The biggest true wrestling fan I have ever met. A true advocate for the sport at every level and an incredible supporter of kids wrestling. Huge Hawkeye fan, but really just a fan of wrestlers from any school. PSU will enjoy how Swafford wrestles. Wide open and carefree.
Thanks for the nice words, man!! I’m actually a lifelong Notre Dame Irish fan… my 2nd cousin married Lou Holtz’s son in the 90’s and despite the fact I’ve never met any of them ever, haha I became a ND lifer… and have only rooted for individuals in wrestling since. My bro Justin wrestled at UNI so most of my family used to be UNI fans… Brennan was the only lifelong Iowa fan.
I wish I was better at promoting youth wrestling, tbh… if it’s one thing I’m probably becoming known for these days, it’s digging in to a ton of wrestling history and writing stories that remember past wrestlers who are likely at an age where they feel totally forgotten. I feel it’s important to get these guys to fall back in love with the sport again and to provide them an outlet to talk about some of the best times of their lives on the mat. Wrestlers put in way too much work over the years to ultimately end up feeling forgotten in time. Tons of history stuff… A lot of current HS stuff, some college… every level. I don’t know if any of you guys have heard of The Pin Doctors, but that’s my site/page… started it 2 years ago and am already up to 16k followers on Facebook! Kinda cool!
I (we) had a rough weekend a couple weeks ago. I totally lost my temper and was wise enough to use social media as my vent-source! 😂 Life has been a little weird since. Tons of support. Some hate mail. It is likely that I will be writing an online petition to the NCAA to modify the redshirt rules to where they are essentially the same as it is for football…especially with Covid. I’m gonna be pushing the hell out of that on The Pin Doctors when I get going on it… I hope I get a ton of people to sign it! One can dream, right?!
I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t have the most favorable opinion of Penn State fans before all this went down, for it seemed like I couldn’t have a respectful conversation with any of you without someone making a reference to the incest, meth-loving buffoonery that you associate us all with and as a person who grew up being grossed out by these types of people (that really are everywhere), I guess I was just butt-hurt. I mean, when my brother transferred to Iowa, there was an article posted on BVM Sports with a pic of Brennan getting his hand raised after his 2nd NAIA title, and I can’t even count the amount of comments I read from you PSU fans implying that y’all thought he had a…”situation in his pants.” Lol, I couldn’t help myself from chiming in and I engaged in some of the most off the wall flame-warring that I’ve ever had! 😂 It was pretty funny, tbh… but yeah, I wasn’t so sure about you guys… but then when 2 weeks ago happened, I was amazed at how respectful and complimentary most of you were while discussing my family and it means a lot…really. People very easily could have kicked this dog when he was down, but hardly anyone did. THANK YOU!
I obviously have my biased opinion of Brennan, but the general consensus of him is that while he might not always be the safest wrestlers, he’s very fun to watch, for he doesn’t take many risks…A gunslinger. Probably not a style anyone has ever seen. He’s able to get away with more than he should because he has this insane hip and leg strength… was a 5X state track placer in sprinting events in HS and actually started out at Graceland (where he transferred from) on a full ride for football. He’s like a mustang or a bronco or whatever. Powerful and fast as hell, but sometimes needs to tame down a bit. We are from Iowa originally, so we were all very excited to watch him do his thing in Carver. Hopefully that day will happen… He was a “medium floor/high-ceiling” D1 recruit…He wasn’t the type of wrestling recruit that would be noticed by Willie Saylor or other guys who do HS rankings at the national level, for my family is very big on training hard and participating in multiple sports opposed to specializing in one. So the recruiting process for Brennan was rough out of HS because no D1 schools had him on their radar since he never participated in many big national off-season tournaments. That’s why he started out NAIA and football even… He initially refused to wrestle anything lower than D1. He began wrestling after football season his Freshman year, went on to Win 2 titles and finally was given a chance by his favorite team. Kinda a unique journey… I have a ton of highlight reels of him I could post here if any of you are interested… I mean, yeah he’s an Iowa guy, but he’s got a style that I think anyone can have fun watching. I am going to be devastated when his career is over, for watching him compete since Kindergarten has been some of the most fun I will ever have in my life. I am so proud of him.
But yeah, I’m the brother who flipped his lid and Mineo shouldn’t be blamed for any of it, for I knew that it was likely that some of my outbursts were gonna be plastered all over the place, it’s just that I was so infuriated at the time that I literally didn’t care at all. And I failed to consider the fact that I put Brennan in an awkward situation with his team in the process.
It was a bad deal. They really didn’t need to have the freaking presser with the narrative of Brennan living a lifelong dream that weekend and what not… How is someone expected to NOT think he would be starting after watching all that.. that’s the one thing that I hope the staff considers when handling these situations in the future. I’m a single father of 3 daughters who I have 90% of the time and I live paycheck to paycheck… I can’t always afford to do these things at this phase of my life. So that’s where I’m at right now… I learned a lesson in this, which is that sometimes I need to STFU and control how impulsive and confrontational I am when I am pissed off. And I hope the staff learned something from this as well…Both sides could have handled it differently and both sides are human and humans make mistakes… I just hope we learn from them so we can at the very least turn a negative into a positive.
I hope the dual this Friday is entertaining for us all and free of any injuries for both squads.
