"Hawkeyefan - how is it that Title IX is helping increase depth at college programs? With fewer and fewer programs, there are fewer and fewer wrestlers at the college level, meaning the field of competitors is slowly dwindling away - which makes the caliber of the whole field weaker."
Okay, let's take NCAA football for instance. Let's say there are currently 113 or so D1 programs. How many have a legit shot at a national title year in & year out? Maybe 15-20 top tier programs.
Now, cut the number of teams in half. Now there are 55 teams looking for the best players. So a guy who maybe could start on a team before is all of a sudden a 2nd stringer. The 55 teams are on average going to be deeper (more overall talent) teams than when there were 115 teams.
All of a sudden there are more teams battling for a national title. The top 15 or 20 are probably still the better programs, but the other 40 teams left have way more talent than before, in other words the bottom teams have caught up with the top programs simply because of the number of roster slots in the entire league.
I watched this last night on CSN and from what I could see the Iowa style was gone. I have watched some older stuff where Gable was still coaching and the brands where still on the team and it has changed a lot. They don't seem to have that mean streak or that swagger anymore.
I think this has to be a coaching thing even if the other schools are caching up to you in the quality of wrestlers they are getting it shouldn't change their Iowa style of being aggressive or just plan mean.
But then what do I know I live in Utah and don't see that much wrestling.