Sooners beat Ags in wrestling

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

First time in 13 yrs...It happened in Norman, last night I think. There is a thread in the football forum, already. Prolly will help Spates keep the HC jorb, eh?

[RUSH LIMBAUGH is my clone!]

From a former OU asst. wrestling coach I know:

OSU has had problems all season long at 149, 157, and 184 pounds. They've never been able to come up with a quality starter at those weights. If Jake Deffienbach and 2xx NAIA champ hadn't transferred in from Lindonwood as a graduate student, they would really be hurting. John Smith didn't throw that dual, OU simple matched up well with them, they each won 5 weight classes, but the OU 184-pounder pinned the OSU wrestler, which was the difference. Some of John's recruits haven't panned out as planned. Similar thing led to the downfall of Jim Zalesky at Iowa. Thom Ortiz has made some major recruiting errors at ASU, which should ultimately lead to him being fired this year.

Jack Spates gets some decent kids, but OSU gets who they want most of the time on a national basis. That is getting ready to change. Tom Brands has Iowa back on track. Ohio State finally hired a good coach who is quickly turning that program around. Penn State built a new wrestling facility and has its best team in years. There is a lot of parity this year, and I think it will be that way for awhile. Last year both Iowa and OSU didn't take home a top 4 trophy from the NCAA tournament, which was the first time since 1973 that happened.

I'm hoping that Jack retires in the next year or two. With Stoops' Iowa connections I would expect someone with an Iowa background would be a leading candidate. There simply aren't any OU guys out there coaching in the college ranks anymore. Port always pushed them to get a degree in business or engineering if they were smart enough so they could make money and be able to donate to the university.

Spates has done one thing correctly. He got a new wrestling facility about 10 years ago. A former walkon wrestler under Stan Abel donated $500,000 last year to double the size of the facility. That will give them 4 full mats, plus excellent locker room space, weights, etc. Probably, Cornell will be the only school with a better training facility. Steve Friedman, who was the head of Goldman-Sachs (later Bush's economic advisor) donated several million to build one with 4 mats. Bleachers slide out over the other mats except for one in the middle for dual meets.

Whenever, he does retire, the facility is in place for the right coach to get the program back up to where it should be.


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