Championship Trivia

[n9531l]

In case you haven't been over to the TOM home page lately, Earl Smith has an article up with a long list of interesting facts about the tournament. Here's a small sample.

For the first time, two unrelated champions had the same last name.
Of the eight AA's at 285, six came from Big Ten schools.
Gannon Gremmel (Iowa State) was the only AA to come from the state of Iowa.
Missouri was the only team with two true freshman AA's.
Missouri was the only team with three wrestlers that fell in the Round of 12.
For the first time, a #33 seed became an AA.
Oklahoma State was the only team with three AA's who had double-digit seeds.
For the first time, a team with four champions did not win the team title.
Penn State has had at least one champion every year since 2011.


Here are a couple I think he missed (actually, guesses on my part):

For the first time, a champion wrestled in the final without an ACL.
For the first time, a champion came from a school whose wrestling program is being eliminated.

[RYou]

For the first time, a champion wrestled in the final without an ACL.

I think was exaggerating a bit.  I'm sure his ACLs are there, torn, but they are.

For the first time, a champion came from a school whose wrestling program is being eliminated.

Given the volume of executions back in the 80's and 90s, there is high probability it's happened before. My hesitancy is abut the way they used to cut programs back then with no advance notice to the coach or team.  Now they give 12 months or more notice

Everything I am hearing is that there is more than sufficient funding now from boosters, +$13,5 mil which is enough to fund the program going forward and even fund the full 9.9 scholarships.  Stanford was one of those big time programs that did not offer the full 9.9 scholarships. The issue for the team now is how much more will the school want.  The trend today is that if you want to keep a program, fully fund it.....as well as a women's sport in order to maintain Title IX equity.

Stanford has more than enough money to keep the sport.  Heck its foundation owns a big chunk of Google.from the initial stock offering.
The Stanford Electrical engineering and computer science departments have more millionaire faculty than many medical schools from their technology research and patents

[ViseGrip]

For the first time, a champion wrestled in the final without an ACL.

I think was exaggerating a bit.  I'm sure his ACLs are there, torn, but they are.

For the first time, a champion came from a school whose wrestling program is being eliminated.

Given the volume of executions back in the 80's and 90s, there is high probability it's happened before. My hesitancy is abut the way they used to cut programs back then with no advance notice to the coach or team.  Now they give 12 months or more notice

Everything I am hearing is that there is more than sufficient funding now from boosters, +$13,5 mil which is enough to fund the program going forward and even fund the full 9.9 scholarships.  Stanford was one of those big time programs that did not offer the full 9.9 scholarships. The issue for the team now is how much more will the school want.  The trend today is that if you want to keep a program, fully fund it.....as well as a women's sport in order to maintain Title IX equity.

Stanford has more than enough money to keep the sport.  Heck its foundation owns a big chunk of Google.from the initial stock offering.
The Stanford Electrical engineering and computer science departments have more millionaire faculty than many medical schools from their technology research and patents

I suspect that Title IX is playing a silent but large part in this issue.

Clearly $13 mil is enough to keep a program running, especially with limited scholarships. However, if they reinstated wrestling, the sun wouldnt set on that day before someone filed a Title IX suit because there was no matching women's sport added as well. The fact the the funds were raised independently and would totally fund the program doesnt change the arithmatic of X# of men's sports must = X# of womens sports.

So why not just add women's wrestling? Because its not an officially sanctioned sport.

[mspart]

Title IX is the hammer for sure.  But at BYU, Mark Schultz tried to get funding and got it actually, but the admin said no, they were axing wrestling.  It was not long after Schultz participated in UFC4 (I think) and totally devastated Goodrich.  He went in support of a guy who was supposed to fight him, but I think Schultz accidentally injured him.  So rather than stop the card, Schultz was asked if he'd go against Goodrich, he did and smashed him.  Not quite the image BYU wanted.  I'm guesing it was more that than title IX at the time.  Same at Boise State.  No support for the sport from admin and they got rid of it.

I graduated from there and have not done my alumni duty of donations because of that.  Not one dime of donation, just because of them dropping the program the way they did.  My meager effort has not brought back the program, which is sad, but I just can't bring myself to support a school that killed the sport I love.   Schultz had them on the rise and was getting good recruits.  UVU has tried to take that place but it has been a long time and they had two AA's this year and that is good.  Hopefully UVU gets better and better.  They had Justin Ruiz as an assistant for awhile and I thought that would bring them some recruiting but he left a long time ago. 

Anyway, there's my spiel. 

mspart