It isn’t. That assumes people who care about football and men’s basketball care the same amount about wrestling. They don’t. Not at those schools. Hell, Michigan’s basketball NIL struggles but their collective and booster support for wrestling is better than Iowa? Right.
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It isn’t. That assumes people who care about football and men’s basketball care the same amount about wrestling. They don’t. Not at those schools. Hell, Michigan’s basketball NIL struggles but their collective and booster support for wrestling is better than Iowa? Right.
I didn’t say it is all the time. But, the right coach with the right finesse should be able to get the money if he needs it. In their cases “trickle down” is absolutely there if you can do what is necessary to find it…
With all the top tier studs being mentioned everyplace but Iowa, i think its not money keeping them away. I fear its the current Iowa 'rep', which includes the coaches, as negatives.
The trolls have been trying to stoke that 'rep' for years now, and a bad season exacerbates things.
What neutralizes that? Only better performance.
Anyone that refuses to acknowledge the key reason recruits aren’t coming to Iowa is just in denial. Recruits want to be coached by the best with the best. Time has passed the TnT style and methods up and every year it only shows more and more with the lack of major recruits passing up, even some portal guys can’t be bought.
We’re to the point now where it isn’t the trolls, it’s the results.
neither you nor anyone else on here has any idea of what corporate money may be available for other teams to tap into. I would think other states may have more and better financially situated corporations/alumni than we do here in Iowa.
Iowa just spent $30+ million on a new facility. Nobody has spent more money on wrestling over the past five years than Iowa.
He speaks for the troll union.
then you have no idea what PS has spent. plus the nil money has been more recent. lastly facility money isn’t the same as actually paying an athlete to come and compete at your school.
Oh. Because I guess that’s not possible in a state that sells 15,000 season tickets for wrestling. 😂
Where did I say Iowa couldn’t access funds? I just wasn’t going to let you unilaterally dismiss, by FAR, the 2 biggest schools that have wrestling. They absolutely do not have near the following that Iowa does, but that doesn’t mean the school itself does not have way more money around it than Iowa.
My point was simple. Michigan and tOSU can ABSOLUTELY match or exceed Iowa on any given recruit if the coaches want the kid bad enough…that doesn’t mean they have more overall money directly at their disposal to play with at will, but they sure as hell could win a bidding war when necessary…
no, it's the same kind of money...its just whether the program leaders and donors prioritize NIL and RTC athlete funding over state of the art facilities
this is a choice that was made - one was more important than the other
IOWA needs to make a BIG play on one of these TOP young kids outa PA and SOON!!! SL winning the TRAILS and the O could go a L O N G way toward us doing just that!!!
Penn State has the best room in college wrestling right now and Michigan has the best grad programs (and westlers care about education more than most other athletes). Both also have far superior RTCs than Iowa. Those are the difference makers, not money. All three schools can offer a kid "enough" money, at which point, the decision becomes much less about who offered the most money. Outside of PSU and Michigan, Iowa has done better with the portal than any other school. Ok St has done well this year, but overall, Iowa has been better.
Watching this weekend Last chance tourney i think our main issue is the lack of hammers in the HWC. I still think we need to change asst coaches but more and more I think the reason we cant get the recruits is because no one is interested in the CLub team.
I think they’re separate issues. Club team membership isn’t keeping kids from wrestling for the Hawks, imo. We just don’t recruit well.
It truly is NOT that Iowa doesn't recruit well. Compared to any other team except Sanderson's, they do very well historically. It is just that, when you compare recruiting to PSU, NO ONE comes close. Even when tOSU had probably the 2nd best run compared to PSU, they NEVER came close to having 14 top 10 lb4lbs in their lineup at the same time.
This has kind of been my argument against those wanting to blow up the current system. Even if you get the best staff possible, do you really think they are going to steal recruits away from PSU any time soon? Meanwhile, Brands has atleast shown he CAN beat PSU quite recently.
There are absolutely changes that need to be made. Especially stylistically. Scrambling needs to become a focus and finishing needs to be improved. Identifying talent early in recruiting and getting closer to these guys from the get go needs to be another focus. But, acting like they are where they are because their recruiting is poor simply is NOT true...
I disagree. The metric for a good recruiting class needs to change, imo. We do good at pulling in a bunch of mid tier guys in the hope of developing them into national champs. But that hasn’t worked out. Recruiting AND development needs to improve.
Are we sure about this?? Jax Forrest and BB seem to be very deeply involved in freestyle. If you had to choose between tOSU, PSU, Mich, OSU or Iowa, which Wrestling club are you picking??
seems like the younger kids care more about it but maybe they always did and I am just catching up.
Since Kemerer, they have done a MUCH better job at landing top 10's vs. the mid-tier you point to. Even now they have Ferrari and Deluca coming in.
Yes, to even come close to PSU, they still have to recruit even better, but PSU has now set a ridiculous standard to try to compare to and it just isn't even possible for any other team to come close. Again, I EMPHASIZE the fact that PSU just had FOURTEEN top 10's on their roster at the SAME TIME. There are only 10 weight classes.
I don't care who you get as coaches NO ONE will ever come close to matching that while Sanderson is at PSU....
We don’t need to match them, imo. But we do need to get more top ten guys onto the team to even have a chance.
No argument from me. I just don't see why you would even try to directly compete with PSU for top 10's right now, unless you have already built a relationship with them that you feel super confident about. Otherwise, I keep beating down the fact that they need to find the type of kids that have chips on shoulders and like knocking off legacies vs. just being a replaceable part of one.
I get that PSU, right now, is the best place for most to meet their highest goals in folk and free. But, not all kids are built that way. Finding those kids and bringing them in could go a long ways towards truly competing with PSU...
But what you consistently ignore is how much better PSU is at turning their top 10s into champs. If you’re a top 10 recruit who goes to PSU, you’re most likely gonna win a title. If not, you’ll likely be a high AA. They very rarely miss in the top 10.
Iowa HAS done a better job at landing high end recruits. Only one of them DEVELOPED into a champ since 2017. We currently have a top 5 overall recruit on the roster who’s beaten 1 AA through 4 years.
You can’t separate them. Cael’s development success is what drives his recruiting success. It’s a feedback loop. And it’s only getting stronger. He has gotten even better since he started at PSU.
The way to get there is to produce with the good recruits we do have. Ayala is off to a good start. Can’t see the typical regression over his last two years. Turn that narrative and get him over the top.
Gabe had a great year. Needs to make another jump to be elite-elite, especially offensively . Can they get him there?
Caliendo was fantastic and has gotten better every year of his career. Can they keep that trend going or will they wear him down?
Until he’s gone, Tom controls his own destiny. Forget PSU for now. There is NC talent on this team. It needs to be developed. Tom can prove all of us wrong and I hope he does!
Yet you act like Iowa gets NOTHING out of their top 10’s. Individual champ or bust is a ridiculous argument. Warner and Kemerer had fantastic careers.
Yes, what PSU is doing is AMAZING. But, making that the standard is beyond laughable. Even under Gable, it hasn’t been done remotely with the consistency PSU now has. Right now PSU is a real life UNICORN.
Can Iowa do better? Absolutely. Should they do better? I say yes to that as well. But, if you are going to hold any coaching staff to a standard that is even remotely close to what PSU is currently doing you are going to be perpetually disappointed.
For ANYONE to truly compete with PSU now, you absolutely are right to want substantial improvement, but you will ALSO absolutely need them to fall back a solid amount from where they are now…
Once again, it comes down to very simple math my friends. I used the "playing poker" example and I think most understood! You all just read above I assume? FOURTEEN TOP 10's!!! Now, F*** st has MANY MISS, see 125!!!
Just that when they miss, they just "shoot again" usually with a "better gun"!!!! They HAD a TOP heavy recruit, went out in brought in a better one. They HAD a top 165 recruit, went and goy a better one, they had a TOP 197, went and brought in a better one!
I like my chances ALL day where I am playing with 3-4 hands, and you are holding only ONE!!!!.
Now they have just about every darn thing going for them. So as MSU said, get creative in your thinking. Go outside the box, inside the box, around the box, FIGURE SHEET OUT!!!! I guess that was part of the Ferrari fiasco?
NOT sure how that turns out, but at this point, you need to do ALMOST anything to get a team that can WIN on the mat!!!
It's also easier to turn top 10's into national champs, when there are 13 other top 10's to roll around with at practice. Telling me Star didn't benefit from having Brooks, Haines having Mes..etc etc
From a credibilty/what have you accomplished standpoint, Dennis wasn't exactly a home run hire.
Oh. 😂
This is #TTH. Too macro of a view. The coaches need to be recruiting and developing NCAA champs. 2 guys winning titles in 10 years is beyond unacceptable.
In fairness to him, I don’t think a guy in his position gets to call a lot of shots. The HWC is Brands’ baby.
Just saying he's not a big draw/magnet for elite guys.
Now get lucky and have Jden Cox join...
