PSU has now added Ono, Duke and Blaze to an already stacked lineup.
The separation of PSU and the rest of the wrestling world just keeps widening and widening.
May the battle for second commence...
A breakdown of the potential starting lineup for the 2025-26 Penn State Wrestling Team.
www.flowrestling.org
A few opinions...
I think you're finally going to see Iowa wrestling fan enthusiasm start a slow tank that hasn't happened before. All the stars are finally misaligned.
It used to be that Iowa had a least a 10% chance of pulling a rabbit out of a hat and was the clear #2, but now Iowa is going to have to fight like hell for 4th or 5th and it's more like a .002% chance. What also got Iowa wrestling through some of the second fiddle years recently was an exciting lineup including Spencer Lee, Kemerer, the fireworks of DeSanto not knowing if you were going to see a fist fight, Marinelli, and Cassioppi was pretty dominant for a year or so too.
Those things are all gone now and Carl Sanderson has shown that Gable's smashmouth style of totally destroying yourself physically and mentally in the room all year long worked in the 80s and 90s but it doesn't anymore. Science in training has taken over and he's found the right recipe along with over double Iowa's NIL to boot.
Iowa has no star now and their coaches--while great coaches and personal friends of mine--were too late to the Sanderson style party and now it's too late to catch up. They understand it now seeing what PSU has done, but the money and recruiting isn't there anymore no matter how they change things...that ship has sailed. It's identical to what Gable did in the 80s if you think about it, he found an innovative coaching and recruiting style that worked at the time and everyone else got left behind. Carl is the greatest wrestler and coach to ever do it and he's going to blow by Gable like he's standing still. I hate Carl and PSU, btw.
My personal guess is that Iowa is going to be 5th this year, and attendance is going to slowly fall as younger people weren't alive to see any of the glory years. When CHA eventually gets bulldozed (never thought I'd see the day as a wrestling fan going to 40-50 sold out duals in my lifetime), Iowa wrestling is going to get a 6-7,000 seat shared facility like DeVaney, etc. and will use the future basketball arena for bigger duals like PSU, OSU, nebraska, etc.
Can't compain too much, though...how many other schools have ever had the dominance time in wrestling that Iowa has? Rarified air for sure...only two other schools in history have ever done it.
