Reply To: Gophers — Other Sports

I’m kind of tired of reading about this situation that took place at the B1G Wrestling Championships this weekend. Iowa is catching the brunt of the criticism since they are the standard most other programs judge themselves against and fans judge their programs against. Admittedly coach Tom Brands of Iowa keeps putting Iowa in the limelight for the wrong reasons which is pisses me off. The shoving at the end of the Iowa vs. Iowa State match this season was embarrassing. The way that some of the wrestlers (*cough* Austin DeSanto *cough*) carry themselves is embarrassing.

Two of the Iowa forfeits I can kind of see because the wrestlers were actually injured or wrestling with injuries and Iowa deemed it more important to not cause further injury to Eierman and Kemerer. The other two were just chicken shit. Honestly I now hope that Iowa gets rolled in the NCAA’s minus Alex Marinelli who is what Iowa wrestling used to look like.

This is kind of a culmination of what I see is going wrong with the sport of traditional high school and college wrestling. Gamesmanship by coaches using their wrestlers as pawns in a different mind game. Wrestling used to be coaches putting their best wrestlers out on the mat versus the best wrestlers the opposing team put out there. Now it is a chess game and a cat and mouse game of trying to create mismatches with their lineups to be able to put up bonus points on the scoreboard. Then you get this bullcrap like this past weekend where because Iowa wasn’t in the hunt for the team title they forfeit matches to save wear and tear on their wrestlers. It’s kind of like sitting your star players at the end of the season because you already made the playoffs. It’s bullshit.