" students to enroll. These students are so interested in being able to say (for the rest of their lives) "I was an NCAA athlete," that they'll pay more to go to a lower quality school, just for the opportunity to play their desired sport.
And most of the previous talk has been about liberal arts schools using this strategy. Do you think that Cleveland State has seen increases in its state appropriations? You need to understand that adding lacrosse is potentially a NET REVENUE POSITIVE proposal for Cleveland State.
Now, this doesn't mean that wrestling has to be dropped, if they could add a women's sport to offset the men's lacrosse increase. But it's just consistent with the overall craziness of having our 18-22 year-old athletes trained through universities. And my (unsolicited) suggestion to the wrestling community would be to start thinking about options outside of the NCAA/universities, along the lines of your "club" suggestion a few months ago.
ARGUMENT OF THE WEEK
By JM
I found that I was at a disappointing disadvantage attending the NCAAs in person when it came to knowing what was going on. In particular, the people in the stands were given no information from the PA announcers at all about the HUGE controversy regarding the Realbuto-Miller match. Only those people who had access to external communications were made aware of the situation during the quarterfinal round. Was this because the announcers in the arena were not aware of the situation? Or were not compelled to voice their knowledge of the situation? Or were forbidden by the NCAA to inform the live audience? Most of the attending fans were unaware of the controversy until leaving the arena and only later found out by talking with the few people 'in the know.' Surely, not a fan-friendly environment.
Similarly, the fans in the stands have to sit on their hands and wait to find out the results of video reviews of certain contested portions of matches. Why not show the replay on the mega-screen to all in attendance? Is this another NCAA regulated attempt to keep the paying customers in the dark?
I believe the wrestling powers-that-are need to re-examine the fan-friendliness of the NCAAs and make the necessary improvements that 21st century ticket-buyers are expecting.
NEW IDEA OF THE WEEK
By Mike T.
The NCAA wrestling tournament is the greatest thing in the world. It seems that the current college wrestling format puts all the emphasis on this tournament. If we are going to keep it that way, why not go all in?
All 10 starters on every Division I wrestling team compete at the NCAA tournament.
Possible benefits:
1. Boost attendance at NCAAs
2. Increase TV viewership at NCAAs
3. More teams scoring points -- less teams with 0 or 1 point
4. More pins at NCAAs, fans love action and the first round would be a bloodbath (in a good way)
5. Another session at nationals means more TV time, more revenue for host/NCAA.
6. Shorten/rearrange the season -- conference no longer needs to be the last tournament of the season
7. With conference no longer at the end of the season, National Duals now has a better chance of being successful
8. Incentivize schools to add wrestling -- No matter how small the schools market, they get 10 athletes at the big show with a chance to get on TV and brand their school
9. Better chance for Cinderella story at NCAAs
10. Less athletes in redshirt -- coaches fear pulling redshirt if wrestler can't make nationals and contribute to final team score, this is no longer a risk
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