wrestle87

I mean...there are lots of rules that are in place to make it so refs can penalize him for his style. There have been maybe 3 wrestlers who have been able to penalize him for being plodding and patient. It's pretty clear that he must feel like he's made of wood. Every D1 wrestler is capable of pushing when they sense an opponent is vulnerable. There is a reason he doesn't get stalled out. Something about tying up with him scares his opponents enough that they decide it is better to play his game than to try to blow the doors of the match with pace. I agree it's not fun to watch. But aside from NCAA's, I'm never seen someone put incredible pace on him except for AOC in the NCAA tournament last year.

Yeeeah, that didn't look like a cursory injury. His knee was bent in the same direction that starrocci's was when it grenaded. Didn't look like an ACL position, but an LCL quite possible. Head to toe scrambles claim another knee.

“CaLiEnDo’s GoInG to ClOsE tHe GaP!”

Really looking forward to Mesenbrink Hamiti

Will Lewan has 5th/6th jaggers blood.

Jim Gibbons just shoehorned in a Hunt for Red October reference into wrestling analysis…cross that off my bucket list I guess.

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.