boconnell

I think part of Steveson being so highly regarded is how he won his title. He crushed 2X world medalist Gwiz in two matches to make the team. Then he beat 4X Olympic and World champ Akgul in the semis 8-0. Then he beat 3X world reigning champ Petiashvili in the gold medal match. So that's the next best USA heavy of the past decade, and the two best international heavies of the past decade in a single gold medal run. Snyder has a comparable win over Sadulaev, but it didn't come while he was in college. He doesn't have a win on the level of Akgul or Petriashvilli while still in college. He also didn't have to beat anyone domestic at Gwiz' level. Steveson had probably the best couple month run of any college kid ever at any weight. And I agree Mocco is hanging around the top 5, but I can't put him over Konrad who had his way with him while both were at their peak.

I'd put Konrad in there. Mocco is probably near the top of these lists if Konrad doesn't exist. Nobody has ever had more usable size in the limited heavyweight era. It was impossible to hold the center of the mat against him, but it was impossible to attack him. So you just got walked backwards as inevitability set in.

And Brown AA Ophir Bernstein. And a few other guys who reached the college level. Allen has won like 15 straight team titles in Texas.

I didn't say anything about him overreaching when saying Hughes is good or will be good. I said it was bonkers to say Fix didn't know how to scramble and struggled against a bunch of guys he beat and a world champion he couldn't beat. I also said it was crazy to say Hughes is at Fix's level because both were 4Xers. I hope Hughes is great. I think he will be. I think there's a good chance he wins a title while Fix never did. But it's nuts to say Fix struggled late in his career because he couldn't beat RBY and Vito.

Then he should have said 'I'm excited about my guy and the future is bright'.

This is some bonkers stuff. Fix beat all of the guys you mentioned except Arujau. They didn't outscramble him. He didn't even touch Vito's leg for the most part. Vito scored clean off his own shots. And Vito's a world champ. He wasn't outscrambling Fix, he was just better at wrestling. Being a 4X Oklahoma champ doesn't mean they were similar in HS. There are tons of 4X Oklahoma champs, and most never come close to Fix's level. You are massively reaching to say Hughes is close to Fix, let alone better.

People love to talk about how misguided colleges focusing on sports is. I am not sure that what you learn in academics actually applies more to life than what you learn in athletics. I bet NCAA D1 athletes hit traditional success markers at a greater rate than those who obtain Bachelors of Arts or Sociology or similar degrees (and I say that as a holder of an English Literature degree).

You're crazy if you think most football and basketball teams make money.

That's a decent job completely explaining away a pretty solid AA run. I am pretty sure you could make a similar argument for most 5th place AAs if your goal was to explain them away.

I'm sure they won't mind if you stop pretending.

I absolutely agree they are deserving of more college wrestling opportunities. I just strongly disagree that a big college is Texas would win much.

Bo moved to Texas for 9th grade. There are a handful of other AAs the last decade, and all are from the Dallas area. Most are from Allen HS (Nickal and others) or Martin HS (Mondays). The panhandle is good like you said, but there just aren't a lot of people up there. The rest of the state south of Dallas has 1 combined team state title back in like 2005. Good wrestling is definitely all from the part of the state that can take an easy drive to Oklahoma. The other 200+ schools try hard but don't really approach a national level. I say that as someone who lived and coached in Houston for a long time.

Little Rock is much closer to good wrestling than Texas is. They are also an enrollment driven university that was happy to oblige a big donor that wanted wrestling. The Texas schools you mentioned have zero need for more enrollment. They have huge enrollments and giant lists of students turned away. They also have far fewer alumni with wrestling experience because so few in the state wrestled in college. The odds of a big money donor propping up at a giant university with multiple millions a year for a men's and women's program is near zero. The University of Texas is a fantastic school with tons of wealthy alumni, but none of those alumni wrestled in college or have deep connection to the sport. If they did they'd be at a different university. Also look at the top 10 programs in the NCAAs and tell me how many current AAs are within 100/200/500/1000 miles of campus. Texas would be a distant last in a list like that. I'd love for a big Texas University to embrace wrestling. I finished my undergrad at University of Houston. It's just not happening.

There are about 300 High Schools in Texas with wrestling. There were like 20 Junior Highs as of a few years ago.

Why would a Texas school have immediate success? There is very little D1 talent in the state, and very little D1 talent in the surrounding states. The travel budget would be large and only a few schools in the state play in a conference with wrestling. There is also very little wrestling history in the state. It's hard to overstate how few older people there wrestled. There are near zero boosters at those schools who have a history with the sport. Most of the coaches in the state come from out of state and a good chunk of the refs never wrestled. It is just a very young sport there without much history. I think a big school would probably be terrible if they started wrestling (which is not going to happen).