The annual dive into Jason Bryant's D1 Preview Guide - Mat Stats 42

It’s the annual stats mound of news, notes, facts, data and more as co-host Jason Bryant talks about his annual mega-collection of stats for the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships. With over 250 pages, “The Guide,” as it’s become known, hits every pertinent stat and figure for the upcoming NCAA championships and also puts together history that’s available no place else. 

Order the Mat Talk Online D1 Preview Guide at mattalkonline.com/guide and use discount code matstats to save $10. 

Video: https://nwcaonline.com/news/2025/3/12/the-mats-stats-show-the-mat-stats-show-episode-42-2025-ncaa-d1-mens-wrestling-media-guide.aspx


About Mat StatsWelcome to the NWCA’s latest venture to help our favorite sport. Glenn Gormley, Jason Bryant and Kevin Hazard outline their effort to bring statistical analysis to wrestling. Mat Stats is the NWCA’s attempt to bring wrestling up to speed with so many other sports by incorporating stats. It is the same sport, the wrestlers are just older and better.
Mat Stats by the NWCA is a monthly podcast by the National Wrestling Coaches AssociationApple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podcast Addict | Castbox | RSS

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Jason Bryant, Glenn Gormley, and Kevin Hazzard today where
we be talking NCAA Wrestling Championships. They are coming to
Philadelphia third weekend in March. It is the most most
wonderful time of the year. And if you are somehow
still listening after that serenade of holiday music, I applaud

(00:20):
you along with again Kevin Hazzard and Glenn. Normally, I'm
Jason Bryant. Normally we have Glenn who break down a
lot of stats and we take a topic and we
tackle it. Today now we're we're not gonna do that.
We're gonna tackle a lot of stats and we're actually
gonna go through those stats in a way that you
can follow along with your favorite wrestling tournament, that being

(00:41):
the NCAA Division IE Wrestling Championships again coming to Philadelphia's
Wells Fargo Center Wells Fargo Arena, Wells Fargo Center. It's
one of the two. There's a lot of Wells Fargo's
onno the one des Moines, Wells Fargo Arena, the one
in Tempe. I better get that right before I have
to announce it. But anyway, Glenn, Kevin, this is the
time year where people like yourself also digging the stats

(01:02):
because you've got to fill out brackets, you've got to
win belts, you've got to like you've got bar bets
with your buddies, and you've got things that you remember
that you know your friend doesn't remember. And you've got
sucker bets left and right too. Not condoning gambling, but
I'm saying it's like we've got all this type of
stuff that centers around our most favorite three days in March.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yes, Jason, I love when ever since you've put out
this guy. It's my favorite thing to read every year,
you know, because I'm a numbers guy, I'm a stats guy,
I'm a wrestling guy. So it's everything I need in
one So I really appreciate you putting this out. And
I know, like I could speak for a lot of
the we merry guys that agree with me on that.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
I spent all weekend starting Friday night glued to my television.
I had my iPad, I had a laptop and the TV,
and so a lot of times I had two and
three things going.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
So I've got got some really good, uh film information.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
But the guide is what I've you know, I need
to finish off everything for the for the weekend coming up.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
I know one of our one of our mutual friends here,
the guys that you spend a lot of time with
from from the Wayman, Mary Gang, Rob Larrymore for example,
every year since I started puting, hey can you get
this south faster? Can you get this south faster? Can
you get this south fast? I promise it the Tuesday
before the Nationals, because that is the day I leave
now as the as the public address announcer. We've got

(02:30):
meetings starting on Tuesday night. We need to be there Tuesday.
We prep, we do sound check, we do a lot
of things on Wednesday, So Tuesday once I have to
get into the like my actual the job, part of
my responsibilities with the NCAA Championships, I really can't do
a whole lot more with it other than maybe uh
swapping out some information. If there's a replacement, I will
run at it. And in case you're not clear on

(02:52):
what I'm talking about here, when I say the guide,
I'm gonna go on screen here. So if we go
over here to matt talkonline dot com slash guide, I've
got it now up on the screen for you use
the discount code. Matt Stats. I'm going to do this first.
Why because this is where people get tricky, tricked up,
tripped up about the discount code. You have to add
this to your card. Now retails for forty dollars. It's
worth every penny. So okay, we've clicked it. Now we

(03:14):
got to check out. I don't see the discount. Just chill,
We're good. Hit check out. There's the discount code right here,
Matt Stats. Click apply. The discount has been applied. Now
you can pay with PayPal. You can pay with your
credit card, paypals. Right, we've got that here. You enter information,
you go to your checkout. Boom. It's that simple in

(03:34):
terms of how to check out. It will go. It'll
send you a download link immediately through a company called
selfie se l lfy, so keep an eye on that.
So buying it is easy. Now. I cannot help you
with the Android if you want to carry this with you.
This is mobile friendly on an iPhone though. Basically you'll
get the link. It'll download through your browsers, so you
want to go to your downloads in your phone. So

(03:55):
typically you'll go your files or downloads. If you've got
an iPhone. That's where you're going to find it. If
you down loaded to your phone, if it goes to
your computer, you'll have a download right there. You can
save with your machine and then you can maybe air
drop it or send to your computer. Android folks, I
don't have one, so I cannot tell you how your
files are handled. But it is a PDF file. It's
easily found. You can easily move it from one one

(04:16):
place to the next, so just keep that in mind.
So there's that Matt status code right down there. Well
hold on right down there on the screen, and that's
how you get it. So that's the simple buying process.
So we've got that out of the way. What's next
for you, Glenn?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
All right, Jason, I want to answer you a couple
of questions. Kevin and I want to answer ask you
some questions, and we'll start at the top. Okay, give
us a little history on the announcers and how you
and Kevin Hawsard got involved in this.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Well, Kevin's been announcing a lot longer than Brian has,
hasn't he. So hold on one second. Let me let
me so the the announcer's portion of it. So this
is what happens. So and this is all in the guy.
There is a history about it, and I actually I'll
zoom up to that and actually show you. We'll start
with that section of the preview guide. Let me share

(05:05):
my screen here in a moment, if I can just
make sure it's ready to go, because this is as
we prepare for the show. Things that I cannot control
take hold. There we go. That's what we're looking for.
We're looking for that. So let's go to the screen here.
That's the wrong page. There we go, let's try that.
Speaking up, yes, the brief announcing history. So for those

(05:25):
of you that are been around the sport a while,
these are two of the most iconic people when it
comes to the NCAA Wrestling Championship, Sandy Stevens and the
late Ed Alaverti. They should look from at this tournament
for decades now, how long exactly? Well Ed started back
in nineteen seventy three when this thing was in Seattle.
That was his advent to the tournament. And he was

(05:47):
a music teacher in Washington. And Sandy had done an
event or two, but really became part of the tournament.
I say an event or two. I think she'd worked
a championships with Ed before then, but became a constant
in nineteen two. So she did that for Russi math
I told there would be no Maad. I do plenty
of math is in this guy. So here on the
timeline you can see where where the other announcer. Sandy

(06:10):
was the constant from from eighty two to twenty fifteen,
her and Al. She worked with Todd Hibs. She worked
with the Don bluzzon game Who's done? It's too tall
and too proud from whole Colahoma A great guy, Boom
it great. Just here I think Fargo is when I
think Don. So that's the line of succession when it
comes to the announcing of the championships. And I put

(06:32):
this in here because Brian and I have been announcing
this event since twenty sixteen. I've done the Division two
excuse me, I've done the Division three in the ANI
since twenty sixteen as well. So this is one to
kind of honor those who came before us. Knowing that
you know that twenty sixteen year Madison Square Garden was
was kind of tough because you know, a lot of
people were not happy with the change. But a lot
of people also didn't know that it was going to

(06:53):
be and Brian, they came on board, so that was
a transition. I want to make sure that we honored
those laid the groundwork, because I don't have ideas and
how to call a match, right if I'd never heard
Ed Alierti at the Virginia Duels the first time in
nineteen ninety five. So I speaking from my own announcing style.
I borrow a little bit from Sandy, I borrow a

(07:14):
little bit from Ed. I borrow a little bit from
WWF announcer w W announcer Howard Finkel. So there's a
couple of things that I pay homage to. I have
my own style, but for example, the way I call
a fall is very much like this man here, you
know fall. You know Ed Aliverti just so poetic, and
he has his gift of gift of gab was amazing.

(07:35):
He'd you know, always walked by him at the Virginia Duels.
Usually I'd be coming from the after party when he's
getting up to wake up for the day and be like,
mister Alberty, hello, young man. Just you know, always such
a such a good dude. Ed was, and you know
he was He was an iconic voice of the sport
still is. You can't go back and see old Olympic
footage without hearing it. Oh from the United States America,
Isaac Anderson. You know it's ed, you know. So that's

(07:58):
that's the breakdown on how we all got in. There
is in the preview guide. I know you're not going
to buy it for that, but that's that's the preview guide.
We got to pick up Aul so reminds me, I
got to updake the skyline on page fourteen. So as
I'm going through this, page fourteen, because this is last
year's version, this is not this year's version. But that's
the brief brief history of the announcing stuff we got

(08:18):
asked me and Brian said yes, they asked me, I said,
and I said, who do you want to work with?
I said, give me Brian. So we're good. So that's
kind of the brief brief summary of how Brian and
I got started with it.

Speaker 4 (08:29):
So this is your tenth year.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
This will be the tenth tenth, tenth year, ninth tournament,
because well we know what happened in.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Twenty Yeah, so we all miss think that. The only
thing that I don't know is are you going to
sing the national anthem this year?

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Never used to never never never never never never. That
was his thing and it will always be his thing.
So a little side note. So at Saint Cloud State,
which I will actually plug my hat here got my
Husky's hockey hat. The announcer who pre heeded me had
done this, Chuck Clawson for thirty two years. He had
a trademark. Let's say do it? Do I have it here?

(09:06):
I gotta make sure my som Let's see where is
it I have? Yeah, he has a trademark. Where is it?
I'm really not prepared for any of this stuff today.
I apologize. There we go. Trademark. I've got it muted.
That doesn't help either man. This is bad production value. Sorry, folks.
He does the WU. You know he doesn't go Huskies

(09:27):
WU and go Huskies WU was kind of like the
hashtag or kind of like the thing. I don't WU.
That's Chuck's thing. But I've made sure it was part
of the program. So I got the student section. So
when I was after a goal, I would say go Huskies,
they would do the WU. And now we have a
WU scrolling across the videoverboard. So I am very aware
of who came before me, and I am very aware

(09:48):
of the traditions that they set for. For example, Sandy
and Gouty named Ed Bankowski, they came up with entire
you know, they came up with the how many years
have you been attending, which we do during that mid
halftime break during the finals. Now that's the perfect place
for it. Todd Hibbs came up with the senior sendoff,
which he brought to every division. So last week at

(10:08):
the NAI Championships with the seniors, when they walk off
the mat for their placement match, win or lose, they
get a thing. So those traditions that we didn't create,
but we keep with them, we keep them as part
of the tournament too. So it's not our creations. Those
are the things that were laid before us, and we
pay honor to those two. So this isn't about me
on the mic. That's just one thing I do here.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
By the way, well thank you now, Jason on the
question what inspired you to compile the guide.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
I'm a glutton for punishment. Honestly, as we go back,
this is last year's guide, as you see on the screen,
I keep up a different theme. So back in twenty thirteen,
I was in one of my many many jobs in wrestling.
I joke that I've had more jobs in wrestling than
Sammy Henson or Wade Shallice, and that usually gets a joke.
But it was working for Amateur Wrestling News and we

(10:58):
were with the Amateur Wrestling News in the open bat
it had a merger and I was running the magazine.
I was designing the magazine and Eric Betterman said, you know,
it'd be cool if we did like a championship digital
and I was like, all right, yeah, so I tried.
I tried it with the Midlands that year where it
had the bios and just like headshots and stuff, and
it was very simple. I mean it was maybe sixty pages,
but it was like six six athletes per column. It

(11:21):
had the wins and losses of the athletes, which I
pulled off a track wrestling and formatted and it was
it was a digital thing, and I printed up like
one or two of them, and just so we had
at the table when they were doing some audio broadcasting
and well for years I had been kind of a
stats gopher for ESPN, and it had this big binder
of stuff and I lent my copy to Tim Johnson

(11:44):
and then the producer of the Jerry Daniels, the producer's DESPN,
and they're like this is great. I'm like, yeah, sure.
Then you know, the Amateur Wrestling News Open Matt merger
kind of fell apart. I ended up setting out of
my own Matt Talk online with that book. I'm like,
you know what, that was a really good thing because
it answered a lot of questions I wanted to have,
versus having eight browser windows open or going through track wrestling.

(12:06):
Now we have Wrestle stat but it was for doing
all these things. I was like, there's a quick way
to answer these questions. We don't have that old NCAA
guide anymore. There used to be about this big. I
still I probably have like fifty of them here, actually
hard copies. They're not very big. They used to. I
think they stopped him in nineteen eighty two. So there
was a real lack of actual information. And I never

(12:26):
actually got access to the championship program because I was
I'm covering the tournament, so I'm not going upstairs and
buying the program. We had a couple of little media
kit but I'm like, there's so much. There's more missing here,
and there's questions that I want answers to. And Jay Hammond,
when he was still alive, had access to his database,
the wrestling stats database, and he would like he could
pull it up and he would work there. But then

(12:47):
after a while we have to go to Jay for everything.
And then Jay was getting older and he handed off
the database to me. He passed away several years ago.
But you know, in that work, I was like, well,
take all that work and put it together and build
it and then add more to it, and then add
more to it because we always get the how many
states have the most all Americans? Okay, well let's pull
that up. So I wanted to. I've been quick piloting,

(13:08):
compiling stats for years on this, when I was at Internet,
when I was at USA Wrestling open that. So I
just put it in a digital format. And then I
was like, well, I've never really you know, give it
away or do I This is a lot of work.
Why don't I just try to sell it? So I
started selling it for ten bucks and then it sold okay,
and I'm like, well there's a lot more here. I'm
like it was like it was like one hundred and
some page, like this is definitely worth more than ten bucks,

(13:30):
because I look at the program was being sold for
whatever double that, and I was like, well, I have
triple the information. So I then added more to it,
and then I added more to it. Then I added
more to it. And every time there's guys like you
that asked me questions and I was like, well, I
should put that in the guide for next year. I
should put that in the guide for next year. Well
this is something like, well, when was the last time
I want to be able to answer those questions with this.

(13:50):
I want you to be able to answer those questions
by going to this book and be like, yeah, I
can tell you the last time that, or the most
All Americans that was won by a team was this?
Or how many times have there been this? How many
three time All Americas? Three time All Americans have there been?
How many? How many two time national champions there been?
One to answer all those questions, because you know you've
got them, they always come up, Hey who was that

(14:11):
guy that was? So you know, I don't have all
the brackets in here, but I do have links to
all the brackets in here. So up here we go
to two thousand. Let's let's pull that up. We're gonna
open up this page and we're gonna you know, you
can't see it on the screen, but that link just
took you to it took you to Wrestling stats dot
COM's Jay Hammonds brackets. So, for example, like all those

(14:32):
brackets are still there. I don't have them personally contained
in there, but they're all in there. So that's one
thing that we can do pretty easily to link the
history to it that's online, as well as putting a
book together that has pretty much everything you need. So uh,
the genesis was really is my own curiosity plus the
opportunity to put more stuff out there. So and then

(14:54):
since then it is taken on the mind of its own.
It is over. We see last year's was two hundred
and fifty eight pages. And here's the thing. The NCA program,
as good as it is, half of its ads. I
have like three ads because from three people that have
been supporting me the entire time. You've you know, granted, okay,
maybe for Tony Rotundo and Mark Lundi who I used
their photos for compound with Cliff fretwell, he's been supporting

(15:17):
me since day day negative and since ever since as
he likes to say. And then Reslit who's been sponsoring
the newsletter for a while. So that's pretty much all
you're gonna get. You gonna get two hundred and fifty
some plus pages of content. So that was kind of
the the impetus for it is like I just want
to be able to answer those questions. And then again
ESPN I get. I print up about ten of these things.
I used to use them for the mat side reporters.

(15:39):
I give them in the production truck, uses it that
we have them at the head table. So it's basically
become a resource. That's it's well not officially endorsed by
the NCAAA, we use it a lot of places there,
so thank you.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
Do you and Brian use that guide?

Speaker 1 (15:57):
And do you do it on?

Speaker 4 (15:58):
You don't have it?

Speaker 3 (16:00):
You have it online, not in a a paper format.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
I do print about ten of them, which and the
thing is they cost about forty bucks to print, even
even with a discount. I like the UPS store FedEx office.
So that's the thing. I don't sell a hard version
of this, be a hard back or a hard copy
of this, because it's one I couldn't distribute it, and
two it's just it's a lot because you know, you know,
I don't have it. It's not a large print order.

(16:26):
I can't have this stuff turned around like that. So
I'll take I usually print them up the Wednesday before.
So if there's anything that happens Wednesday night that changes
the brackets, well I'm not gonna I'm not gonna print
new ones. I may be able to get to it digitally,
but once that first whistle blows, I probably can't update
anything anymore because again we're we're working here. So but yeah,

(16:48):
we have the computers open. Brian's got got it open.
We command F control F on our PDFs, and it's
search it's a searchable digital document, so it's it's pretty
easy to go through and find stuff. One thing I've
also done last year is if you're scrolling through it
like on your phone and I need to go back
to the brackets, every page has a link to the
brackets back to it, so you know, I'll take it

(17:10):
up and open it up and send it over to that.
That link just took you right over to Track Wrestling.
This is last year's page, of course, so you can
see how everything took it took you back there. So
it's it's kind of you get everything you need, so
you might end up with like fifteen winters of track open.
You get back to the brackets because you've clicked on
them so many times.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
If you had to print them and distributing you need
attractive trailer.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah, I will say if you do print this double
sided draft black and white, and if you've got if
you want to spend an extra twenty bucks or is
twenty five bucks or you know, depending on how how
many you don't have to, I would say if you won't,
you don't want the history, you just want the bios.
I'd say there's a ways to print this and print
what you need if you want to keep them. Like
if you've got your draft on a on a Thursday

(17:53):
morning with your Saint Patti's State crew, you know, you
can print out just certain pages that would be great
to take a long way with you, you know, and
make sure that you hit that you know, promo code
to save your ten bucks when you're on those drafts,
because with these things, you're gonna win those leagues too,
because you're going to have quick access to all this
stuff that you may not have time to go through.
Wrestles that or track to cross reference everything. This is

(18:15):
just a quick scroll boom, you got it.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
I think, yes, exactly. Let me address something really quick here.
The most common question I get from the Will Marry
guys is the seeding process. Now, it's a complicated thing.
Jason has it all lined up on the guy. Because
there's a lot of numbers and complicated stuff. I'm recommending

(18:40):
that if you're really interested this, you buy the guide
and read it on your own. Okay for that and
the automatic qualifiers and all that stuff. It's a complicated process,
but it's explained very well in the guide.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
It's a lot of mass so initially so applications. We've
got the three parts here. This is all in here,
earning the alecs, the sliding scales, earning the at larges.
And right now as we record this, I think right
before we started the at large bids. So it's Tuesday,
March eleventh, so the at large bids email came out
just before we hit records, so I do not have

(19:16):
a completed set of some questions that we were talking
about are getting to so the brackets will be out
Wednesday night, March twelfth, so by the tay if you're
watching this before the brackets come out, We're still waiting
for certain amount of data to become available so I
can complete it and get this thing out for you.
But there's you know, it's a lot of math. Here's

(19:36):
the seating criteria right there. This explains it. I want
to bowld this part because Glenn, this is the reason
I put this in here. Previous performance that the NCAA
Championships has zero to do with the seating formula. So
I know that the thing is we've been with this
type of format since I want to say, two thousand

(19:57):
and nine. It's it's morphed over the years. But the
the basis of you know, previous stuff hasn't been a
thing for a very long time. Current year data, that
is the buzzword. That is the thing you need to understand.
Current year data, which you just because you won a
title three years ago doesn't mean you're automatically you know,

(20:19):
you know, it's it's not a thing. Get it out
of your mind, because that's we haven't been that way
for all most a decade and a half waymen, twenty
years ago was oh five, so about fifteen sixteen years
we've been at this type of thing where it hasn't
been a thing, so zero has zero to do with it,
so no previous stuff. But yeah, there it is un

(20:41):
the screen. There's a primer on that.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
I'm so glad you put that in bold because Kevin
and I in the will you Merrik High, I put it.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Big bold red, so even Kevin can't miss it.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, we'll get about one hundred questions.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
But two years ago.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
This guy place eight. It does page.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Fifty five, page fifty twelve. It was fifty five on
last year. So, by the way, what you're looking at
this year on the screen For those of you that
are watching, if you're listing Matt Talk online dot com
slash guide discount code Matt Stats save ten dollars, you
scroll through and it's there. It is. So we're looking
through last year's guide because again the data hasn't been

(21:18):
released to the public yet, so I can't toy with
it until we're done there. So that being said, that's
on page fifty five. Did you know also that March
is National Athletic Training Month. This is longtime Clarion trainer
and Jim Thornton, who is part of the NCAA medical
staff for a very long time, So he would always joke, hey,
did you know March is so when you see a

(21:39):
trainer out there, it might be ncaa bingo out there.
So if you hear that, it might be one of
those things that you know, take a sip of your
beverage whenever you hear did you know? Maybe you can
play that. That's another thing we maybe maybe I'll put
a Bingo card in this year for the sayings that
we have out there, Like you know, anytime you hear
me make a WWE reference, like brisk Jerry Brisco a

(21:59):
long time ww talent scout and you know he was
one of the stooges back for the pro wrestling fans
that remember that. Uh, he'd always love the callbacks to
some things like that. And then we be like, you know,
there's the you know, get a little color. It's you know,
you're you're bleeding a little bit, I got some color?
Get blood time out there. Anytime you throw some of
those out there, it's always kind of fun. And Mack
Ryder always has these has this fake monopoly money with

(22:20):
like Tom Brands's face on them and Sandy's face on them.
They make side bets with each other they mean absolutely nothing,
so that people have a lot of fun with it.
So there's a lot of things you can do with
the info in this guide. Have fun with your thank you.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Another question we get a lot of times is how
do we decide the location and who makes that decision
on the notional tournament?

Speaker 1 (22:44):
So that is not something that the guide will handle. However,
just so people know, this is something I answer a
lot on the message boards. It's up for bid, you know,
they put you know there's there's big proposals out there.
First of all, the city's got to want to have
have the event. You can't just say we need to
put it out West. I agree, I'd love to go
to Portland. I'd love to go to Denver. I'd love
to go to Phoenix. I'd love to go to Vegas.

(23:06):
Those cities have to bid, and their bids have to
check a certain amount of boxes. Can you give you
know this? Are you allocating this? How many rooms? Can
you give us this? Transportation signage at the airport, things
like that are all important factors into the bid. What
is your guaranteed seating? Where are your athlete areas? So
all those things come into play. It's not just who

(23:27):
has the best financial bid. But all those those things
have to be put together. Philadelphia, the last time we
were there, the the arena is fantastic. There's a lot
of space on the floor. You know, it's an NHL arena.
They've got this is They've got some some entry points
from the tunnels from the side as well. It's not
just a straight end zone. Four tunnels. It's home of
the Philadelphia Flyers, which kind of indifferent on anyway. But

(23:50):
you know, I like Philly as a sports town. Just
you've got to be there. Just don't tell an about it.
You're an opposing fan. You'll enjoy yourself. I went to
I went to Citizens Bank Park one time as an
Angels fan. It did not go very well for me.
That being said, Philly is a great sports town. Although
they did boo Santa So, but the Phillies is gonna
be great. Go back to the bid process. So with

(24:11):
the bid process, you know they've got a bid on it,
you've got to have your CBB and your Sports commission
gotta won it and those are the key things you
can't well, they should put it there to grow to sport.
The best way for you to pay attention to to
get involved in that is talk to your sports commission
and get involved. It's like your local community elections and
stuff like that. You want to be you can, you can.

(24:31):
I if you you think X city should do it,
ask and if they can't do it and they don't
have the room. Some places like Vegas, I know it's
been a hit. People talk about Vegas. Well, the weekend
that we are is the first week at of NCAA basketball,
and that is Vegas is the biggest weekend of the
year because everybody's gambling on March Madness. They don't you know,
we're not their primary tenant, uh for hotel rooms that

(24:54):
that weekend it would be everybody coming into gamble on basketball.
So that's one thing else I got to take into consideration.
So they look at the big packages, they look at
the CVB, they look at transportation, communications facilities, athlete experiences,
all sorts of things. So proximity to hotels, there's a
lot of moving parts that go with it. And of
course everything I've said you could probably pick apart and

(25:16):
be like, well, this, this, this, and this, it's it's
a whole package thing. It's just that one place might
lack one place, might you know be through the roof on.
So I don't have any information on how those things
are actually finally decided. But that's the problem. You got
a bid on it, they got a bid. You can't
just put it somewhere.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Thank you for that, Jason. One other thing that the
William Mary guys always harp on, could you please explain
to everybody the OW award and who and who grants
it and how it's if you could just explain this
one more time for the people, and you have to
do it next year for the fans to every year.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
So towards the end of the end of the session,
we've got the awards, We're doing the awards, and when
we get done we say and that the championships are
now closed and automatic. We guess to what about OW?
The Outstanding Wrestler is not an award presented by the NCAAA.
We learned a lot about what is and what isn't
from the NCAAA. Back in twenty twenty, when the NBCA

(26:16):
announced the first and second Team All Americans, some people are, oh,
that's an the NBCA All American. That's not an NCAA
All American. The NCAA does not award All American honors.
That is up to the individual sports to determine how
they do that. In our case, it's the Wrestling Coaches Association,
which names the Division one All American team. That four
years has simply just been the place winners. So the

(26:39):
place winner and the All Award All American have been
synonymous with each other up until we learn oh wait,
in twenty twenty, the NBCA named the first and second
teams and then they named honorable mentions. So you're hearing
terms like All American and Placer in different different worlds. Now,
because we have a five time All American and a

(26:59):
fourth placer, this is the last year we should have
that because those COVID kids, the COVID era kids are
now aging out of these extra years of eligibility, at
least in terms of those that have wrestled the tournament
five times. Still got a couple of those, like Carteristarachi,
for example. But the OW is an NWCA award. It
is voted on by the coaches. The Coach of the

(27:20):
Year is an NWCA award voted on by the coaches.
The Assistant Coach of the Year some places, that's the
assistant Coaching Staff of the Year is voted on by
the coaches, so the end of the tournament, before the end,
they get sent out a ballot to their phone. It's
all digital now, so there is no not like they're
not counting OW ballots at the table like we did
twenty five years ago. It's digital. It's like a survey

(27:41):
Monkey link or an Alkimer link or something like that. Boom,
boom when we fill out and they have the stats,
boom when the time gets cut off, here's the OW.
And whoever, whether it be Rob Cole who does Coach
of the Year because it's named after his dad, you know,
whoever's lawyer's usually doing the OW or most falls or
something like that. You know those are you know there
are in awards Most Dominant and Restler of the Year

(28:03):
are NCAA awards. OW is not an NCAA awards, So
all those things that are extra have to come after
the championships have officially closed. So OW is going to
happen after the official close of the championships.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Thank you for explaining that, Jason. Okay, how long have
we had three hundred and thirty wrestlers? Approximately three hundred
thirty wrestlers at this tournament.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Glenn, you know the answer to that because it's in
the book, because you've done your research. So we can
go back and look participant in history by year, and
Glenn is setting up a lot of these questions so
you can buy the guide. This also goes to the
time of the research. So we see on page fifteen,
I can tell you the participants by history, and I

(28:51):
don't say qualifiers semantics. Why do I not say that
because there are people who have qualified that got hurting
could not compete. So you like Kevin Beasley, for example,
My buddy wrestled at that school in Norfolk, transferred to
Michigan first that year, qualified but got hurt could not compete. Well,
he was an NCAA qualifier. If I don't think you know,

(29:13):
I just say so. No, it's participant. So if you're
competing in the tournament, I'll put you as That's why
I used the term participant. So a little unnecessary facts there.
So we go back. I'll tell you how many schools,
how many wrestlers, how many schools had a placer. That's
all in a scroll, so we can go back and
look in the field the number of wrestlers. Three hundred
ninety four was in nineteen seventy. That was the last year.

(29:35):
Then we went to qualifying systems and more of a
format that we have, so we see they're whittling down
and we got to about nineteen ninety that's when D
two and D three were phased out. Dan Russell I
believe was the last D two wrestler to be grandfathered
in under that. I think he wrestled in ninety one
or ninety two, But we kind of settled on that
three thirty number right around nineteen ninety eight nineteen ninety nine,

(29:58):
so some years you'll see a three twenty nine here.
That is because again Jay Hammon's database really helped start this.
Didn't have maybe who the entry was before it was
pulled out of the bracket, so I'd have to go
through the pages of Amateur Wrestling News, which on the
screen I got a pile of them right there, filed
from years, so I have to go and maybe find
out who was scratched at the tournament, if that was

(30:19):
actually reported. But three point thirty has been a consistent
since the late nineties.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
I think I think one of the things that's nice
about the way they do it now since then is
the fact that it's a lot more quantifiable.

Speaker 4 (30:35):
I mean, the.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
Seating et cetera was kind of you know, back room,
and the entries were kind of backroom. And then they
made it you know, so there were pretty not rigid,
but really good guidelines.

Speaker 4 (30:50):
And I think it's become a much better way to
get the wrestlers into the tournament.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, the wild card meeting prior to two thousand and nine,
they caused people not to be friends anymore. There was
some some stuff, and there was some it's just weird.
I love this format much. I mean it's not perfect.
It's not perfect. We know it's not per No system

(31:18):
is going to be perfect. But this system is much
more I mean it's much more democratic. I mean, you win,
you win enough matches, you're good. You don't have to
worry about, well, we need to get this many guys
to the round of twelve. And I will use this
as an example, and it was from from the old CIA,
in which the year Ben Askron was on a tear
every you know, there were people that were kind of

(31:39):
fleeing the way class allegedly because like, well, we're not
gonna win Ben's just destroying everybody. So the thought was
from the the the conference formerly known as the Colonial
Athletic Association now it's the Coastal does not sponsor wrestling anymore,
partially because that school in Norfolk and a school in
Fairfax left the conference and then we know how that went.

(32:01):
The situation was is they were trying to get more
round of twelve athletes at one seventy four, so it
helped him get bore bids that old historical data of
the five year rolling average, which is you could have
wrestlers that didn't actually compete with that were not actually
in college at the time determining who got bids. So
they both they took the CIA took four to seventy

(32:23):
four pounders because they had a better chance at getting
They thought all of those wrestlers to the blood round,
and they left a guy named Ryan Williams home that
from that school in Norfolk w ended up being an
eventual NCAAA runner up. He was third behind two All Americans,
Don Fish from Ryter and Charles Griffin from Hofstra. So
the new system, the system we have now, Willie doesn't
get left home and the collective one seventy fours that year,

(32:47):
don't go oh and six because one one did not
get to go prior, so they took four. One was
scratched before the tournament, and the other three would oh and
six that year. So that's my lesson a while, I
like this system better than the wildcard system, well hit,
I like it. I like I'm not bitter at all.
I'm not bitter at all.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
And I remember some I remember some of those wildcard
votes at the old EIWA. You know, I was Billy's assistant.
We married. But yeah, guys, since two thousand and nine,
we've had thirty three guys per weight class qualify. And
it's like Jason said, sometimes not healthy enough to wrestle
in there. Okay, but Jason said, real quick. Nineteen seventy

(33:29):
we had the most wrestlers ever, three hundred ninety four. Okay.
In nineteen eighty we had one hundred and twenty eight
teams with qualifiers. That's the most ever. And in nineteen
eighty six we had forty six schools with all Americans,
which was the most ever. And that's great. There's some
things you can find out once this guy comes out,

(33:53):
like how many brothers are in the tournament et cetera.
Some small, great trivia questions like that that we're not
ready to answer you because, as Jason said, the out
large bids are just coming out as we're recording this.
But we can answer this. Okay, what school is one
of the most titles.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
Well, we know that's Oklahoma State thirty four and counting
as they like.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
To say, yep, and then I was second with twenty four,
Penn State's third with twelve. What coach has won the
most titles?

Speaker 1 (34:26):
That would be, uh, the year of our Lord Gable.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Right, yes, the year Lord Gable.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
I'm stealing that from my buddy's at Blood Round. Tommy
and Kevin jokingly said, yeah, it's the Blood Round Wrestling
podcast here in the Year of Our Lord Gable. So
it's always kind of funny to not to poke any
blasphemy at there. But I was just I felt like
it was prime time for me to finally answer that
that way.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Okay, that was perfect. Gable's got fifteen, He's c Gallagher
and Cale Sanderson both have eleven as of right now.

Speaker 4 (34:55):
Okay, I don't think Gallagher is gonna get a lot more.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
No, Gallagher's stuck on eleven, and I think Sanderson might
win another one or two or three or four with
the way he's going. Okay, what coach has the longest
Division one ten yure?

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Jason jay Wis at Harvard jay Weis covid is I
can tell you that that is. Actually I can probably
have to pull up this year's guide for that because
I updated the numbers some years.

Speaker 4 (35:24):
Right.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, he's over thirty because we had Tom Barelli and
John W. Smith retire last year. So if I can
scroll up by page again, I've got my other I'm
not gonna I'm not gonna scroll on screen for you anymore,
just because that's that's that makes for bad. Of course,
it can't find what I'm looking for. Like I said,
I've got my uh got my preview guide working on

(35:47):
the screens behind me, and I've still I mean, I
have it up, so let's see, I gotta remember where
that is. That is because my table contents isn't link
up yet, so which is why I've got to scroll
through these things. But in there is a ton of trivia,
and one of which is coaching ten years, and it
will break down every coach. It'll also have how long
they've been there. So if I can find this correctly. Man,

(36:07):
I should have just had page numbers for these things
on here. Would make it for a much better example.
All right. So Jay Weiss has been at Harvard for
thirty this is thirty first season, followed by Brian Smith
and Joel Greenley. Brian Smith at Missouri Joel Greenleay to Ohio.
Both have been there twenty seven years, twenty five years
for the Mangler, Mark Banning at Nebraska. So those are
our quarter centurions that are still actively coaching first year coaches.

(36:31):
While we're on the flip side, and we've got John
Stutsman at Bloom, Donnie Vincent at Buffalo, Ben Bennett Central Michigan,
Donny pritz Laugh at Columbia, Jamie Franco at Hostra, John
ARSII at l IU, David Taylor at Oklahoma State, and
Adam Hall at Utah Valley.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Thank you for that. Okay, Now we bet you a
little bit ago that we'll see how many brothers in
this tournament?

Speaker 4 (36:55):
Now?

Speaker 2 (36:55):
What was the most number of brothers in one tournament?

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Off the top of my house.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
From one family?

Speaker 1 (37:04):
One family? Oh, it is the Fine Silvers, the Law
Offices of Fine Silver, Fine Silver, Fine Silver and fine silver. Yeah,
they had two sets of twins for Duke. Although to
the other question, last year, believe we had nine sets
of brothers in the tournament. The most I can remember,
I want to say, was Saint Louis and either three
or four maybe because I remember Sandy said something and

(37:26):
I walked over. I went through because I had looked
this up when I was at intermat so it must
have been anywhere between five and eight in that range,
and I definitely knew it. Thought it was Saint Louis.
There were thirteen sets of brothers one year. I remember that,
and because there was somebody had said there was nine,
I went through and I said, no, there's these two
because they were on separate teams like the Stout Brothers,
for example, ones that pit at ones at Princeton. So

(37:48):
that type of stuff is also in the guide.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, that's great. I tell us a little bit about
nineteen sixty two one fifteen with the four guys from
Grand Year.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
Well, what's funny between about this is Ben Askrin will
always he'll jump out on Twitter and ask questions and
sometimes he'll tag me in the question. Sometimes he won't,
and or he was on fr I think this one
was an FRL question last year when he was on
with with the crew at FRL, and I remember this
being the case because they was talking about the three Arrowheads.

(38:26):
Three wrestlers Keegan O'Toole, Mitchell Messing Brink, and Noah mulvaney.
They were all the same weight class. I'm pretty sure
those are the three from a Heartland Arrowhead in Wisconsin.
So it was like, and those are kids that he
coached with his club, and Ben went to Arrowhead. So
I was like, No, said, is that the most I
was like, well, I haven't been able to nail down

(38:46):
all the high schools of all time, but I do
know that in nineteen sixty two, four wrestlers from one
high school were at the same weight class. Mike grand
Staff for Virginia Tech was Granby guy. Gray Simons from
lock Haven was a Granby guy. Let's keep going down here.
We've got Bill Merriam from Lehigh was a Granby guy.

(39:09):
Oakley Johnson from Michigan State was a Granby guy. Now,
if you've listened to my Etchton Stone series with Gray Simons,
here's an interesting side note with those four ocle Johnson
was a four time state champion Grandy for coach legendary
coach Billy Martin. Well. Gray went to the ninth grade

(39:30):
early and then he had he lost like the second
half of his senior year, so he only wrestled. He
was on the squad his freshman year. He got beat
out by Mike Grandstaff for the starting spot. Mike Grandstaff,
when's the state title? The next year grand Staff starts,
Gray wins, and then the next year grand Staff goes
to Norview beats Gray in the state finals. Then the

(39:52):
next year Gray can't start Bill Merriam because he's not
not eligible. Bill Merriam wants the state when's the state title?
So Grace tied to all all those guys, So yeah,
and Grace Simons won that weight class, beating Mike McCracken
of Oklahoma State in the finals. So four grammy guys
in a weight class that had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,
and eleven twelve thirty fourteen more than what's what's for

(40:15):
divided by fourteen, that's more than was that thirty percent?
Thirty percent of the of the weight class was grammy comments.

Speaker 3 (40:23):
So Grace Simon's only won one state title. I sophomore Yeah, yeah,
that's an interesting stat right there.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
Won seven college national titles, won one high school state title.

Speaker 4 (40:34):
One high school yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Kyle, one national titles, need state titles?

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Wow, Okay, I clearly was not alive when that happened.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
No, okay. Have there ever been two people from the
same high school in the finals?

Speaker 1 (40:53):
Yeah? Mount Carmel Tony Davis, T. J. Williams nineteen ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yep, thank you for that. That's that's wild.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
Hold On.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Who makes the decision of the order of the championship
finals Saturday night, Like what weight class is going to be?

Speaker 1 (41:08):
The levision straight television, So there is a discussion. The
NCAA has a discussion with the ESPN. They look at
the matchups, they look at hey, should it be this
should be? This is their team score race. So uh
sometimes like well, the one year with Gable in the finals,
just leave it in order wrestling, and then one year
we're like, all right, we'll start at seventy four because

(41:29):
we won in sixty five. So that's that's that's the
discussion between the NCAA committee and television.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
Yeah, and I think it's pretty obvious what's going to
be the last one this year?

Speaker 1 (41:44):
Funny things can happen at the tournament.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, that's true, that's true. Okay, have wrestlers ever placed
as they were seated one through eight in any weight
class at a year.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
So they started placing eight in when nineteen seven nine,
so they started seating the twelve and in no place
in history have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven
eight at this tournament ever happened. One through three fourths
happened because well that would make sense, but back then
they only seeded four. But one through eight has never happened.

(42:18):
So if you're at you're you're you're wanting to play
the lottery, well and you want to throw your money away,
bet on that happening, because it won't happen.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yep. Okay, Kevin, go ahead and ask some questions. You
go ahead, Okay, I didn't want to hog the screen. Okay, Well,
let's split.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
With the screen. It's that's three of us on here now.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
So the city with the most NCAA champions.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
You can find that in the guide. But it was
a place. We were not that far away. We were not
that uh we were we were we just at Actually
a lot of you were at there there this weekend
Tulsa because host of the Big Twelve Tournament to Tulsa, Oklahoma,
with forty something. Off the top of my head, I
want to say forty eight. I'm trying to recite this
from memory. That's what I'm trying. I'm trying to sound

(43:12):
smarter than I actually am. It's not going so well
for me.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Well, you've had a lot of data to compile this.
But what school has the post o w's.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
Oh, i'd be Oklahoma State.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Yep. Okay. And I put this together. How many multiple
most pins guys have we had? Guys have won the
Gregorian Award more than once.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Oh, let's see, I don't know that off the top
of my head, Glenn. Let's see.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
I do know that off the top of my head,
because you do the top of my head, because I
put it together a little bit ago.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
Yeah, because that now you didn't feed me before.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Yep. Magic man Gary Albright in the Lord in the
Year of Our Lord Gable and Hot.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Gary Albright, Yep, he was a Husker.

Speaker 4 (44:08):
Asker and had done it one year.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
I just looked at it real quick when I was
waiting to start to show.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
For one thing, I also do have in the guide
when we talk about most falls is I have the
standings on all time, all time, so we have him
by a year, which last year was was whyt Hendrickson.
He had three falls in ten minutes and six seconds.
But all right, I'll turn this on you, which you
can only get in the guide because I'm the only
one who's ever compiled this stat and listed it this way.

(44:39):
Most falls, least time, fastest ever. So of all the
most falls least times, you can find the.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Guide Gable and Magic Man. Gable had five pins twice.
Bruce ken Bruce Kensith had five pins. I'm drawing a
blank on who was the one, and I saw your thing,
the one who did it the most, who did it
the quickest. I thought it was white Hendrickson for some reason,
but maybe not. No, he didn't have five.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
Darryl Peterson in nineteen eighty five is what it is?
Five falls? Get this in five minutes and forty one.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Yeah, yeah, I didn't know that to fight.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
I look back, I didn't come out of the first
period ever.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
Yeah. One thing I've also got to add is I
don't have this in here, and I'm gonna write this down.
I probably if I don't have if I didn't put
it in last year. I probably should how many four time?
How many wrestlers have been the number one seed four
times in the modern era? And I have to? And okay,
clarifying modern era is kind of a weird term because

(45:41):
we have various errors in wrestling in the era in
which we've seeded to twelve or at least more than twelve.
So we've playdates since nineteen seventy nine. Let's go there.
How many wrestlers have been seated number one four times?

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Cale? Sandersoud for sure?

Speaker 1 (45:56):
One's one?

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Okay, No, not.

Speaker 4 (46:01):
Smith, Not not John the younger brother.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Oh, Pat, No, I don't think he was. Well. I
think Dake was seated over Taylor that one year when
Dake beat Taylor, So that takes him out. Dake was
not seated number one the first year he won?

Speaker 1 (46:21):
Uh for the second?

Speaker 2 (46:24):
What's that?

Speaker 1 (46:25):
He wasn't seated number one at nine either.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Darian Caldwell was Okay, hmmm, Steve, No, I don't think.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
The tricky thing is is he only won two national titles.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
Well, the Taylor jumps out when you say one two,
But I think Dake was seated number one above him.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Tim Kreeger, okay, was the number one seed all four
years and finished fifth first second. First. The joke is
comedian Greg Warren talks about wrestling Tim Kreeger in college,
and he goes, you know, talking about west Roper. Well,
dere Warren give it to him. It's like I was
wrestling this guy who lost three times his entire career.

(47:12):
There are some days I lost four. He's talking about
Tim Kreeger. Yeah, because I'm pretty sure Tim Creeger only
lost three times his college career, twice in the in
the tournament his freshman year and then the junior year
in the finals.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
Yeah, so I may have to add that to the guide.
All right, we need to Yeah, I got guide stuff
to put together. Boys, Okay, questions we've gone through.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
D we flow through all the questions that we have
answers to right now.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
So well, let me let me just put it. Let
me what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna put
a little pull the curtain back a little bit. That's
not what I want to pull the curtain on. Let's
go back to the other sheet. No, that's not it. Okay, anyway,
there's the Tim Kreeger search. What I'm gonna do here
is I'm gonna jump over. Once I get the right
thing on the display, I think, think this is where
we're at. Let's try that. Yeah, there we go, so
right here on the page. So this is how I've

(48:05):
done it. So if you are a fan of philadelph
if you're a fan of history, I think you're gonna
be pretty pleased with how this thing works because we've
got a ton of them here. So here's this year.
You know, it's the guide. So I've got you know,
we go with some, we go with some, some presidential,
some history here. If you buy this before we're out,
you'll get this placeholder proof of purchase on it. But

(48:26):
we have the Founding Father sitting here in an arena,
ready to go with the guide. Now. I'm also a
fan of crude humor. One of my favorite shows is
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. So there is a distinct
theme running through this year. Last year I went with
the comic book theme. The year before I went with

(48:48):
the Nintendo the Nees cartridge theme, which probably was my
favorite whenever I had Mario stuff in it, and I
had eight bit stuff everywhere. This year, the prevailing theme
is the Gang goes to NCAA, and if you've familiar
with the show Always Sunny in Philadelphia, there will be
some Easter eggs and some callbacks from the show in

(49:08):
the guide, so I try to keep it light as well.
So we've got a bit of a blend of you know,
Franklin and the Declaration of Independence meets meets Patty's Pub, which,
oddly enough, if you go try to look for it,
does not actually exist in Philadelphia. There's also the questions
about cheese steaks. By the way, it's not a Philly

(49:29):
cheese steak, just called a cheese steak. You can do
your the teruristy spots and pats at Geno's. I do
recommend it for the experience. You can pretty much get
a cab there at all times. There are better cheese
steaks to be had in Philadelphia, you know. There's You
can ask anybody who's the local. You'll get fifteen different answers.
One of the better spots that was near Drexel and

(49:50):
Pen was called Abner's. I think they closed. There is
a cheese steak food truck right off the train station
I want to say thirty third, thirty fourth Street near
the Drexel stop. Call Horns. It's a food truck. I
ran into that food truck on kind of on the
back side. There's a bunch of food trucks there. That
was real quality cheese steaks. So if you're taking the
train in, maybe hop a block around the corner and

(50:11):
go to Horns. They've got a little Instagram presence. They're
not really prolific on it, but I enjoyed that cheese steak.
And it's a big guy who spent a lot of
time in central Pennsylvania. That's one traveling in. I would
definitely recommend that it's kind off the beaten path. So
as we get to the guide in here, I'll have
these this table contents. Let me take the grid and
grid lines off. I use Adobe in Design to do

(50:32):
this in case you're wondering. So we have a clickable
table of contents. So if you've got a place to
your phone, your iPad, that'll all be there. We've got
our schedule of events you'll need to know. These are
all links to the brackets from the past, your quick
stuff that you'll want to know. Here's a quick stuff
of who's the last chance, where's it been? And I
break the aras up just so there's more questions. So

(50:54):
you can see here the divisional era because we started
three divisions at nineteen seventy four. Freshman eligible became in
nineteen sixty nine, so you know, they kind of say
the Gable era. Anything after Gable is a new era.
I like to use the four year eligibility standard as
a modern era. Then we have the University division started
in nineteen sixty three where we had the college and
university divisions. Prior to that it was just the NCAA Championships.

(51:18):
So we've got that, We've got our largest point spreads,
which of course I had to update this from last
year because Penn State blew the roof off the place.
I kind of kept with my you know, Ross Bendick
from the Foundation for Wrestling Art has these cool little
graphics and such, so I used that trophy one for
part of it from the eight bit era. We keep
this in here again, this is in the front end

(51:38):
of the book. The other breakout that I added this
year is like the champion, how many champs and AA's
has the Champion had? That wasn't found anywhere until I
decided to throw that in last year. So the front
end of the book has a lot of the basic stats.
Then we you know, Glenn alludes to some of the
questions that we've had the announcing history. What I'll have
you see this in red. That means I haven't updated
that yet, so it tells you how a year. One

(51:59):
of the things I really like is when we get
to the back, I'm gonna scroll through because all this
stuff is all blank stuff right now, you know, oh,
this is also for your for your draft type stuff,
bonus victories. I'm gonna add the dominator points this year,
which is what the same metric the NCAAA uses for
most dominant. Basically, it's like a duel meet. If you
wrestle every every pin, you get six, tech, five, four

(52:22):
and three. If you lose by three, you lose by decision,
you lose three. So I have the dominant score, kind
of like your top one hundred when it's sometimes to
fix your fantasy baseball. The top scoring wrestler across the
entire tournament, so if you're picking madly, or if the
top scoring wrestlers per weight class, I'll have bonus points.
I'll have all that stuff in here. From the stats.
I break out stats like you would not believe. If

(52:43):
you need to look for some trends, here's how the
overall seeding performance has been of those place winners over
the last and this point since nineteen ninety nine, since
we changed to the current weight class structure. Then we've got,
you know, the unseated. We don't have unseated wrestlers anymore.
So this is one thing that Glenn was going to
allude to, but we decided to pick up the pace.

(53:03):
How did the unseated do? What schools had the most
unseeded placers? That's all in here. Of course, the gang
lose is a bar bat I said it was. There's
Patty's Pub right there. This is the stuff you argue
about what state has the most All Americans? What state
has the most national champions? Who are the four and
you know five time All Americans and place winners. We're
gonna you know, we've got the Carter Starachi going for five.

(53:26):
Last year, i'd had this with him and Aaron Brooks
on their quest for four titles. Now Starachi's going for five.
His entire career match by matches in here. We had
to expand this to four timers. We had Brooks and
Starachi last year we threw them in there, we had
the finalists, we have the two time champs, and now
then we have one of my favorite things. This is
the bigger one of the big topic talking points from

(53:47):
folks at your generation is oh, the D two and
D three champs they used to have a chance to
you know, well, you know they only were there technically
for seventeen seasons because seventy four was the started divisional era.
There used to a big Carlton right there in the
divisional era. And then we also have the era where
schools with dual affiliations like the aforementioned Gray Simon's pictured

(54:07):
darreing your screen. Rick Sanders, for example, wrestled in five
college you know, placed in five college tournaments. So you've
got all sorts of bar trivia. The Gloria ron that
I talked to. Who the ow's are the wrestlers on
the cover of Sports Illustrated, including there's a Tennessee guy
in there, Glenn. Yes, that's frank Emmanuel, who side note,

(54:29):
was my stepbrother's uncle. He's the reason I'm a Tampa
Bay Buccaneers fan. I've mentioned it on the show before.
Frankie wrestled at the nineteen I want to say sixty
one sixty two in that range NCAA Championships. He was.
I didn't catch this for years because he was listened
under his name. He's his first name, Tom Thomas Frank Emmanuel.
So it was again so it was my stepdad's first

(54:51):
wife's brother. So but he was around. So you know,
you know my stepbrother was a Dolphins fan because Frankie
played for the Dolphins. I actually have that SI here.
I actually have all three of those sis. I've donated
two of them to the Hall of Fame, so the
Hall of Fame has Those are the three wrestlers that
have been on the cover of Sports Illustrated, including Danny
Hodge right there added, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
When Emmanuel qualified for you, Gie, we did not have
a team.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Here's the thing. The NCAA's were opened back then. So
in in the book that bud Ford put together for
for you Tennessee Valls people, there is a little pot
out about frank wrestling at the NCAA's without a team.
So that's a cool thing that it was a situation.
I didn't learn about Uncle Frankie wrestling until about five

(55:40):
years ago. And this is this is a guy I
was a Bucks fan because of because he was on
the Buccaneers coaching staff when I was a kid. Streaks.
This is one that's also very common. Question, when was
the last time, you know, I always got that streak
of having a finalist. Uh, that is there. That's the
thirty four straight years we've got the ASTRASK with a

(56:01):
couple things. Of course, Cornell didn't compete in twenty twenty one.
Oklahoma State streak ended due to the palty back of
nineteen ninety three, so they were unable they were ineligible
to compete that year. Multiple champions by team, we've got
you know what teams have had five all five champs
in a year. That's all here again, I'm showing you
the stuff that you can get. I'm not going to

(56:22):
stay on the there so you can screenshot it. The
most prolific teams of all time, all the schools with
the most medals, the most qualifiers, the heras through the generations.
I'm talking about t Swift Blood round. My favorite stat
in this whole book is this guy right here, Zach Sanders.
Zach Sanders from Minnesota is the only wrestler in the

(56:45):
era since nineteen seventy nine where we placed eight. Where
there is a true blood round, the round of twelve.
To have wrestled in that round four times and never
lost the only one in history that he never made
a semi. Finally, he was a four time All American,
but he never lost in the blood round. Sadly, the
only person who have gone to the blood round four
times and lost every one of them was Mickey Phillippi

(57:09):
just a year or two ago for Pitt. So there's
there's some real cool stuff with this picture. I love
this picture Zach and j Rob I found. I was like,
you know what, that's that's cool. So Zack's a great dude.
Jay's the reason I started. I moved out to Minnesota.
So those are some cool things. There's a lot of
those Blood Round questions that come up that I get
a lot. And of course I added the graphic of

(57:30):
John Langey this year. It's called pulling a Langy the
wrestlers who have lost in the first round and come
back to finish third. And this also has to be quantified.
Nineteen ninety seven is in ninety seven or ninety six? Yeah,
ninety six the advent of the full rustle back. Prior
you had to lose in the first round. If you
lost the first round, the guy who beat you had

(57:51):
to win, cause there are guys that went to the
NCAAH one. You're a full zero to two guy to
in barbecue if you at least qualified win a match
in this era. John was the first one to do it,
lost the first round to David Wells of cal Poly,
came all the way back and finished third. The last
guy to do that was Tyler Kaisak from Penn State
did it last year. Oddly enough, both number seven seeds,

(58:13):
both in Penn State. So that's another favorite stat that's
in here. What team's records are in the semis and
the finals. This is also a new thing new this year.
What are the most loaded weight classes in NCAAA history.
People believe that, like the the two ninety nine pounds

(58:35):
with the most champs and such like. You could say
that there were you know, that year, for example, there
were thirteen all Americans. There were eight individual titles out
of that group alone, six individual champs. So I've broken
that out. That was something that you know. This is
another thing I do is where's the flow of teams
per year? Qualifiers per year? Sadly, I have to put
teams that dropped in there, like that school in Norfolk,

(58:58):
and then also added the last year I added this
qualifiers per conference per year, so you can see the flow,
the EBB and flow. This year we will have we
had our first automatic qualifier from Bellarmint, so that'll be
in there. Southern Conference champion, so Bellerman will be in
the book for the first time officially. Here's our era,
you know, since nineteen seventy four of the divisional era,

(59:19):
where we're at with conferences and whatnot, So a lot
of stuff, the championship bios will be in here. This
is the last ninety to one hundred pages I have
to put together. I can't do that until those brackets
come out, so that's the hard part. You gotta wait
for those seeds and be able to organize. I can
have everything ready to go, which is I need to
sort them and have and whatnot. And then of course

(59:40):
on the back page I always leave a page for
where we remember our fall and wrestling friends. Last year
we remembered Denny Dial, Tommy McMillan, and John Graham. So
that's what I have here. So pay homage again to
those of those of who we lost throughout the last year.
So that is how the guide works, That's how it's
put together. That's why i don't get any sleep this

(01:00:01):
time of year. And I'm announcing the d threes this weekend.
So and I was announcing the Anais last weekend and
then I announced the Reagionable before then.

Speaker 4 (01:00:10):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
So it's been busy. That's what I got. All that stuff.
You can have all that stuff, matt talk online dot Com,
slash Guide, Matt's dad save ten bucks.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
It's well worth the money.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
It's well worth it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Again, I like to thank first of all, I'd like
to thank you guys because again, you guys brought me
onto this show three years ago to kind of handle
the heavy lifting behind the scenes. And it's been something
you guys have been supporting this and it's again you
just you know, it's it's your show. I'm just here
for it. And it's the opportunity to to kind of
pitch this because you know, I'm an independent media outlet.

(01:00:49):
I am my own you know, I don't have you know,
the check is it written by somebody else. I got
to go out and hustle for it. And this is
one of the things that I've put together. I get
it because it answers a lot of my questions. But honestly,
this is the one thing you you know, everybody, and
I say this, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna make some
money off of this, clearly, but as a wrestling junkie,

(01:01:10):
this is the answers almost every one of your questions
at your fingertips. So that's my pitch. Matt Talk online
dot com slash guide. If you most of my buyers
are repeat buyers. If they get it once, you're gonna
get it again. And if you get it again, you're
gonna get a discount code for a discount off of
next year. So you really if you ever played full
price for it, you've missed a discount code, or you're
a first time buyer. So that's what I got. Matt

(01:01:31):
Talk online dot Com slash guide from the makers of
the Fargo womanac and the Olympic Preview Guide, is the
Division I Preview Guide. So that's all I've got, gentlemen.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Okay, guys on behalf of Jason and Kevin. Look forward
to seeing all you guys in my old home city
in Philadelphia for the National Tournament.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Audios Bloggers and cheese steaks for everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Yeah, saft pretzels and cheese takes. Blogger go Danny Bloggers
saw pretzels, cheese steaks.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Blogger I