What point are stats if you aren't rolling around in them looking for the unusual? For the kindred spirits I thought I would try a little trivia.
Jan Gould - "I underestimated you Michael"
Michael Scott - "Well, maybe next time you will estimate me"
This one needs a little explaining.
I was taking a fresh look at my breakdown of the eras in college wrestling with an eye toward calculating who exceeded expectations by the most. The reason you need to break things up into eras is because the exceeded expectations calculation depends on starting and ending points (seeds and AA finishes). How the tournament has been seeded and how many AA's per tournament was highly variable in the early days. The sport was growing and organizers experimented a bit before settling on a more stable structure.
I call this The Growth and Experimentation Era. The number of AAs steadily increased as the size of the tournament increased, but seeding was a hot mess. Some year the number increased, some years it decrease, some years it disappeared, and some years even had different numbers of seeds in different brackets. Like I said, hot mess. I am going to ignore this era in this trivia.
What followed were three more eras where the number of AA's stabilized at 8, but the number of seeds increased incrementally. This will be our area of focus. Maybe it is best to share a graphic at this point that illustrates the concept.
Now back to the trivia questions.
In the 12 seed era (1979 - 2013) only 4 wrestlers exceeded their seed every year and finished on the podium four times. Who are they?
In the 16 seed era (2014 - 2018) only 3 wrestlers exceeded their seed every year and finished on the podium four times. Who are they?
In the 33 seed era (2019 - 2025) only 1 wrestler exceeded their seed every year and finished on the podium four times. Who is he?
A couple of notes.
Each one of these wrestlers started and finished their careers within the era. There are probably wrestlers whose careers spanned two eras who qualified, but I didn't bother to look for them. This eliminates a guy like Daton Fix who was a freshman in 2018 (16 seeds) and a senior in 2024 (33 seeds).
That leads to the second note. Daton would be eliminated even if his career was within an era because he was often a #1 seed, making it impossible to exceed his seed. So forget about anyone who was ever the favorite.
Jan Gould - "I underestimated you Michael"
Michael Scott - "Well, maybe next time you will estimate me"
This one needs a little explaining.
I was taking a fresh look at my breakdown of the eras in college wrestling with an eye toward calculating who exceeded expectations by the most. The reason you need to break things up into eras is because the exceeded expectations calculation depends on starting and ending points (seeds and AA finishes). How the tournament has been seeded and how many AA's per tournament was highly variable in the early days. The sport was growing and organizers experimented a bit before settling on a more stable structure.
I call this The Growth and Experimentation Era. The number of AAs steadily increased as the size of the tournament increased, but seeding was a hot mess. Some year the number increased, some years it decrease, some years it disappeared, and some years even had different numbers of seeds in different brackets. Like I said, hot mess. I am going to ignore this era in this trivia.
What followed were three more eras where the number of AA's stabilized at 8, but the number of seeds increased incrementally. This will be our area of focus. Maybe it is best to share a graphic at this point that illustrates the concept.
Now back to the trivia questions.
In the 12 seed era (1979 - 2013) only 4 wrestlers exceeded their seed every year and finished on the podium four times. Who are they?
In the 16 seed era (2014 - 2018) only 3 wrestlers exceeded their seed every year and finished on the podium four times. Who are they?
In the 33 seed era (2019 - 2025) only 1 wrestler exceeded their seed every year and finished on the podium four times. Who is he?
A couple of notes.
Each one of these wrestlers started and finished their careers within the era. There are probably wrestlers whose careers spanned two eras who qualified, but I didn't bother to look for them. This eliminates a guy like Daton Fix who was a freshman in 2018 (16 seeds) and a senior in 2024 (33 seeds).
That leads to the second note. Daton would be eliminated even if his career was within an era because he was often a #1 seed, making it impossible to exceed his seed. So forget about anyone who was ever the favorite.
