Pro Wrestling

[watoos]

If college sports are going to be all about money, may as well stop pretending kids have to enroll in a college. Do all college athletes graduate? Heck no they don't.

Here is what I envision for wrestling. Get owners, not sponsors. We can have Lubert's Lions. Pay the wrestlers big money, wrestle in arenas where people don't have to contribute to the Levi Lamb Fund to get a ticket to see their favorite wrestlers.

Don't need the NCAA, it is useless anyway. Don't need that many rules. Win by pin or tap out. Maybe make punching, kicking, fist to the back illegal.

Being a professional, the wrestlers will have to sign contracts which will stop poaching through portals.

Hells bells, open it up to high school wrestlers, who needs an education if you are a stud wrestler?

Can do the same for all college sports. Won't affect going to the Olympics, we already allow professional athletes.

Maybe WWE fans will even show up. We can have women wrestlers on the team.

If you think I am writing this tongue in cheek, I am. I don't like NIL's, they are going to ruin amateur sports, especially for small market colleges.

 

[EBHS68]

There is no substitution for school sports.

 

[Bernard Shakey]

I don't like NIL's, they are going to ruin amateur sports, especially for small market colleges.

I keep seeing this take and I still don't get it? How exactly is it going to reduce parity more than it already is? Only 5 teams have won an NCAA championship in wrestling since 1989! The small market teams aren't routinely competing for national titles because they're in SMALL MARKETS! Boone, North Carolina isn't a wrestling hot bed and their coach isn't a living legend in the sport. I don't think having a guy place 6th at nationals was the starting point to App State building into a program that challenges for a medal ever. Unless Cael or David Taylor decides to go be a coach there an starts pulling in blue chip PA, NJ, OH, and NY recruits, having an outside shot of getting someone to AA is probably about as high as programs like App State will ever get. I just mention them because John Millner has obviously been a talking point recently, but after all the rumors of NIL deals swirling he ended up staying! Something his coach didn't even do when he was in school. Mr. Bentley left UNC, a smaller market team for wrestling to go where...oh perennial national power at the time Oklahoma State! Saying at the time:

"Oklahoma State is one of the best programs in the nation and one of the best programs of all time," Bentley said. "It will be a good situation for me."

So talented wrestlers leaving small market teams for national powers is nothing new. So far the only big name recruit to go somewhere else for a reported NIL deal is Real Woods, who transferred after he finished his degree, something we see happen all the time. Verk graduate transferred out, Max Dean and Drew Hildebrandt grad transferred in. I doubt anyone would be super upset outside of Stanford if Real transferred and there weren't rumors of an NIL deal around.

In NCAA sports there will always be the have and the have nots. Not every school will have equal facilities, or equal coaching experience, or equal support from the university, or an equal amount of local fans, and they won't all have equal access to NIL money. Yeah you might have some people who try and buy wins, but I don't think that will ever be successful. Once someone pays a kid 8 mill to go play for Tennessee and Tennessee still finishes toward the bottom of the SEC, I think other big money donors will be a little hesitant. Sure Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, and Notre Dame in football and Penn State, Iowa, Ohio State, and Michigan in wrestling have more big money donors around their programs and will likely be able to provide more NIL opportunities to their athletes, but those are already the teams who were at the top of the pack anyway!

If you believe the implementation of the NIL is the first time money has infiltrated our precious amateur sports, I have some beachfront property in Iowa to sell you. Football coaches are usually the highest paid state employees and TV deals for football and basketball are in the billions. People have been getting rich off colleges sports for decades and yes, athletes have gotten paid before. Even in wrestling, athletes were allowed to go make money coaching at camps over the summer. You're telling me no one running a camp who was a fan of a certain team never over paid an athlete for appearing at a camp? At least now Its legal and doesn't have to be done in shady back room deals. I'm sure shady stuff will still happen, but there is always shady stuff going on. As long as there are sports with rules there will be someone trying to exploit those rules to give their team an advantage.

 

[Bosco2]

If college sports are going to be all about money, may as well stop pretending kids have to enroll in a college. Do all college athletes graduate? Heck no they don't.

Here is what I envision for wrestling. Get owners, not sponsors. We can have Lubert's Lions. Pay the wrestlers big money, wrestle in arenas where people don't have to contribute to the Levi Lamb Fund to get a ticket to see their favorite wrestlers.

Don't need the NCAA, it is useless anyway. Don't need that many rules. Win by pin or tap out. Maybe make punching, kicking, fist to the back illegal.

Being a professional, the wrestlers will have to sign contracts which will stop poaching through portals.

Hells bells, open it up to high school wrestlers, who needs an education if you are a stud wrestler?

Can do the same for all college sports. Won't affect going to the Olympics, we already allow professional athletes.

Maybe WWE fans will even show up. We can have women wrestlers on the team.

If you think I am writing this tongue in cheek, I am. I don't like NIL's, they are going to ruin amateur sports, especially for small market colleges.

The "fist to the back" gave you away.

 

[watoos]

The "fist to the back" gave you away.

I knew it. Seriously, these NIL’s need some rules.
Warner was the highest placing Hawkeye, so he should ask for 300k, Woods only finished 6th.

 

[watoos]

I think the wrestlers should have to wear their sponsors patches on their singlets, like race car drivers.