Hump Day Hottie: Arizona State Wrestling

UPDATE: WRESTLING HAS BEEN REINSTATED AT ARIZONA STATE! HUZZAH!

As I have mentioned before, wrestling is my favorite sport. (The real stuff, not WWE.) An unfortunate reality in the world of wrestling is that at the college level, the sport is being decimated. 458 programs have been dropped since 1972. As a wrestling fan, I’ve written letters, bought t-shirts and donated money to try to save myriad programs, including Syracuse, Clemson, Slippery Rock, Fresno St. and Eastern Illinois. Oregon just finished their final season (damn you, Nike!) and on Tuesday, Arizona State announced that they were dropping wrestling, effective immediately. (They are also dropping men’s swimming and men’s tennis, citing economic reasons.) This breaks my heart, not just because a storied program is ending, not just because the Pac-10 is quickly dying, but also because of the hotties we’ll be missing out on. With that in mind, I bring to you the hotties of Arizona State wrestling, both present and past.

Heavyweight Quinton Pruett, formerly a Sun Devil. How cruel is the AD at ASU to deny us this?

The Other NCAA Tournament

In all the hoopla surrounding the NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament brackets (Siena Elite 8, you heard it here first!), there is another bracket that was released last night:  the NCAA Mens Wrestling Tournament, which takes place in St. Louis March 20th-22nd.  Between Iowa, Iowa State and UNI my state has 28 wrestlers competing; Iowa is missing a wrestler at 197 and UNI is missing a heavyweight.  But that’s still a lot of muscles…in spandex…rolling around….*shake* I’m back.  I’m pretty pumped about it, so here are some wrestling hotties:

Rasslin’

The Big Ten Men’s Wrestling Tournament was this weekend and while I could not be there taking awesome pictures like last time, it was exciting nonetheless.

For the conference tourney, each school gets to send one wrestler per weight class for 10 wrestlers each. The Top 7 in each weight class advance to the NCAA tourney in St. Louis in two weeks. (The top 7 seems like a lot to me, but that’s how it’s done.) Iowa is sending 9 of its 10 wrestlers to the National tourney, with only sophomore Chad Beatty not making the cut.

Overall we ended up with one champion in Brent Metcalf, one 2nd place in my wrestling boyfriend Mark Perry, four 3rd places, a 4th place and a 7th place. All in all, that’s kind of a disappointing showing by the Iowa Hawkeyes but it was still good enough to take the team crown with 127 points. Minnesota was 2nd with 112.5.

2008 National Duals

For the first time since 1996 the University of Iowa won the National Duals. At this meet, there were D-I, D-II, D-III, NAIA, NJCAA, and NCWA schools for a total of 80 teams. On Saturday, they had 18 mats going all day. Since I wangled myself a press pass, I got to be right down in the action. It was sensory overload. I have never in my life been around so many completely jacked guys. I’ve also never felt more Brobdingnagian. Wrestlers tend to run on the…short side. Wading through the crowds, I was like Godzilla attacking Toyko. Tiny muscular men were bouncing off me every which way. I’m pretty sure there are still a couple 125-lb wrestlers stuck to my shoe.