Ray, We'd like to rank the story as the "Best we've ever read on this board" but we are kind of harsh with grades.
Fortunately, it's unlikely to pull
down my GPA.
Wow...that is THE Ray Brinzer! I though it was just an handle.
The long-winded rambling gave me away, didn't it?
On a serious note, lying is only universally bad for those who believe they are in some religion/covenant in which it is universally bad. That is my case.
Yeah, if you make a vow to not do something, you should take it seriously. That doesn't resolve the underlying dilemma, though: you could, hypothetically, find yourself in a situation where the consequences of refusing to lie were catastrophic. For me, the hypothetical possibility of such a thing changes how I would regard entering into such a pact. I would still need to answer the question, "What would I do if...?" only now I've upped the ante from "tell a lie" to "break my oath".
I think one of the better answers to this would be to rely on faith: God/the gods/fate/the Flying Spaghetti Monster/whichever will not put me in such a situation. Though that does raise the question of what it would mean if you
did find yourself in such a situation; what would the message be?
For my part, I have the exact opposite conviction: I take a vow never to lie, and
inevitably the fate of the world will wind up depending on my telling a small fib. I lead an ironic life.
Ray is a smart guy. smarter than some give him credit for.
This would be what is known as, "damning with faint praise."
Wait, what? What do you mean when you write "I lie to my children about Santa Claus"?
I tell them that if they're not good, Santa won't bring them anything. In reality, Santa's too soft for that.
Wow, watching some of those old matches you just don't see many creative takedowns like that anymore. Quite honestly wrestling was a lot more fun to watch back then.
Quite honestly, it was probably more fun to do. This gets into a really big topic, but I'll give you a few of my ideas on it.
First, we play follow-the-leader too much with technique. Coaches watch the DI championships, see what the athletes are doing, and decide that that's how you do it if you want to be great. Because if the people at the top of Mount Incredible are doing it that way, it must be right.
The problem is, that's actually a very skewed view. The better you understand the sport, the more you realize that the people who win NCAAs wrestle the way they do because they happen to wrestle that way, not because it's the only way to get there. The fact is, most of them could be a lot better than they are, and you could be seeing a much wider technical range than you are. The follow-the-leader approach is circular: the people you're following are created by the process of following.
I also believe we've rather mis-learned the lesson of positional wrestling. Back in the '80s, the Soviets were masters of this. We watched them and said, "That's amazing! They're just never out of position!" Whereas we just seemed to be throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck.
So we went to work on it, and we got better at it. But we got the idea that
the whole solution can be, "Never come out of position." For a large part of your career, it can seem true. A strong kid who never comes out of position can win Junior Nationals just by capitalizing on the mistakes his opponents make.
The problem is, that road comes to a dead end. Defense isn't
that hard to learn, and eventually people stop making obvious mistakes. Then you have a bunch of guys standing around, hoping something will open up. You can be respectable that way, but you'll never be great.
Most of the really dominant wrestlers you see out there — Saitiev, Kudukhov, Smith, Brands, Jordanov, Gable, etc. — are aggressive, and technically deviant. They create action, and they force their opponents to play a game they're not used to. You can't get there by playing follow-the-leader; in fact, that's moving in the opposite direction. Being aggressive, taking risks, and defining your own style is more fun
and has a much higher ceiling.
We need to stop being so impressed with terms like "All American". It's not incredible if your son becomes a competent, respectable wrestler, and therefore becomes an All American. That's like saying that you're an incredible carpenter because the houses you make don't fall down. But if you coach a kid to be a tough competitor who can find ways to win, who knows his craft and can learn on his own, you've done something. As a by-product, don't be surprised if he becomes an All American or better.
I think there's so much pressure to be undefeated an a 4x champ these days that people wrestle to not lose. I don't think it was as big an issue back then and wrestlers weren't as concerned about losing that they let the fur fly!
When I was at Oklahoma State I was introduced to rock climbing. I liked it. I decided to approach it seriously: I would climb as if there was no rope, with the mindset that if I fell, I'd die. Like I was doing it "for real".
At the same time, I was working out with Pat Smith. It was weird wrestling him. He was so relaxed, it almost didn't seem like he was taking it seriously. But even when you knew he was working hard, and taking it absolutely seriously, he never tightened up. It wouldn't have helped.
At the Olympic Training Center, after I left Iowa, I needed a computer. A friend who worked in for a big company got me three broken 486s (which were fairly high-powered machines at the time). I took them apart, and managed to make one good computer from the parts. I installed Linux. I then realized that this was different than working on any of the (expensive) computers I'd gotten to use in the past. Having installed the OS, I knew that no matter what happened, I wasn't going to break a machine which cost thousands of dollars. I could always wipe the disk, reinstall, and get back to having a good working computer.
I became very good with computers. I never became any good at rock climbing. As it turns out, the freedom to experiment without worrying about the outcome is critical to development. You can take risks, learn how things work, and then make better choices (and take smarter risks) when things really do matter.
One of the larger changes I've seen in our wrestling culture has been the growth of a "high-stakes" mentality in youth wrestling. I went to tournaments because I bugged my parents to take me to them, and hitched rides with other wrestlers. I took it a lot further than many kids, but I think their basic experience wasn't that much different. People took winning seriously (e.g. Mr. Kolat and his cattle prod), but we weren't micromanaged so much.
These days, parents commonly drive the process, and feel they have to get everything right from the outset. We don't let kids make decisions, and we punish them for taking risks. It's not surprising that we wind up with fearful wrestlers who don't know what to do without instructions, and who wrestle like they're constipated.
Ray -- if you're still hanging around here, I've a question.
At the national tournament in Ames in '93, I remember you losing to Kevin Randleman in the semi's. Tough loss and I felt really awful, though my wild guess is that you felt worse.
However, driving south out of Hilton after the session was over, I remember seeing a lone wrestler out running in his sweats near the football stadium. Absolutely nobody else around. I remarked to my buddy in the car with me, "that's Brinzer." I was highly impressed that someone who had just lost such an important match would nevertheless be out in the cold March air around midnight getting a run in. Maybe you simply had to get some weight off, but my respect for you jumped a few notches. I've mentioned that experience to many, many people over the years.
Now, don't lie (
), but was I right? Tell me I haven't been mistaken all these years.
Sorry... I have no idea. I could have been running to cut weight, or I could have been running as penitence for losing. Or I could have been eating Ding Dongs and drinking Mountain Dew while some other sucker went for a run.
Did he have a hood on? I mean, I'd think my hair would have been kind of hard to mistake.
