I don’t know if you follow wrestling or not, but the Brands are the absolute best in the business.
By your reasoning you’re essentially saying it’d be a good idea to wait until after the B1G and NCAA’s to offer them an extension because if they don’t you could use it as a bargaining chip for a lower contract. That’d be completely fucking stupid. Like stark raving stupid.
There are quite literally no two better coaches in folkstyle wrestling right now than the Brands brothers, including Cael Sanderson. Penn State’s success is because of their massive in-state recruiting advantage, which Tom Brands has turned on them. We have 5 starters from Pennsylvania in our lineup, all ranked top ten, which is more than PSU. Brands has secured approval of a $20 plus million facility, funded privately to no detriment of the Iowa athletic department, which will only help get Pennsylvania kids and other top wrestlers. They have international success and have coached at the international level, which—like Sanderson—only helps to draw in the very best wrestlers who have the desire and ability to make the switch from folkstyle to freestyle after graduation. They have the attendance record for 13 straight seasons. Revenue record as well. They’re from Iowa, wrestled at Iowa, and coached here for a decade and a half and have said a million times they’re not in the market to leave. You reward that, not hold it out there as a carrot.
The two best active folkstyle coaches on planet earth taking the program in the best and most positive direction since Gable and you think the U should just, oh I don’t know, hang on a minute and see if they’re really “worth it?” That’s fucking mental.
