I can say that Tom Brands is considerably more concerned with compliance than any of the big wrestling schools…
Nothing is happening at Iowa that would a legitimate lawsuit would have any chance…
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They would most likely settle but yeah not a good look if any of that us true.
I think The Brothers would win but in the litigious way college athletes is today, there would probably be a suit. The legal costs and negative publicity could hurt the program. All these years later, a lot of people still bring up the Sandusky and Ohio State guys. Hell, some people still remember the punch Woody Hayes threw and Bob Knight hurling a chair!
PS glad to see the RAF signing you posted. Would have loved to see Busimar Satiev in that format.
There won’t be a lawsuit…
And comparing this to Sandusky and Ohio is ridiculous…
Anyway…
I am pumped for RAF getting sad… it proves what they are doing is working and that is good for wrestling…
One of my favorite wrestling stories ever involves Bobby knight and Doug Blubaugh…
I agree about most of your post but people are still bringing up Sandusky and stuff. Not comparing it to what just happened. Only saying people won’t let shit go years later when it comes to sports.
You would know better than almost anybody, will competing in RAF mess guys up with eligibility on the international and Olympic level.
UWW does not have any eligibility rules as far as competitors go other than you have to have a license… UWW does set guidelines on transferring…
The individual federations have their own rules as to athletes and their eligibility to compete for their specific country…
I am unaware of any federation that prohibits participating outside of their own trials process…
All of the big nations have wrestlers participating in other leagues professional and exhibition…
As far as stuff that gets talked about…
The googlewebs have given every nerd an opportunity to talk shit about everything…
The amount of bullshit that gets talked by those who have absolutely no clue about what goes on is an endless source of amusement to me…
Iowa gets the absolute worst of it in the wrestling community, Greco not withstanding… I can tell you that both of my sons experiences with Iowa and the Brands is almost 180 to the typical trash that gets talked…
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Agreed. But, remember, your boys might be different. They are all business. They’re just animals who were probably respected for their Iowa-style ways. I’m sure they loved Otto while he was there. They had a world-level internationally trained kid without brakes in a room made famous for that style. Some guys on that team in recent years have uncharacteristically seemed to fade in the most high profile matches, whether up or down on the bout sheets.
If that insider story is “true,” rather than me just jumping on and hating the Brands, I’d say damn… Tom and Terry know that every single athlete in that room is injured to some extent. They know what it takes to be a complete psychopathic winner. They don’t wanna fuckin hear that not everyone can be a Spencer Lee, wrestling without knees. Fuck that. It’s wrestling. And it’s Iowa. Now, the story goes, that a top guy they pay to wrestle isn’t wrestling because he’s hurt. Well, they gotta find a way to put that money somewhere. There’s no LTIR loopholes in the college money game.
NIL is turning meathead (and I mean that in a good way) coaches into salary-cap professional sports GMs. It’s now a business. You can’t “win” being a nice guy or completely ethical. Ask Cael.
i can not 100% say exactly what they thought about otto as i never had a convo with either personally…
i know they understood exactly what they had with otto… a totally legit world level guy in greco that really did not like folk and they fully understood going in this was an experiment so they did not do any “extra” with him… he was basically a room guy and nothing more to them on the outside to see if he really wanted to live a D1 lifestyle… and tom said right up front that he was concerned that otto’s greco ambitions would not be able to be realized fully there…
there was some latitude given to him when they were trying to convince desanto to seriously give greco a try, but, that lasted a month and a half only and they were not coaching either…
even after it was obvious that it was not going to work out on the folk side they were fully ok with him training there as he fit in with everyone and obvisouly as a practice dummy otto presented looks and feels that nobody else in this country could provide… they were totally ok with max coming in for several weeks and training and tom actually liked max quite a bit…
he made the comment to otto’s club coach, max really has his head on right, not like otto…
i laughed because they did not recruit max at all and for good reason even though UNI was…
regardless, all this is to say that the brands were both incredibly forthright and upfront going in and remained that way throughout and otto left on good terms with them…
otto was not over trained at all… of course both boys have been training at closer to a D1 pace 2-3 times a day since they were 8 and 10…
and more importantly, otto confirmed that both the brands can coach… he has been around the best coaches in america and abroad since he has been 12…
i think the brands are really suffering from what happenned to uncle john in his later years… a totally different kind of athlete than they all where and it is diffulcult to work with some that just do not want to be the best in the world…
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Blubaugh stories. I’ve got a bunch of those. Ole BlueNuts was a character for sure. He was my Hs Coach’s coach when he made the Senior World Team as a HS Senior. Used to come to South Florida in his camper and work us out like dogs. One time he was demonstrating a move on me when his Narcolepsy acted up and he passed out on top of me. I thought he died and lost my fucking mind. Crawled out from under him, ran into my Coaches Office and grabbed him screaming. We ran back into the room and Blubaugh was still facedown on the mat not moving. We ran over next to him, and when I was telling my Coach what happened, Blubaugh grabs my damn leg. I thought a dead guy was grabbing me. I almost lost my damn mind. Could probably still use therapy for that shit.
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I don’t think many people ever put fear into Bob Knight, and Blubaugh is definitely on a very short list.
As far as Brands, I’ve been around him, though it was many years ago, and I respect him, but I think the perception is he’s too stuck in the past. That may not be reality, but that is what a lot of coaches and wrestlers think. It works against Iowa in a lot of ways, and now they have this going on.
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That is the story…
I am not sure the Brands are built for this new landscape… too hard nosed… too guarded… too inflexible…
With that being said, I don’t think their X and O coaching is the problem per se…
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@LJB Thought you might want this one … came up in my FB.
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Ha…
I saw it…
They are at OTC camp getting ready for Croatia in a few weeks…
I am so ready for this season to kick off…
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Did he ever say anything about humbling Bob Knight?