By Britt Malinsky
I planned on making the first article for this site be something totally different, but I feel like I’m forced to start this with a comment about a school that has won six out of the last seven NCAA Division I Wrestling championships, and, with what they have in the pipeline, has the talent to become 12 out of 13 even if the head wrestling coach there doesn’t recruit a single additional wrestler moving forward. I’ve heard conflicting stories, both in that there’s an extension awaiting Board of Trustees approval, and that the two parties are still negotiating a new contract.
To me, what the scenario actually is is irrelevant. James Franklin, the Penn State football coach, would never be coaching in the final year of his contract. Pat Chambers, the Penn State basketball coach, would never be coaching in the final year of his contract, and it should be noted that Pat Chambers has had exactly one postseason appearance in his six-season Penn State career, and that was a College Basketball Invitational appearance in 2013-14. He has never made the NCAA Championships, and has never even been invited to the National Invitational Tournament! Why Sandy Barbour, the Penn State University Athletic Director, would leave wrestling’s head coach, Cael Sanderson, in the lurch for an entire season, and play Russian Roulette with the success this program has had in the last few years, confuses me to absolutely no end. Further, the fact that Cael could bring in the sort of class that has been reported for the Class of 2018 so far despite the chaos of being in the last year of his contract, frankly, shows how much work the rest of the Division I wrestling world has to do to catch up.
Britt Malinsky is the editor for Wrestling By Pirate, located at wrestlingbypirate.wordpress.com. He can be reached on Twitter at @WrestlingSHP.
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