Week-End Salvo

[Oracle]

In the wake of this week's stunning news of the NCAA canceling the D1 wrestling tournament, Wisconsin coach Chris Bono may have summed it up best:

"I understand why it’s being done but it doesn’t mean I can’t be upset, mad, angry, hurt and all the emotions that go into all this. Most of all hurt, not just for my student-athletes, but all the student-athletes that can’t go out there and compete." -@ChrisBono

This unprecedented action sent shock waves throughout the sport. Never before has an entire season been completed, including qualifier tournaments, and then no nationals. The WW2 break suspended entire seasons.

Many of us were looking forward to gathering Minneapolis which serves as a reunion of sorts -- 12 months of planning -- but none of us wants to be endangered, especially at our advanced ages. Did I just say that? So while it's a major disappointment, life goes on....hopefully healthily.

The ones that suffer the most, obviously, are the athletes. It's difficult to wrap one's head around all the 'what ifs' that are always sorted out at NCAAs.

* Iowa will not dethrone Penn State
* Spencer Lee will be deprived of possibly winning 4 titles
* Vincenzo Joseph cannot recover his lost crown
* Kollin Moore cannot get that elusive title
* Matt Koldzik burned an ORS year and cannot be Princeton's 1st 4X AA
* We will never know if unbeaten frosh phenom Shane Griffith could win at 165
* Several toss-up weights - 133, 141, 149, 174 - we'll never know who was the best
* No telling how many fans would pack US Bank Stadium -- would it have been 40,000+?

Whereas the sport was about to take a jump in TV ratings and live attendance, that will all have to wait. The idea of using a football stadium should be revisited and soon. It's the way to go.

Freestyle season will also be in limbo, as are the Olympics. Will give coaches more time to recruit. I wonder how summer camps will work? That's a huge part of coach's comp packages.

Have a great week end everyone!

[JAD77]

Good to see the Oracle that we all know and respect back! Great post.

Have to really feel bad for the seniors. They busted their humps for years to get to this point. Pomrinca will never get the chance to experience being part of the Big Show. Jordan Kutler was finally healthy and primed to make his run towards the top spot on the podium.
Life goes on, but there will always be a big piece missing in that part of their life.

[mookie]

I liked the bracket paths for Paetzell, Humphrey, Kutler and Weiler. Along with Wood I thought Lehigh had a legit shot at 5 AA.

[jdalu75]

The WW2 break suspended entire seasons.

Not true. No NCAA tournaments were held in 1943-44-45, but here are the EIWA brackets for those years, freely available as always, and only at Jay Hammond's Wrestlingstats.com website:

http://www.wrestlingstats.com/eiwa/pdf/ ... 201943.pdf

http://www.wrestlingstats.com/eiwa/pdf/ ... 201944.pdf

http://www.wrestlingstats.com/eiwa/pdf/ ... 201945.pdf

The problem in the war years, in addition to a shortage of healthy young men available to play sports, was travel. The trains were packed with servicemen being transported all over. It was a problem for major league baseball, so it certainly would have created problems trying to move wrestlers large distances.

This is something different. When an epidemic approaches the answer is not to pack large groups of people into concentrated spaces. It happened to hit at a time when the college sports winter season was coming to a close and one of the largest events was about to begin. We haven't seen quarantine signs since reruns of Laurel & Hardy and The Little Rascals that were filmed in the '20s and '30s. I imagine the last time parents kept their kids home was during the last big polio outbreak, in 1952-53; at that time there were no vaccines other than for smallpox.

Let's try to keep things in perspective. This is an attempt to keep hundreds of thousands (or millions) of people from getting sick and tens of thousands from dying. I'm very sorry for the athletes who have committed so much time and effort who won't get a chance on the big stage. I'm also sorry for the hotel workers, restaurant employees, and airline folks who are being laid off and will need to ride this out with no income. How many people who work in and around Disney do you think are wondering how they're going to pay their rent in a couple of weeks?

I'm thinking of Fay Vincent holding a news conference by candlelight after the earthquake in 1989 that interrupted the World Series: "Baseball is not the priority today." Words to remember.

[NothingMeaningful]

Three undefeated EIWA wrestlers (Glory, Tucker, Kolodzik) lost their chance to show what they could do against the best, and to show they belonged in the conversation.

[Richb-3]

The 1943-45 EIWAs had only 8-10 teams, Coast guard was added during that period. I don't know who totally cancelled the season, and who competed just in Duals. I always find it interesting that the three years of no NCAA wrestling tournament was the years OkSU dominated basketball (I think 2 1sts and a 2nd) , That is how Iba became part of the name of Gallagher hall

It seems like this disease will cause one's lungs to resemble dried out despoiled sponges. Not a pleasant way to spend your last few days. I am pretty sure I would have attended had NCAA not overruled, but I likely would have had room in bag for some trepidation.

[JAD77]

Interesting how the Academies dominated the Easterns during WWII years. From what my dad told me, campuses were pretty well stripped of most males, hence the poor showing by other colleges. The Academies on the other hand, probably had full, if not increased, enrollments.

[jdalu75]

1941 EIWAs had 11 teams. Not a big difference. The conference didn't hit 16 teams until the postwar years.

The service academies and a lot of other schools sped up classes so that students could graduate in three years. That continued postwar for awhile; that's how Ed Erikson graduated in three years.