Why? Nobody's putting an asterisk on this year with Cornell already out.
Iowa week .....over before it started???
- Thread starter dunkej01
- Start date
Until Cornell's lawyers get involved, that is.
Agreed. Emphasis on "yesterday".Obviously this is really a duck of Robbie Howard, who was about to enter the game and wreck Spencer Lee's perfect season.
Joking aside, seeing Iowa take the mat yesterday drove home the fact that I clearly don't understand how contact tracing works given Tom Brands' positive C-19 test last week.
Like everything, the answer depends on the scale.
Tex set his own frame: "if any 3 of ___ are out." Like setting frameworks, asterisks are subjective also.
Call Cornell one team out (ignoring a few other ranked studs on other ivies), any asterisks anybody assigns now has low to minor weight or value. But it's still valid to bring up in convo!
Add 3 more from Tex's list? That asterisk grows substantially in meaning. One might even say "The asterisk next to the resulting team and individual titles would be so big as to dwarf the accomplishment" and be found to be generally valid.
tl;dr: Remove 4 powerhouse programs from Nationals, and I'm with Tex: the asterisk is HUGE.
It could be cool if they allowed the returning top 2 place winners from last year D3 compete at the D1 tourny since theirs was canceled. Pipe dream and many reasons why it would not work I imagine..
To me, that wouldn't matter. Of course, there would be an asterisk because it's not a "normal" year and there's a weakened field, but the tournament is still likely to produce some great matches, and I'd love to see that no matter who is competing. If it ends up with the same prestige as, say, winning the Southern Scuffle in a normal year, who cares? There have been great matches at the Scuffle over the years, too.
Sorry, asterisks exist only among fans and sports media. Not in the actual games.
At least not until they're on the rings and banners.
At least not until they're on the rings and banners.
I have never really seen an asterisk in the record books, or if there were one I doubt it would mean much. If say Iowa, and Mich to get hit and PSU wins the championship do you think 10 years from now anyone will be saying yeah, PSU won but...? No it will l be PSU won 5 straight and 9 out of 11 years.
Anyone? Check that. I do believe HR would be talking about it 10 years from now.
Sorry, actually that might be 8 straight and 12 out of 14 years
Anyone? Check that. I do believe HR would be talking about it 10 years from now.
Sorry, actually that might be 8 straight and 12 out of 14 years
I have never really seen an asterisk in the record books, or if there were one I doubt it would mean much. If say Iowa, and Mich to get hit and PSU wins the championship do you think 10 years from now anyone will be saying yeah, PSU won but...? No it will l be PSU won 5 straight and 9 out of 11 years.
Anyone? Check that. I do believe HR would be talking about it 10 years from now.
Sorry, actually that might be 8 straight and 12 out of 14 years
Yep, the asteriks are only in people's minds.
A prime example. That is what everyone said and believed but the official record did not have an asterisk and still does not today.
Iowa faithful will never acknowledge the asterisk that will be with any title placement this yr lol
Baseball did proclaim there was an asterisk. There was basically a 154 game record and a 162 game record. In 1991 baseball removed the asterisk and recognized Maris 61 as the single season record.
That and the interwebs......I've already typed it....err...saw it being used in message board combat.
JimGibbonsNoS**t dot gif
You know I love your work, but this is a tired point: conflating all Asterisks as equal--b/c they're meaningless.
I disagree with both.
I'd also add that asterisks exist among athletes, as well as fans & media. I can't find it at the moment, but Spencer Lee didn't hesitate to describe his 2020 All-American award much differently than his 2019 & 2018 ones. Wrestlers are the most self-accountable athletes on the planet. I guarantee tons of wrestlers who get to actually compete at Nationals this year (if the tourney field is depleted by 4 top programs being absent) will give us some form of verbal asterisk.
People will absolutely say "PSU won but..." if this happens from now until eternity. It won't mean a thing but they'll still say it. People put an asterisk on DeSanto's state title over Spencer Lee. In reality there is no asterisk. They wrestled. DeSanto won. That's the end of it.
With regard to my post, quibbling with the word “asterisk” misses the point. When a national championship is on the line the best athletes want to face the best competition and become the undisputed #1. Head-to-head competition eliminates debate about who is the rightful #1. Removing key competitors from the mix leaves athletes and fans alike with unanswered questions.
It’s the same reason why you see thousands of posts on any given wrestling board that explain away an unexpected or undesirable loss to a perceived inferior opponent (“our guy was injured,” “our team was sick,” “we forfeited weight X”). We want the best version of our warriors to defeat the best version of our opponents’ warriors on the field of battle. So do our warriors. If we were to win Nationals this year with Iowa sidelined, for example, I'm confident that the title would not be as meaningful to our wrestlers than if they faced and defeated Iowa on the mat in March.
It’s the same reason why you see thousands of posts on any given wrestling board that explain away an unexpected or undesirable loss to a perceived inferior opponent (“our guy was injured,” “our team was sick,” “we forfeited weight X”). We want the best version of our warriors to defeat the best version of our opponents’ warriors on the field of battle. So do our warriors. If we were to win Nationals this year with Iowa sidelined, for example, I'm confident that the title would not be as meaningful to our wrestlers than if they faced and defeated Iowa on the mat in March.
You're either with me or against me; it's black & white; binary, binary, binary...Hasn't the internet suffered enough from this lame debate method the past 10 years? It's the easiest and least mentally taxing point to ever make!
As if zero other data points exist beyond a result. Yawwwwwwnnnn.
Not quibbling PSUblu, just curious ... so for giggles, I looked at the NCAA Record Book. The only asterisks are in the team champions list, 1928, 1931, 1932 and 1933, where the "*" is a reference to the "Unofficial Champion".
"They wrestled. DeSanto won."
- this is simplistic use of the binary debate
- e.g. "you're either with me or against me"
- e.g. it's either black or white
"That's the end of it."
- more overly simplistic b.s.
- asserts that there is no further discussion available
- asserts that zero possible mitigating factors (Spencer recovering from injury) are allowed to be at play
- asserts that the Result alone is king, and dismisses any data points that are not the Result King.
I find that debate style lacks effort in thinking.
I find that debate style tiresome.
I think that style has been so played out for so many years that I reacted childishly myself.
**Disclaimer. The following is not specifically in reply to the discussion at hand, but just my thoughts on the broader topic at hand.** Humility, nuance, balance, and rational discussion of a topic where both sides are honest with the strengths and weaknesses of their respective positions does seem to be in short supply in much of what passes for dialogue/disagreement these days. The general anonymity of internet discussions sure seems to have brought out the worst in people, or as I strongly suspect, has shone a light on their true character as they hide behind their screen names, spew their garbage and slander people. As the saying goes, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks". One tiresome example of what jtothemfp mentioned is the use of "owned" and "destroyed" to describe the perceived victory of "their" side in an argument. This is really just a way for someone to beat their chest without having to actually address the finer points of the topic at hand. It is all rather tiresome for anyone who would actually enjoy a thorough and fair discussion.
To end on a more positive note, I want to thank the overwhelming number of posters on this Board who are thoughtful and polite in their comments. And for those other posters, as my Mom always told me, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." 😎
Perfect sig line for me on this, psalm guy! Thank you Ecclesiastes, 12:13.
Consensus seems to be that most of us are more concerned for Covid. It’s more like covid caught a case of the Tom Brands!!
