Penn State Wrestling's Success Is 'Mind-Boggling,' Gable Steveson Says

At the NCAA Wrestling Championships, wrestlers and coaches discuss what it will take to unseat the Nttany Lions.

Penn State wrestling coach Cael Sanderson leads the Nittany Lions at the 2024 NCAA Wrestling Championships. / Reese Strickland-Imagn Images

PHILADELPHIA | Gable Steveson, the Minnesota wrestler chasing his third NCAA Wrestling title, has marveled from afar at what Penn State wrestling has achieved recently. Like everyone else, he considers coach Cael Sanderson and the Nittany Lions to be a dynasty that shows few signs of ending.

"What Cael has done for the program is mind-boggling," Steveson said Wednesday on the eve of the 2025 NCAA Wrestling Championships. "Seeing a coach bring a group of guys together and dominate a collegiate sport is just crazy. It reminds me of Alabama football or Coach K [Mike Krzyzewski] at Duke in basketball, just taking over the game and running with it. ... And I think they’re looking to break the team point record again this year, which is going to be a crazy thing. If they can keep doing that, that's a cool thing."

Penn State arrived in Philadelphia for the three-day NCAA Wrestling Championships essentially as the foregone conclusion to win its fourth straight team title and 12th in the past 14 tournaments. DraftKings installed Penn State as the -6000 betting favorite, giving the team a 98.4 percent chance of winning the championship. The Nittany Lions are such overwhelming favorites that most coaches and wrestlers are looking to the future and asking, "How do we get there?"

"Obviously we’re always trying to beat them, but again and again they’ve proven that they’re on top," said Missouri's Keegan O'Toole, a two-time NCAA champ who could face Penn State's Levi Haines for the 174-pound title Saturday night at Wells Fargo Center. "Yeah, you draw parallels with coach [Nick] Saban at Alabama. It's a dynasty."

Toppling that dynasty won't be easy, particularly as college athletes earn more money through revenue sharing, scheduled to be begin this year, and NIL opportunities. Penn State Athletic Director Pat Kraft said recently that he would fund the wrestling program to the limit of Sanderson's ask.

"This is no joke. If Cael walked in there and wanted $100 million, 'I will find you $100 million, Cael," Kraft said. "But the reality is, it's opposite to that: 'I'm good, Pat.' It's whatever we need to do to get better, but he's never asking for anything more than what he believes it takes to just win."

RELATED: How Cael Sanderson built, and then expanded, the Penn State wrestling dynasty

For the competitors, unseating Penn State will require a combination of recruiting, retention and development and the financial commitment to address those tasks. Some programs, notably Oklahoma State, are making it. The Cowboys hired Penn State legend David Taylor last May as its head coach, with a funding boost from Chad Richison, president and CEO of Paycom. Oklahoma State won the Big 12 title and enters the NCAA Championships ranked fourth nationally, according to InterMat.

"We laid out a plan when I got to Oklahoma State of what we are going to do to be successful, and I think first you’ve got to surround the guys with the best talent in the world," Taylor said Wednesday in Philadelphia. "It's developing a world-level RTC [Olympic regional training center], which we’ve done in a short period of time. You’ve got to recruit. You've got to surround your program with the best individuals, and it takes time, takes development, takes hard work. ... It takes a long time. It takes day-in, day-out effort."

Rutgers coach Scott Goodale, whose team went 5-3 in the Big Ten with a 35-3 loss to Penn State, was asked Wednesday how college wrestling could slow the Penn State dynasty. "I don't know, that's a really good question," Goodale said before laying out a painstaking long-term plan.

"We’d love to be in that position one day," Goodale said. "The sport is changing, there’s no question about it. College athletics is changing, no question about it. You need to get on board with those changes and make some things happen. Your administration has got to be on board with what you want to do.

"It’s hard, it’s hard. It’s getting the best guys in the world to come to your institution and want to compete. And it’s putting together a plan not only from your college athletes but your senior level athletes and maybe even levels less than that. It’s a huge mountain to climb right now, at least from where I sit, I can tell you that. But I think that’s the ultimate goal."

Penn coach Roger Reina, who is retiring after this season, said coaches and administrators must get ahead of the curve regarding the direction of college athletics. Still, Reina said, that sentiment isn't new.

"These are timeless things," Reina said. "I think if you would have talked to [former UCLA coach] John Wooden in basketball decades ago, he probably would have said very much the same thing. But there’s levels to this, and what’s being done at Penn State with Cael and his staff and the team is remarkable. And yet I think it's inspiring, too, to programs across the country. I tip my hat to them and yet I think the formula is very much the same as it’s always been, to be honest."

Penn State set the team scoring record at last year's NCAA Wrestling Championships, where it crowned four individual champions, had six finalists and won the team title by a record 100 points. As Steveson noted, the Nittany Lions could set another scoring record this year. So when will the rest of college wrestling catch up with Penn State?

"It might take a little bit, to be honest with you," Goodale said.

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