you pretty much have to be an asshole to want to do it and you don't have to be an asshole to play on the line (but it helps).

Basically, if you have the temperament it is a good fit but it won't just make you a good lineman (contrary to popular coaching belief).

Wrestling is infinitely harder than football. So yes, you must have a near-crazy work ethic to be any good at it.

But wrestlers, by and large, aren't assholes. They're inherently modest. No matter how good of a wrestler you were, the most common question they get involve ring worm, "starving yourself" and "touching sweaty guys." And that's only after they tell people they wrestled.

Dan Gable, the greatest American wrestling figure of all time, can walk into just about any room and go unnoticed.

to want to do that (or box, for that matter). You don't have to be that way to play on the OL or DL (though it helps).

And I wrestled for quite some time. And Dan Gable was a client at my former firm's Iowa City office and I met him many times; very nice dude, just super intense about everything. Very sad story as well.

Wrestling rewards a nearly psychotic devotion to physical fitness. You can be good at football without really trying too hard. Not the same with wrestling.

So cool you met Gable. I go to the NCAA tournament most years and have met him a few times through mutual acquaintances. He's oddly normal in appearance considering how dominant he was.

And the story of his sister's death is really sad. But there's no greater motivator. If you haven't seen it, this video of him and his "Rocky Gym" really sums up the guy's intensity. He's 65 years old! And still works out like a mad man!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=627iLLSwhlg&t=

that those with a wrestling background have the highest pass rate compared to other sports for special operations schools in the military (SFAS, Ranger school, BUD/S, MARSOC A&S, etc.). Swimmers are supposedly second, even excepting BUD/S. I 100% believe it just from observation.

The best soldier I ever came across was a college wrestler. He was smart and disciplined and beyond crazy. He could donkey kong climb (dual rope) a 35 foot wall like it was nothing, among many other things. Spent most of his career in special operations of various sorts.

wrestlers on the line?

I would've had no interest in wrestling otherwise.

as a former wrestler I always disagreed. It takes a certain personality to really like that grind.

team go out for wrestling in the winter...learn great leverage, core workouts with pushups/situps, and just being physical with dudes their size. Then I'd have them kill it in the weight room in the spring/summer (I'd actually encourage some of them to play rugby in the spring to stay in great shape and keep up the physicality but would not require it)

This could not help but make my football team better.

As I see it, the trend today has been to encourage elite athletes to concentrate on just one sport. Granted, in this context we're not talking exclusively about elite athletes, but still . . .

I'd bet they weren't even close.

Our wrestling team used to dominate our league, for the most part (back then, the Catholic schools played in the same league as the city schools. But the really elite wrestling programs were in outer ring suburbs and rural areas.) But our football team was only mediocre.