You know, the 33, 41, 74 matches were all pretty close at nationals. I know, the rules of the match are clear, but they’re “virtual ties”. Co-champions.
Spencer Lee and Gable Steveson share Hodge Trophy honors
- Thread starter Blair Sanderson
- Start date
If you are going to make a blanket statement like that, please elaborate.
If Lee hadn't whined on tv about his laundry list of injuries he might have won the Hodge outright. But the Hodge committee doesn't like excuses.
Let's be fair, the Iowa fan bases dwarves every other fanbase COMBINED. On top of that, you can vote multiple times. Now, I definitely lean towards Lee winning this award. However, the fan vote should be taken with a grain of salt. A LOT of Iowa bias skewed the fan vote and you all HAVE to know that!
Still, I am pretty sure the fan vote only gets a certain percentage, REGARDLESS of whether Lee won by 15k votes or by 1 vote. I think this is probably as close as it sounds. If Intermat picked Steveson, I would bet the member vot favored Steveson as well.
With that said, I am happier to see Lee at least share it than lose it outright!
Still, I am pretty sure the fan vote only gets a certain percentage, REGARDLESS of whether Lee won by 15k votes or by 1 vote. I think this is probably as close as it sounds. If Intermat picked Steveson, I would bet the member vot favored Steveson as well.
With that said, I am happier to see Lee at least share it than lose it outright!
It’s almost comical that you refuse to see the point most people are making regarding the decision to scrap process and voting points in favor of a co-Hodge. Very few people are “losing their minds,” it just doesn’t make any sense if you want to evaluate the award from a objective perspective. At the end of the day, it isn’t a huge deal but it is a valid point to acknowledge the flawed process.
Greatest 🧠 is more like tiny 🧠.
I dislike fan votes for exactly that reason. That said, if you have a fan vote and you set up the rules ahead of time, you should abide by them.
I think there are two ways this happened. First, as I speculated above, W.I.N. wanted Steveson to win the award because he will be in WWE and the Hodge will be mentioned all over the place on national television.
Second, the vote was close enough that it was decided by the fan vote (which I believe someone said is worth 5 first place votes, but I may be wrong on that), and W.I.N. got spooked by that because (a) the fan vote was just supposed to be an email collection scheme and never make the difference and (b) W.I.N. would get roasted by non-Iowa fans who would feel as though this confers a significant advantage to a wrestler from a school with a big fanbase in close years (which is a fair criticism).
It could also be both, as in they wanted Steveson to win and he did win but for the fan vote.
There were clearly shenanigans at play here. If they were transparent about it, they would release the vote totals and breakdown, but they know that will cause hell in the community, probably because Spencer actually did win the vote overall.
Again, the outcome is not what matters here as you can make cases for both wrestlers. What matters is that W.I.N. acted in bad faith, and isn't being forthcoming at all. They clearly have an agenda and they are doing what's best for W.I.N.
The Ackerman and Willson selections were already a black mark on the Hodge Trophy. This just adds to what is increasingly becoming a joke of an award.
He thinks he's the Dark Knight of the mat.
"I am whatever wrestling needs me to be."
-Willie Saylor
If the member vote favored Steveson, the criteria needs to be redone. The criteria is 100% clear who the winner was this year.
The biggest problem with the Hodge and this year's shared award is the role of the criteria. WIN pushed out criteria to the public. Wrestling media and voters spent the entire year talking about the criteria. I appreciate former winners, coaches, and other informed voters casting their respective votes based on informed analysis of their own making. However, if that is the basis, then WIN and the various media outlets need to stop talking about the criteria. This year the criteria simply seemed not to matter if Gable and Spencer tied, because whether one voted by weighting categories, by counting up categories won, or any other metric relying dominantly on the criteria, Spencer was the obvious winner.
Willie, to my knowledge, you weren't like your former employer in pushing out Hodge rankings based on the criteria every week or two of the 2021 season, but you cannot diagnose the Cesspool denizens as insane based on our response to the 2021 Hodge, when many complaints here relate dominantly to the criteria that WIN itself pushed out.
You sound like an Iowa fan and I think you like it.
I think you know what must be done. Pucker up and keeping kissing the Black & Gold ass!
Obviously there are ways do what they want when you have Ackerman sharing with Sanderson. What Ackerman was able to accomplish with his disability was amazing but just based on wrestling ability not in the realm of Sanderson. Congrats to Spencer for being a 2X Hodge winner.
Who are you referring to? Every poster in this thread? Every Iowa fan?
You post like a troll.
I'm not a Steveson fan but i do respect his talent. The way he carried himself this year was night and day difference compared to previous years. Congrats to both men.
I’m good with this, in particular because we didn’t really even have a season. It was impossible for either wrestler to establish a season’s worth of work to separate themselves from the field or each other. Spencer has his second Hodge and third NCAA title. Well deserved. All is good.
I just hope he can get his fourth NCAA title and come back in three years to get his Olympic Gold.
Then take over coaching duties at Iowa, and start pulling all the top talent out of PA.
I just hope he can get his fourth NCAA title and come back in three years to get his Olympic Gold.
Then take over coaching duties at Iowa, and start pulling all the top talent out of PA.
I agree with this post in it’s entirety except I hope SL wins his first Olympic title in a little more than a year. With the recent “outbreak” in Europe I think it’s possible the games get pushed back one more year.
I will take that bet!!! let me know how much and when your guy makes 125?
I have considered the “delayed one more year scenario.” But I assume whoever wins in our Trials this summer would still be our rep next year.
Love it for Spencer...what an incredibly special young man...and hopefully the coach at Iowa whenever TnT decide to call it a day! And though I completely despise Gable Steveson, I think he deserves to be the co-recipient. From a pure wrestling standpoint, when he didn't completely destroy his opponents he reminded me of Jaydin...spending 7 minutes looking like a cat playing with his dinner (mouse, garter snake, etc.). And like Spencer, GS had zero competition at 285. Happy for both of them.
Upon further consideration, Smalls' position makes total sense. This is a known route to serious wrestling fans because WIN has done this previously. I'm not referencing Carl and Ackerman.
Naming co-winners allows the two to forever share a bond. A brotherhood that cannot be broken. I think we should all be happy with WIN's co-winner ways. Willie and Christian: 2016 and forever. https://www.win-magazine.com/flos-c...ie-saylor-named-wins-journalists-of-the-year/
Wow, is this really the level of analysis in the wrestling media today? Lmao
Again, set a rubric and follow it. If there is a point system and they want to name co-winners when it is close, then say the award will be shared by athletes who are within X points of each other.
It's really not difficult to, like, count up the votes and pick a winner, whomever that is.
If they are going to not follow the rules that THEY set up, then that just makes the award a total joke.
Dat der is some funny shit. The "co winners" was a cop out by the committee. I know you're being facetious with your "Hodge committee doesn't like excuses" comment, cause that borders on being so removed from reality that it's comical.
Interesting...........coulda sworn that Japan wasn't in Europe.
Learn something new every day.........
I'm not "insanely"
pissed off because GSteve is so good but Grace here nails it. Lots of second place guys were perhaps deserving of the award; Willie himself cited Nolf/Nickal should have both won it.Yeah you got me good there. I would assume that if they were to hold the Olympic Games that they would invite other countries to attend the games and that it wouldn’t just be the Japanese national games. They could possibly even invite some countries from Europe. Who knows.
Exactly. This just opens it up to fraud and abuse and thus makes it a joke award.I'm not "insanely"
What, we're supposed to take at face value from W.I.N. that "hey guys it was like totally close this year so the award will be shared in contravention of our clearly elucidated criteria"? Without disclosure of the vote totals and breakdowns, how can we take them seriously?
Haven't they now set up a system where wrestler A beats wrester B by 5 points and they could just say wrestler A won it, but in another year wrestler A beats wrestler B by 20 points and they say "it was a virtual tie! co-Hodge winners".
That leads to all kinds of problems for an award that already doesn't seem serious. Heck, we could easily imagine a situation where a school adds wrestling, get a high profile recruit who has an amazing year, finishes runner-up in the Hodge voting, and then W.I.N. decides to have co-winners for promotional purposes. And we'd never know any better. How is that fair?
Transparency is the key. The fact that they are purposely NOT being transparent is what's so distressing about this. Release the vote totals and the breakdowns. In fact, release them going back. I'd love to see the spread between Nolf and Nickal. I'd love to see the vote totals Emmett Willson got. I'd love to see whether Ackerman got any votes.
In a covid shortened season, I have no issues with this simply because the two winners were so dominant and the impacts of covid were different for every wrestler. Because Spencer was limited due to covid and because GS was so impressive, I can get behind this 100%. If this was a normal year, GS might have been able to win this all by himself, in a shortened year with SL wrestling limited matches and dominating how he did, there was no chance for that.
Any other year and I think dual winners is a joke unless there is a point system of voting and the votes are tied. Creating a tie for whatever reason (outside of this year) is ridiculous and not something the top award should allow to happen if it wants to stay the top award....but this is covid and everything is a little effed up.
Any other year and I think dual winners is a joke unless there is a point system of voting and the votes are tied. Creating a tie for whatever reason (outside of this year) is ridiculous and not something the top award should allow to happen if it wants to stay the top award....but this is covid and everything is a little effed up.
Then say that up front BEFORE votes are cast. If it was an issue after the vote then it was surely an issue before the vote.
At the very least release the vote totals and breakdowns so people can understand the decisions that were made.
Personally I do not think COVID factored into this, and believe it was for one or both of the reasons I described earlier in the thread.
