Wrestling Scholar

You got options in Mackey: 1. Use the gas money saved to buy tickets in Purdue Club section and get stadium seats and near the action. 2. If they go general admission, then used that saved driving time to get their early and get club stadium sheets. 3. Use saved gas money to buy Goriila cushion from Indianamat. I heard Joe's marketing dept is putting this together. 4. Buy a Beaver cushion from Rookie78 with saved gas money. 5. Buy a boiler cushion at gift store with saved gas money.

So if the North Vermillion coach improves the culture by, open the wrestling room more to get more practice, takes a sales course to sell his kids to buy in, and improves his coaching skills by taking courses and watching video, he'll be better then Brownsburg?

Also- while everybody has class wrestling on their mind. (1A-2A state) is at Southmont this Sunday. The small school guys have a consolation now.

AKA- "They need to try harder"

So there's really no changes!!!!!!! And that's a clickbait title!! and this really is just the beginning post for the annual class wrestling debate.

I love Gene Hackman in "Hoosiers"

I get it, EMD loses the homefield advantage. But we can make offset that disadvantage by agreeing to have the EMD table workers work the clock and scoreboard.

The Scholar's analysis continues with the comparison of Mackey to the Ford Center with the hotel analysis: Per Booking.com West Lafayette and Lafayette have 31 hotels with an average Booking.com score of 7.746 points. For full disclosure purposes, I did not include the "Lincoln Lodge Motel" as that is in the village of Clarks Hill, and would have brought the average score down. Evansville, as far as i can tell has 29 hotels with an average Booking.com score of 7.690. Based on those numbers, the hotel scene is pretty even and quality of hotel is close but with a slight edge to the Greater Lafayette area. Mackey has within walking distance the prestigious Purdue Student Union Club, the brand new Hampton Inn and the Purdue Hilton Garden Inn. The Ford Center has within walking distance, the Hyatt Place, Doubletree, Holiday Express downtown, Bally's casino and the Downtown quality Inn.

The Indiana Geographical population center is in a corn a mile North of Sheridan. Purdue win's big in that category only a half hour away. Think of it this way. The average drive of fans, coach and contestants on average is 3 hours closer to Purdue. Lets calculate: 13K people traveling 3 hours less there and back or 6 hours in total will save 78,000 hours of travel. Think how much fuel saving we'll have that we can throw back into local school districts budgets.

Is Evansville in Indiana????

Lets give an objective view of the seating and parking: Mackey holds 14,240 salable seats, buts that:s for a basketball game. As Joe pointed out, Mackey would institute a platform setup to get 4 mats. This would take out the really cushy premium seats and would also eliminate real seating. I estimate, under the wrestling setup, Mackey could get over 13,000 still pretty easliy which is more then the Gainbridge current setup.. One of the Cons as as Joe pointed out, earlier is that most of these are old wooden benches. Lower level sections 9, 10, 11 and12 are the only stadium seats which would be around 1000 seats with the other 12K being uncomfortable wooden benches. Of course, they sell the portable seat cushions with nice Boiler train logo. Also, there are no suites or boxes at Mackey, so those groups that like to do that would be without that amenity. Quite of bit of parking is available albeit a patchwork. 3 Parking garages are within walking distance at a cost of $5. Also, there's some football field parking lots close that might have a higher price. Note just East of Mackey, is mostly residential housing with plenty of free parking but you might have a few blocks. On a side note, the parking garages near the stadium have plenty of EV chargers. West Lafayette, is EV charger friendly. I was in Evansville last week, and based on the chargers available, the town in not EV friendly. Look at the Ford Center: It can hold over 11K in seating capacity, but looking at the website, the Hockey capacity is 9,437. Ill assume the seating would be the similar to the Hockey setup. The Ford Center has a big advantage in premium seating, as it has over 30-40 suites of multiple sizes and all the other seating would be stadium seats which beats Mackey. Still cant believe Purdue hasn't upgraded Mackey with their athletic budget. Anyway, Ford Center appears to have multiple garages near it with City lots costing $7 and private lots up to $20. Maybe lots at Ford Center are in closer proximity, but Purdue overall would have more parking. The Ford Center is a newer more modern facility, and probably has a more modern concourse area. But Purdue did upgrade Mackey a few years ago. The Ford Center has 22 bathrooms, couldnt find how many Mackey has.

Better reserve a room in the Lafayette area now, or you guys might be staying at the "Lincoln Lodge Hotel". I dont think they're a Priceline Insurance affiliate. Because the insurance cost more then the hotel room.

Clearly you're underestimating the power of "Denial".

HMMMMM. I always wanted to see Victory Bay. Thats hard to beat. And Im always on the search for good BBQ. The drive isnt terrible to the Fort. Better than the Evansville drive. I did that last weekend.

Most of them, and the bowling alley at the Union would be open, and Drew Brees's restaurant "Walk-ons" would have extended hours. Like to see the Fort top that.

Brandon, that's a good point, but were trying to sell the pros to the IHSAA state site selection committee. Let's not scare them away. We need to sell point that we got a plethora of diverse reasonably priced hotels in the greater Lafayette area. Still looks better then paying $900 a night as compared to Indy. I just wouldn't recommend either bringing any valuable either to the Lincoln Lodge hotel. Ill get with the Purdue contingent that we need to have extra security at some hotels that night and maybe a bed bug fog at certain hotels the week before. Also just in, the Purdue contingent is upping their bid and now has an agreement with Bruno's to sell Bruno Bread at Purdue Concessions. Working on Gibson Shaved Ice to open a booth.

We should be grateful to Indianamat for having a quality wrestling forum that's active and engaged. I think the forum is healthy and promotes improvement in the wrestling community and is significantly better then most states forums. Joe does a good job to keep things going and sometimes funny. So here's a thumbs up. The reason i thought of this, as i normally take a look back every year after my home state of Kansas board the weekend of the state tournament which is one of the heaviest traffic periods. The Kansas forum on websitewww.usawks.com used to be a good forum with a lot of participation, engagement and controversy. Just looked today, the Monday after the state tournaments. I meant plural intentionally as to class wrestling tournaments. I was disappointed as the boards are dead. I could only count 6 posts since the end of the tournament Saturday. Hardly any buzz over big matches, team races, controversial calls and other relevant and stupid stuff. Its kind of sad in a way. A lot of the big posters aren't there anymore. Just curious what if anybody has experience with other states, and if those wrestling websites are going strong or have jumped the shark. Websites like this really could be threatened as an ongoing concern. On a flip note, I used to live in Missouri and participated in the forums. It looks like the old board disappeared and something new is out there. The old board was good 15 years ago. I didn't fill like opening an account. Things evolve.

Lincoln Lodge Motel, Clarks Hill – Updated 2023 Prices (booking.com) You can get a room at the Lincoln Lodge Hotel near Lafayette for $39/ night, and I don't think that;s by the hour. Just 15 miles south of Purdue. The wrestling community needs to save money, well except maybe the Carmel guys. Whatever happened to Clown Baby? He could stay at the Doubletree.

I might of had some slight exaggeration on my post. But think about this, if the BIG schedule is biggest drawback, then how does Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin all host there state championship at BIG 10 schools. Ohio takes 3 days got their tournament at the OSU Schottenstein center. But Purdue makes a lot of sense. It's real close to the geographical population center of Indiana. Look it up. It can seat more then Ford and Coliseum with wrestling mats. I think it could hold more then Gainbridge. West Lafayette and Lafayette have a lot of hotels and restraunts. It's not Indy, but not bad. Also, the guy that annonces the tournament retired. We would be able to use the Purdue announcer with the deep voice. Also we got XXX by the campus.

Football parking lots, lots of parking on streets east of Nortwestern. There's some garages a few blocks away. You look, you can find parking.

Come on. If Purdue wins something. It doest mean IU has to get something in return.

Good point again. Probably would lose all or most of stadium seating. But on the flip side, that looks cool. Those lower sears are right on the mat. That would be a great place to see action. Anyway, wood seats suck, but they would be glad to rent out portable seat cushions.

Good point. Might lose those Super cushy seats that cost $900 for a Purdue game. We could go to a 3 mat scheme. Do we really need 4 mats for a 16 man bracket with no wrestlebacks over a two day period. It would improve the audience to mat time ratio for our premier wrestlers. This would be an improvement. The fan could focus on on 3 mats instead if 4.

https://www.purdueforlife.org/app/uploads/New-Seats-2-scaled.jpg. I could pull some strings and get you a media pass in the premier seating.

Purdue is making a big effort to put a bid to make this work. I talked to some members of the Purdue Contingency of my neighbor, West Lafayette Mayor Dennis, Purdue AD Mike Bobinski, wrestling coach Tony Ersland wrestling coach and former Purdue president Mitch Daniels whose a big wrestling fan. Mayor Dennis thinks this a great economic Development opportunity and feels that between Lafayette and West Lafayette, that the hotel situation and restaurant and hotel situation are ideal, and said if the community can host huge football games, that we easily have the infrastructure to handle this big event. Mike Bobinski has been in contact with the BIG 10 office on coordinating the schedule. They feel they could move Saturday's BB gane to Sunday and would not compromise the schedule. Mike even said that the IHSAA felt Mackey would be the next best venue in the state after Gainbridge. They felt it had a much better setup then IU Assembly Hall and IHSAA was getting assistance from Tony Ersland to ambassador the tournament. Word was this be a great they like partnership with IHSAA and the premier collegewrestling team in the in Indiana. Faulkner also weighed in, he's really concerned about travel cost and burden of having the event in Evansville. He said the geographic location of West Lafayette would be ideal. Mitch Daniel's wants to make this happen and is fostering his connections with the IHSAA and BIG to facilitate an agreement. Also, I gotta friend who works at the West Lafayette Hiilton Garden Inn whose a big wrestling fan. He said the IHSAA bought a 15 room block for that weekend. Also, word on street is this that if this goes down, that Purdue would let XXX restraunt run a concession stand at Mackey during the event. I don't if know if the Fort or Evansville could top that. I even gave a call to Matt Painter. He was a big wrestling fan back in his Delta days, and would be glad to work around the schedule to make this work. The ball is rolling.