TJ Dudley cites Nebraska, Mark Manning as model for Campbell Wrestling

TJ Dudley wants to model Campbell wrestling after Nebraska, his alma mater, and how head coach Mark Manning and associate head coach Bryan Snyder operate. That’d be a phenomenal start for the Fighting Camels.

Manning and Snyder, among others of course, helped steer Nebraska to a runner–up finish at the 2025 NCAA Wrestling Championships, a historic finish. Dudley, a three-time All-American and 2016 NCAA finalist, saw it firsthand as a wrestler and now searches for advice as he becomes a first-time head coach.

“They’re my guys, you know, they changed my life,” Dudley told On3. “I talk to them all the time. I talked to Snyder two days ago. I talked to Manning yesterday, you know, and I’m asking plenty of questions and that’s not a new thing … Before I got my job at Brown, I was like, ‘Manning, is this a good idea? What do you think?’ At the time, it was Todd Beckerman. He’s like, ‘Oh, Beckerman is great.’ And then when he stepped down and Jordan Leen came in, same thing called Manning … ‘Hey, Coach, I’m having trouble with this kid. How did you deal with this? How did you, how did you manage a kid in this situation and get him to the next level?’ 

“Because as an athlete, you only think about you, only think about me. And then you can recall moments where you were almost in that scenario and you were out of it, or you were in this scenario, you were out of it. But it’s not the same, right? You aren’t all these other kids and all these different like parts of their life, right? And I got two great mentors that deal with that every day, and they have for 20 years.” 

TJ Dudley ready to usher Campbell into new era

After helping lead Campbell to a share of the 2024-25 regular season title in the Southern Conference, he’ll look to elevate the program to new heights. Nebraska is a pretty good model to follow!

“And so I asked them a lot of questions. I reach out often, and I loved my time in Nebraska. I loved it,” Dudley said. “And I loved hating my time in Nebraska. The 6 AM stadiums were awful. You know, the five mile run, it was terrible. But, you know, you enjoy the process, and you get to love that part of wrestling. You know, everybody has their stories, but, yeah, I absolutely want to run my program in that regard. They just got to number two in the country … And Scotti (Sentes) did things right. Scotti did things this way. And there’s a lot of things, like I said, I learned how to have fun with learning how to be innovative, how to think outside the box. 

“So, like you said, taking the tidbits and pieces from everybody I’ve worked under … And, you know, taking inspiration from all those guys and then adding my stamp on it, right, how I want to do things, and obviously not just taking and using theirs, taking them, putting them together, mixing them around, making my own kind of recipe.”