fishbane

Fall semester started 8/22/2022. So if any of this occured between 8/22/2022 and 10/31/2022, which is possible based on the timeline (8/25/2021-10/31/2022) in the complaint, then that may not been the case. He may have also been enrolled for summer classes or something.

Alirez beat 3x world champion Haji Aliyev 8-0 this week. Aliyev was also a silver medalist in Tokyo. https://uncbears.com/news/2023/7/31/wrestling-alirez-wins-gold-at-poland-open.aspx

Expanding on this the criminal complaint says that the criminal conduct happened "on or between the dates 8/25/2021 and 10/31/2022." https://htv-prod-media.s3.amazonaws.com/files/redacted-johnson-64c995095e416.pdf

One possibility is that he made all these bets last year before he was enrolled as a full time student and an NCAA Student athlete. That wouldn't be exactly zero trouble - he'd still have the criminal charge to contend with, but I don't believe the NCAA could suspend him for that. 1283 would be a lot of bets to place between August/September 2022-May 2023.

Wasn't the team not on the same page with dodging Iowa at the soldier salute this past season? Some wrestlers thought they were dodging others thought they were not. I recall something about that

Whoops. You are correct I thought they were on the schedule. Dodging Iowa and Ohio State next year

The 8 teams on their schedule represent 8 of the top 9 teams at the 2023 Big Ten tournament, and 8 of the 9 highest finishing B1G teams at 2023 NCAAs. The 9th team was Iowa.

This was their first year competing in the postseason at the D1 level. They scored a single team point at the Big 12 championships. They had last competed in the D2 championships back in 2018. I don't know what the timeline usually is for moving up a division, but this seems slower than I'd expect. This was their 5th year in D1 and they participated in the postseason for the first time. Being post season eligible in the third season would be closer to my expectation, but maybe COVID slowed things down, they had trouble finding a conference, or I am just wrong. Mesenbrink transferred from Cal Baptist to PSU. I wouldn't expect a recruit of his stature to commit to a program that wouldn't be eligible for D1 postseason competition by his second year in college, so if they moved up the timeline it was at most 1 year.

Host selection is a bid process and an NCAA school or conference must be affiliated the with bid. It doesn’t have to be a school that sponsors wrestling or school near the host city or in the same state, but usually those kinds of schools are the ones interested in bidding. The closest school with wrestling to Las Vegas is Cal Baptist in Riverside, CA followed by Bakersfield, ASU, Cal Poly, and Utah Valley. Hard to imagine any of them would be really Motivsted to bring NCAAs to Vegas, but perhaps if some person/entity in Vegas really wanted to get the tournament one could be recruited to join the bid. Cal Baptist and Utah Valley are in the Big12 but it is unlikely the Big 12 would be motivated to bring NCAAs to Vegas. The PAC-12 is the only school or conference I could see that would want Vegas to host and try and put together a bid. It could be seen as a somewhat central location for all the schools. “A member institution or member conference of the NCAA must be designated as the host institution/conference for the Division I Wrestling Championships.” https://s3.amazonaws.com/ncaaorg/championships/marketing/2019_bids/wrs-d1.pdf

Las Vegas has many arenas that could be suitable. T-Mobile Arena, MGM Grand Garden Arena, Thomas and Mack Center are the typical size used for NCAAs. Allegiant could be used if they wanted to try the football arena again. The Sphere is cool, but would be an unusual setup. Locations are set through 2026.

It used to decide far more bouts at NCAAs. Before the adoption of the point system in 1941, riding time advantage was the primary criteria in determining the winner of a bout that did not end in a pinfall. After the adoption of the points system, each 1 minute in advantage time earned a point - 1:00 advantage =1 points, 2:00=2points, 3:00=3points up to I suppose a maximum of 8. Matches were 3-3-3 back then. If the match went to OT and they kept the RT clock through OT I guess it could go higher. OT was 2-2 minute periods and there was no sudden death, so perhaps 12 points would have been the max. It wasn't until 1955 that the riding time point was capped at 1 for over 1:00, but then it was changed again in 1966 to 1 point for 1:00 or more and 2 points for more than 2 minutes. In 1970 it was changed back to 1 point for 1:00 or more and it hasn't changed since.

I am pretty sure the sign for water is just the sign for the letter W near the mouth. A W is just the three middle fingers up in the air like an average American person would use to signify the number 3. The three fingers kind of look like a W. Three in ASL is the like the number 2 with the addition of the thumb. I think Europeans use the same gesture for the the number 3 as used in ASL. This was a plot device in Inglorious Bastards.

"Lions wide receivers Jameson Williams and Stanley Berryhill were suspended for six games each for mobile betting that occurred at the Lions' Allen Park facility." I wonder how they know this. Did the player's mobile device share their precise location with the betting app which then in turn shared that information with the league? Did they share time information about when the bets were placed too? Were these guys betting on their phones during a team meeting on the sidelines at practice? I think part of the reason the NCAA changed the penalties for gambling is because of how accessible it is and if the gambling books are sharing their user data with the NCAA and sports leagues it makes it real easy to catch violators. They probably expect gambling violations to be pretty common.

Didn't Cunningham win his title at 157? That's two weight classes up from Brands. Cunningham went from 142-157, but that was the year of the change, so it was really only going up 1 weight, especially since the year before they had a near year long 7lb weight allowance because of the weight cutting deaths. If a weight is underrepresented among NCAA coaches it seems to be the big guys more than the little ones. Nickerson, Jones, and Escobedo all competed in the lightest weight class. Grey and Scott wrestled in the second lightest weight class. The only head coach that wrestled at 285 I think is Joel Greenlee. Is he still on administrative leave?

I had never heard of A Shot in the Dark before. The link to the trailer I posted I found when searching for a different TCNJ wrestler. Anthony Ferraro would have been at TCNJ around 2014-2018. I recall seeing a blind wrestler represent TCNJ at a tournament maybe 10 years earlier than that. As I recall he needed a teammate to lead him around by the arm and I'm pretty sure he won his first match by fall. There was more applause than normal and he stood up with a big smile on his face and his teammate lead him off the mat. It was pretty cool. I'm pretty sure it was this guy - Brandon Scott. Here is a little info I found on him. "Ferris was also proud of coaching Brandon Scott, a blind wrestler who was a two-time district champion and placed fourth in the region twice under Ferris’s tutelage." https://archive.centraljersey.com/2002/03/01/scott-continues-to-win-and-takes-home-district-22-title/

I'm open to tweaks. My reasoning behind giving the bottom guy a point would be that standing them up without giving up a point might provide the top guy with an incentive to stall to the standup. This may change in the era of a 3 point TD, but historically getting a TD and riding out the period is a really big advantage because the defensive wrestler loses the ability to get that escape point. It can be the difference in the match. Denying the defensive wrestler the ability to get the escape point seems like it would be rewarding the top wrestlers ineffective riding. I though this might be redundant with the point for 1:00 riding time advantage. With this 30 second clock on the bottom would you eliminate the point for 1:00 advantage time? Maybe after the initial period the officials could vote on who was less active (top or bottom wrestler) and whichever wrestler is chosen gets put on a 0:30 clock and must score in the period. In the case of the top man failing to score the bottom wrestler gets 1 point and action restarted on the feet. If the bottom man fails to score then top wrestler is given choice to restart (top, bottom, neutral) and no points are awarded.

The two out of three decreasing variance is mathematical principle. For example suppose you have a pool of 20 officials score a sequence. Nineteen of them score it one way and one scores it the other way. If you assign a single official to a mat then that sequence could get scored the alternative way 1/20th of the time. Now if you randomly select 3 officials to officiate a mat and have them vote on the scoring, in theory that same sequence should never be scored the alternative way. The one dissenting official would always be outvoted. If two of the 20 officials would score it the alternative way then 10% of the time a single official scoring a bout would arrive at the alternative scoring. If you have a group of three officials scoring it then to get the alternative scoring both the the dissenting officials would need to be on the same officiating crew which isn't likely. There are only 18 possible groups of three that would vote the alternative way and there are 1140 possible groups of three to be made. It ends up being <1.6% of the 3 person officiating crews that would vote the alternative scoring. I would like the call to be more activity based, but with the forced call in 0-0 matches it can be a real pick-em scenario. Controlling center can be more objective than who tried harder to score. I don't watch that much freestyle either, but I don't think 9 of 10 matches result in two shot clocks. Probably the last freestyle event I watched was Final X I don't think any of the men's matches had two shot clocks in the same match. That said I am aware of the style of match you're referring to where no one is really scoring and there are alternating shot clocks in the first and second period. While it may seem like the officials are just flipping their calls out of perhaps fairness, it is also a consequence of the scoring system that with no scoring beyond the first shot clock point that the other wrestler will be more offensive going forward. If no one has scored and one guy gets put on the shot clock and is unable to score in the 0:30 period then that wrestler is now down 1-0. It makes sense that they will be less passive going forward in the match now that they are behind and that the other wrestler initially less passive may be more passive with the lead. I think the fact that a wrestler is always trailing is a strength of the freestyle system. One wrestler should always be trying to score since 2:30 into the match there must be a point on the board and thus a wrestler in the lead.

Yes. It wasn't a very wide release, but I did manage to see it in a theater. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hammer_(2010_film)

https://shoresportsnetwork.com/a-shot-in-the-dark-new-movie-portrays-inspirational-story-of-blind-st-john-vianney-wrestler-anthony-ferraro/

Matt Hamill. He wrestled for a year at Purdue then transferred to RIT (D3). Won three D3 national titles. There was a wrestler that I coached for a couple of years that was both deaf and legally blind. I recall the visual impairment being described as a tunnel vision that would get progressively worse until he was totally blind. He didn't reach a high level of success, but I recall being totally surprised by his performance the first time he took the mat in competition.

I don't think the freestyle rules was intended to prevent stalling. I think it was designed to encourage action and scoring. With the elimination of OT and the ball grab 0-0 matches would one a problem. Having thought about it more maybe a freestyle solution would work well to address stalling on top. Suppose that after a TD, reversal, or start of a period a clock is started and after some set period of time (this could be anything 0:30, 0:45, 1:00) if no points are scored (no escape/reversal/NF/PF) then a 0:30 clock is set. If a NF, fall, reversal, or escape is not scored within the 0:30 period, then the defensive wrestler is awarded a point and action is restarted in the neutral position. This would be a shot clock implementation with zero subjectivity. Ultimately it may be considered too complicated to implement since it needs 3 running clocks at some point, but overall I think it is fairly simple.

I think you completely missed my point. You got distracted by the basketball analogy and let it slip right past you. I wasn't suggesting the use of the freestyle implementation, I simply used it to demonstrate how the sport of wrestling could use something from another sport like basketball. My point is that asking referees to call stalling slightly different is not the answer and that putting more things at their discretion is a bad idear. I think the fact that 2 out of 3 officials must agree is an improvement and should make for greater consistency in the calls than a single official making the call. The other thing that I like about it is that the official doesn't simply hand the other wrestler a point in most instances. After two calls the wrestler has a 0:30 period to prevent the point. So whilst there is subjectivity in the initial two calls the 2/3 system should make for greater consistency and ultimately awarding the penalty point is a fairly objective criteria - was there scoring during the 0:30 period? What makes it arguably more subjective is that there is a forced call in a 0-0 match. There could be a match with a ton of action in the first two minutes, but with no scoring the officials must pick the more passive wrestler to put on the clock with 1:00 remaining. This means they are having to pick a wrestler in a lot of instances where it is a close call. This might mean there is a lot of subjectivity in the calls (it could go either way), but at the same time there is consistency in that there is always a call and only two possible outcomes. The wrestlers will know better how this will be handled than in a folkstyle match.

In case you were unaware, there is a popular style of wrestling that has addressed stalling/passivity with a shot clock.

I don't think referees should be in charge of calming stalling. The rules should be such that they disincentivize it. I am not really in favour of a solution where the official uses his/her judgement as to whether or not someone is trying to do something to call stalling. The sport of basketball had a stalling problem. The way they addressed it wasn't to have officials call a foul when in the judgement of the official one team was not trying to score. It was the shot clock which is an objective standard with very little in the way of judgement.

I think this is overblown and at the same time how it should be. Relationships and facilities do matter, but this is going to be more like the business world. A job offer from a company where a couple of your former colleagues work with really nice facilities means something, but if another company with similar facilities and good people that is offering 20% more pay might win out. Part of the reason that colleges and universities have such amazing athletics facilities is because they are so good at getting people to give them money in exchange for nothing and being a nonprofit they have to find ways to spend it. There are only so many positions in an athletic department that demand millions of dollars. What else can they spend it on? For years they were capped on what could go to the players. For this reason almost all universities in major conferences have pro-level athletic facilities. Better than some pro teams like the Oakland A's, Washington Redskins, and many MLS teams.