Why the Brands Brothers are the right coaches for this program

[The-Dude-Abides]

Not sure if this has been posted, but I think it shows something that all the "Fire Tom Brands" folks are not grasping. He is clearly heartbroken for Spencer and you can hear it in his voice. It probably brings back ghosts from the year he placed fourth, not to mention all of the pain Terry went through in his career. I doubt that there is any coach in the country who can match the level of passion, selfless devotion, and emotional investment that the Brands brothers have for their athletes. That is not something that you can just import or manufacture.

TnT are of course not perfect. The injury rate is concerning and unlikely attributable to bad luck alone. But I think it is folly to believe that you can just kick them to the curb and bring in a younger stud or two and expect them to be able to lead this program at anywhere near the level they have. I get that expectations are exceedingly high, but there are intangibles in a coach that don't just appear because someone had college or freestyle success. Count me among the bootlickers if you will, but I'm fully behind the Brands brothers as long as they wish to coach. An addition or shakeup to the HWC or assistant staff, that I would be open to. But the knee jerk "fire everyone" theme seems like little more than an immature and ignorant reaction to Penn State's recent dominance.

 

[MVPFAN]

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Not sure if this has been posted, but I think it shows something that all the "Fire Tom Brands" folks are not grasping. He is clearly heartbroken for Spencer and you can hear it in his voice. It probably brings back ghosts from the year he placed fourth, not to mention all of the pain Terry went through in his career. I doubt that there is any coach in the country who can match the level of passion, selfless devotion, and emotional investment that the Brands brothers have for their athletes. That is not something that you can just import or manufacture.

TnT are of course not perfect. The injury rate is concerning and unlikely attributable to bad luck alone. But I think it is folly to believe that you can just kick them to the curb and bring in a younger stud or two and expect them to be able to lead this program at anywhere near the level they have. I get that expectations are exceedingly high, but there are intangibles in a coach that don't just appear because someone had college or freestyle success. Count me among the bootlickers if you will, but I'm fully behind the Brands brothers as long as they wish to coach. An addition or shakeup to the HWC or assistant staff, that I would be open to. But the knee jerk "fire everyone" theme seems like little more than an immature and ignorant reaction to Penn State's recent dominance.

Not even the people who want them fired yesterday (I'm not one of them) question their commitment to their athletes. They do however have things they need to improve upon if they want to live up to their own standards of success let alone ours. IMO if they have the same commitment to recruiting and offensive/coaching diversity as they do to their athletes the results will yield far less complaints. If anything their dedication to their guys is so strong it has at times placed loyalty before willingness to put together the best possible team in order to win.

 

[The-Dude-Abides]

Not even the people who want them fired yesterday (I'm not one of them) question their commitment to their athletes. They do however have things they need to improve upon if they want to live up to their own standards of success let alone ours. IMO if they have the same commitment to recruiting and offensive/coaching diversity as they do to their athletes the results will yield far less complaints. If anything their dedication to their guys is so strong it has at times placed loyalty before willingness to put together the best possible team in order to win.

I don't disagree that there is considerable room for improvement. Just can't think of anyone else I'd rather have leading this program. Firing them would be a collosal mistake in my opinion, not that I think there's any chance of that happening. Just curious, has there been a time when their dedication to their guys meaningfully impacted the best lineup? Maybe reluctance to recruit over someone?

 

[MVPFAN]

I don't disagree that there is considerable room for improvement. Just can't think of anyone else I'd rather have leading this program. Firing them would be a collosal mistake in my opinion, not that I think there's any chance of that happening. Just curious, has there been a time when their dedication to their guys meaningfully impacted the best lineup? Maybe reluctance to recruit over someone?

Yes, I think there are a number of times where we stick with guys who are solid wrestlers but not guys who score meaningful points and we are not going to beat PSU by doing that. If a guy isn't performing there they get one who will.

 

[The-Dude-Abides]

Yes, I think there are a number of times where we stick with guys who are solid wrestlers but not guys who score meaningful points and we are not going to beat PSU by doing that. If a guy isn't performing there they get one who will.

Fair point. That can be a tight line to walk with the current lineup vs bringing in new guys. Iowa hasn't shown much willingness to do so, but I could see a backfire effect if you regularly displace the guys you invested in at the first sign of trouble.

 

[MVPFAN]

Fair point. That can be a tight line to walk with the current lineup vs bringing in new guys. Iowa hasn't shown much willingness to do so, but I could see a backfire effect if you regularly displace the guys you invested in at the first sign of trouble.

Also a fair point. It's not an easy call. I think the best solution is if they get the kind of guys in right away that perform as contenders then the question of having to upgrade will be much less prevalent. Better recruiting from the start is how that happens. We won't be able to beat PSU with guys who AA zero or even 1 time over 4 years, that's the hard truth. We need guys who are contending for those top 4 positions almost every year. Especially with Nil added in we should have a top 20 overall kid (with a lot of them top 10) recruited for every weight. If someone lower than that is in the lineup it should be because they over performed and rose to the higher level. PSU has top 10 overall at most weights and are starting to have 2 deep at some. We don't have the luxury of waiting 3 or 4 years of no AA production trying to develop people.