Of course Reusse would look at it in such a simplistic way, he has to or he can't manipulate the argument in a way that allows him to bash all the successful Men's sports at the U, like Hockey and Wrestling. But no one will ever use the same logic when comparing WVB with college football. There are only 126 Div 1A teams in college football, almost a third as many teams as there are in women's college vb. Looking at it with his logic, you'd have to equate any women's vb team that made the Field of 64 as being as accomplished as any cfb team that made the Top 25.
But no one looks at things that way. Making the Top 25 of the cfb rankings is a big deal, while almost no one cares if a team makes a 64 team NCAA tournament in any sport, other than Men's college basketball of course.
So its not accurate to just compare the number of teams competing in any given sport, especially when you consider that a vast majority of the teams that compete in the sports with 250+ teams don't have any chance of ever winning a National Championship, or even making a Final Four, whereas a much smaller percentage of teams in the sports with only 79 or 59 or 35 teams are ones with absolutely no chance of winning a Title or making a Final Four.
But, giving Reusse the benefit of the doubt and taking into account the number of teams in each of the sports, the wrestling team still has to be considered the most successful of all the athletic programs at UMn. If this year is being counted as it seems to be, UMn's wrestling team will have finished in the Top Ten 17 straight years and in the Top Eight 16 of the last 17 years. Seeing as there are 4 times as many VB teams as Wrestling teams, a Top 8 finish in Wrestling is at least equivalent to making the final 32 in Women's VB, which the Gopher VB team only accomplished 15 times. Accordingly making the Top 4 in Wrestling would be equivalent to making the Sweet 16 in Women's VB. The Wrestling team had 11 Top 4 finishes(they were all at least top 3 actually) while the Women's VB team had 10 Sweet 16 seasons. Accordingly making the Top 2 in Wrestling would be equivalent to making the Elite 8 in VB. The Wrestling team had 8 Top 2 finishes to the VB teams 5 Elite 8 or better finishes. And this season the VB team could get to the Elite 8 again, where realistically they will probably lose to PSU, and the Wrestling team is ranked #2 behind, go figure, PSU again, so this year could be a wash if it finishes out the way it stands right now.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm a big time supporter of the Women's VB team and can't wait until they finally get their first Natl Title. I'm proud that we come close to leading the nation in attendance and that our VB alum do so well after leaving Minnesota. But credit should be given where credit is due and J Robinson started about where Hebert started with the VB program and both built their programs into Nationally Elite programs, with the difference being that Robinson did just a little bit better when you look at the numbers the way Reusse would have us look at them, with the Women's Hockey program probably coming in 3rd while being severely limited in what they can actually achieve looking at it the way Reusse would have us look at them, for with so few teams competing, the women's team has to win 2 National Titles for every one the men's team wins, and a Title for every Elite 8 the VB team makes.
