The Penn State wrestling team won their fourth consecutive national title this weekend and their eighth in nine years. It is an insanely impressive run. It is pretty cool that my brother was there for the tournament and on his way home he ran into Cael Sanderson at Sheetz (that is what it looks like in the picture).
I watched a good deal of the matches on ESPNU and ESPN (which is crazy to think they actually carried a good majority of the tournament). I remember a few years ago when they just showed the finals on ESPN2 or maybe U.
As always, I need to be a contrarian for a moment. There was an article in USA Today about how Penn State’s wrestling run is a greater achievement than Alabama’s football dominance. Ugh. They are both amazing and impressive. However, I think Alabama’s is probably a bit more impressive. I know, most people reading this will hunt me down now, but hear me out.
A friend of mine posted this the other day. It was meant to show how difficult it is to play college sports. I want to use it now for a different purpose…
This shows how many kids play a sport in high school and how many in college. Obviously there are a ton more kids who play football than who wrestle. However, there are also far fewer college wrestling schools (76 D1 schools, as opposed to 125 FCS/130 FBS football schools). That means Cael Sanderson has much less competition when recruiting than Nick Saban.
Secondly, I would imagine recruiting the elite wrestlers is probably easier. At least from a scouting perspective. Each state has a tournament where they decide who are the best. Football is a team sport where you could be the best offensive lineman in the state, but if your team is awful, you may not get much notice. Granted there are showcases and camps, but again, there are over a million kids playing football. Do you think Saban and his staff can sift through all of those kids?
Third, since there are so many more college football teams, the idea that any team can be that good for this long is just amazing. Especially since the number of scholarships is limited to the same as everyone. College wrestling has had dominant teams like this a few different times. If you look back at the insane run of Iowa (20 national titles from 1975-2000) or some of Oklahoma State’s dominant periods, then you see that Penn State’s run is special, but not insane.
I love both sports and there is a reason why it is hard to compare the two. One is a team sport that is totally dependent on the individuals working together, whereas the other is an individual sport that accumulates points for the team. Both runs a dominant, but in my opinion, one is more impressive than the other.
And come on, when we are talking about college dominance, the Penn State fencing team was either first or second for the national championship 22 times from 1990 to 2016. That is true domination.
