Yes I do know that Mark Reiland passed away. I heard it was from covid. That was criminal. Left behind a wife and children. He was quite a few years years after me.
I really had to think long and hard what you asked me. It's not a simple question and a hard one to answer. I think it starts at the top. All the most dynamic wrestlers buy into cael sanderson, Tom ryan, and Tom brands. There's a level of security, and a sense of proving yourself when you wrestle underneath these type of coaches and their legacies. Furthermore, when recruiting they know who are the top 1 to 5 guys who will carry that certain type of mindset into college wrestling. Did you ever notice that most of cael sanderson's wrestlers have similar personalities to him? It's not by mistake. Very unassuming, quiet, but extremely focused, physically gifted athletes... plain and simple. It's the same thing with brands. His athletes always seem like physically gifted, intense screwballs. These coaches know what works for them and who they can coach and who they can coach. Also the culture on the campuses. It's a given that wrestling is number one in Iowa, football and wrestling are number two at Ohio State, and wrestling and football are number one and two at Penn State. There's so much support from the community, state of the art facilities, incredible financial funding, and this air that you have to prove yourself on the team... even if you're the highest level high school wrestler. We don't have that at Rutgers. It's almost like what sport is hot for 2 years or in the moment the administration and student body buy into. Also Rutgers is a very liberal campus in comparison to an iowa, Penn State or Ohio State. We'd rather celebrate a racist professor, a non binary organization, and partying lifestyle, then get behind our athletes. That's just the culture of New Jersey. I also think good Dale is to PC. He finds the goodness even in the worst situations and it's all about preserving his position as a coach. He finds the good in everything, which is a good quality but it can't be for every situation. When brands is pissed he lets people know about it and nobody questions him. Hence the overly liberal culture that he surrounded by in Rutgers. He has to watch everything he says. It's tough being a coach in a very physical sport at a very liberal, sissy boy School. This is certainly not the Rutgers I went to. So I really think the failure is and why we're stagnant is that we don't have the big name as a head coach regardless of his successes, and he doesn't exude that intensity those other three do. A lot of it has to do with the campus life. You can't fault him. He's a business and family man like everybody else is. With that said I will still stick to my original argument in that he's brought Rutgers further in the amount of time, any coach has brought a program they took over. I just think we're stagnant. We also recruit too many lighter weights. We have this log jam a lower weights but scammering for middleweight guys.
