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Like a nitter convention in town

Slick Manager of Champs

Heisman Candidate
Apr 22, 2007
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downtown bar/restaurant overrun with nitters. I can only imagine inside the PPG paints arena. I don't follow closely, but what was their program like before Sanderson? He's not even alum, but they obviously made a home run hire. Would have been nice if it had been us to have that kind of success.
 
PSU had a good program prior to Cael, but nothing compared to today’s team.
 
In all honesty, it is PA, there are probably thousands of Nitters in downtown Pittsburgh every day-just not wearing their gear. I grew up in a small town in western PA, outside of Pittsburgh, I'd say there where more Nitters than Pitters there, in both alumni and just fans in general.
 
anybody at the wrestling tournament?, please give updates on the Pletcher vs Phillippi match, starts at noon.
 
downtown bar/restaurant overrun with nitters. I can only imagine inside the PPG paints arena. I don't follow closely, but what was their program like before Sanderson? He's not even alum, but they obviously made a home run hire. Would have been nice if it had been us to have that kind of success.

Lawn boy convention..
 
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PSU was good before Cael. But, it wasn’t a dominant program; hadn’t won an NCAA championship; wasn’t thought of in the same breath as Iowa or Oklahoma State. In fact, in the Big 10 pecking order, it would have been behind not only Iowa, but Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan in the pecking order.

Cael changed that in one season. More accurately, Cael and a couple of very rich alumni changed it overnight. The alumni pay most of Cael’s Salary and contributed enough for him to hire top assistants. Equally or more importantly, they contributed enough to the wrestling club (which is not part of the university) for it to hire the best stable of post-graduate wrestlers in the country. Most of them, like David Taylor, are pursuing world and Olympic titles. Think of the Foxcatcher wrestling club, 10 times as big, without the creepy owner, and located on a college campus.

The wrestling room is where championships are won. Where guys practice not only against teammates in their weight classes, but against teammmates one or two weight classes bigger and lighter than them. Now add world caliber practice partners into the mix. That attracts top high school wrestlers. It, along with Cael, is why they can get a 4 time Iowa state champion to forego Iowa and come to PSU on a .25 scholarship. It’s why they have a 3 time Colorado state champion who came as a walk-on hoping to win a scholarship. They have 15 out of state wrestlers on the team this year who were state champions in High School; 14 were multiple year champions. The one single year champion, Anthony Cassar, just won the NCAAs at 285 lbs.

Their wrestling club’s budget, which the NCAA has no say over, is, I believe, bigger than the combined budgets of the next five biggest programs. Add to that Cael’s ability to judge and coach talent and you have a dynasty.
 
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Maybe they should have fancier outfits, have tag team and cage matches and allow taunting and maybe they'd have more popularity and a TV deal.

Can you imagine the trash talk they could do on the Peds! :)
 
Here are pictures:
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That nobody cares about.
Haha yeah they win 7 of 8 national titles and it gets maybe a 30 second mention on SportsCenter. Now, imagine if their hoops team ever made it deep in the NCAA basketball tourney. Penn State people make no sense when it comes to their love of wrestling vs their apathy for hoops.
 
They are frontrunners. I went to the matches in State College when I was at Pitt. Good crowd, but never sold out. I went to the EIWA tournaments all 4 years (Pitt and PSU both were in the EIWA back then). They were in Annapolis, Princeton, West Point and Syracuse, I believe. They didn’t have anywhere near the largest fan base at any of those tournaments despite the fact that they had by far the largest student body and number of alumni. They had a good team, but I only remember them having one national champion during that four year period.

Back when they were dominating womens’ volleyball, they were selling out. I doubt they have anywhere near that support now.

What they have is a few very wealthy alumni who have donated so much to wrestling (including the wrestling club) that they dominate the sport. And the crowds have followed the success.
 
Back when they were dominating womens’ volleyball, they were selling out. I doubt they have anywhere near that support now.


They were 6th in the country in attendance in 2017 (I don't see the 2018 numbers with a quick search), so they still draw very well.
 
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