North Carolina wrestling coach Rob Koll excited to see David Taylor at Oklahoma State

North Carolina wrestling coach Rob Koll is a fan of David Taylor taking over Oklahoma State as the new head coach.

It balances out the sport a little bit, according to Koll. Koll, who’s been successful at Cornell and Stanford before taking over the Tar Heels, knows how dominant Penn State is every year.

But with Taylor being the landscape changing move coming from Penn State, that could shake things up in 2024-25 and Koll is all for it.

“I was talking to people earlier and what’s going on at Penn State, you know, it’s great if you’re a Penn State fan, but it’s, you know, it needs to be broken up a little bit,” Koll said on The Athletor Podcast. “I mean, it’s not good for the sport, in my opinion, to have some team that dominant. God bless them. They’ve done a great job. But how do you break it up? And something like this certainly goes a long way in helping.”

Granted, Koll knew Penn State wasn’t going to go away immediately. The Nittany Lions hired two-time NCAA champion Nick Lee as a new assistant to stay right in State College.

Not to mention, the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club is the dominant senior level training center for Olympic Athletes.

“Now we need to have it happen three more three more times,” Koll said jokingly. “We need to get rid of Casey (Cunningham), (Cody) Sanderson and need to get Kyle (Dake) out there and Zain (Retherford) and everybody else and then hopefully all the kids will follow. So I think it was a great (hire). 

“I mean, David is one of the biggest names and faces in our sport. He’s got a fantastic club to obviously draw people, he’s a little bit of a Pied Piper and you know, I don’t want to give him too much credit because I’m gonna get I’m gonna probably be recruiting against him here in the near future.”

As if the compliments weren’t enough, Koll had to throw a playful jab.

“So, other than that, he’s an absolute worthless piece of you know what,” Koll said.

But as Koll pointed out, Taylor is a great technician and could be a great coach. But it’s about more than just rolling around with the guys and making them better wrestlers.

“Coaching isn’t about teaching moves, it’s about running a business,” Koll said. “And he runs a business right now. He’s got his (M2 Academy) which has done very well. He’s obviously recruited kids to M2. He’s actually coached those kids for M2 and have gone on to be incredibly successful. He’s a lot like (Ben) Askren in that regard. I know he’s got his farm. His wife runs a restaurant (and) he’s probably involved with that. He’s signed probably some of the most lucrative contracts with Nike and Scrap Life before … And I’m sure he signed an amazing contract for himself. 

“So I look at him as an incredibly successful businessman and we need more of that in our sport, you know, it’s very easy to teach moves and teach the technical part of our sport. Most good high school coaches could be great technical coaches at the college level.”