By Andy Hamilton
Iowa City Press-Citizen
Sitting in his fourth-floor office overlooking Boone Pickens Stadium, Oklahoma State wrestling coach John Smith has a view that tops most in Stillwater.
From here, Smith can look to the west and watch the renovation of the football stadium named after the oil tycoon who donated $165 million last year to the Cowboy athletic department.
He can glance to the north and see where more Pickens money will help fund a multi-purpose facility that will clear out extra space for the Cowboy wrestling program in its current training site.
He can gaze at the wall across his desk where memorabilia hangs, symbolizing the view that Smith has enjoyed perhaps the most and the view other coaches covet — the one from high above the college wrestling world.
Oklahoma State towered above everyone else during the past four years, winning the NCAA title by an average spread of 47 points during that stretch. But the sport’s landscape is transforming around Smith and other traditional powerhouses.
Programs such as Missouri and Hofstra surged into the top three of the rankings during the season’s first two months after an offseason that was unlike any other in recent history with a flurry of coaching changes that put Tom Brands in charge at Iowa and Cael Sanderson in control at Iowa State.
“I knew I was going to have to get better, “Smith said Friday afternoon. “And not so much because I thought they were having better coaches, but change normally can be good for any program, whether somebody deserved to be replaced or not. That’s not the point.
“I’ll let those people out there decide whether that was right or wrong, but change normally creates a little bit of a fire-up attitude, and normally you get a little better performance, teams get a little bit better immediately. I knew it would be a little bit tougher all the way around.”
Smith, 41, knew the smooth times of recent years wouldn’t be the same this year after losing three wrestlers who combined to win six NCAA titles. Oklahoma State’s three dual losses this season are the most for a Smith-coached team since 2002. But he said setbacks such as Jan. 14 at the National Duals when the Cowboys got thumped by Missouri and Iowa State “give you the chance to really move forward; I’m not sure without them that you can move forward.”
Oklahoma State got back on the winning track Friday by beating Brands and the Hawkeyes 21-11 at Gallagher-Iba Arena in the second coaching matchup in a week between the Olympic gold medalists.
“I’ve got a great appreciation for him, “Smith said. “I visit with him often, and I don’t know if those visits will ever be the same now. They probably won’t. That’s the unfortunate part about coaching. … With somebody like (Brands), that’s something you probably look at and regret a little bit. We may not be able to have those talks anymore — maybe they were only once a year visiting about different things — because of the competitive part of it. You find that now in coaching. Sometimes you might have had a relationship with someone, and it’s probably done until we’re done — to some point.
“It’s a little tougher now. He’s out to whip us. I’m going to take that as a personal assault to us, and I better get up and get going. I think that competitive nature is thrown back into that with our environment, our setting right now, that’s where it’s at. At Virginia Tech, it wasn’t a threat.”
In a sense, Smith and Brands are right back where they were 16 years ago when Smith had been on top of the sport for four straight years and Brands was a youthful challenger.
Brands was a junior in college, coming off his second of three NCAA titles when he ran into Smith, then four years into his six-year string of consecutive World and Olympic titles and at the top of his game.
“People ask who my toughest opponent ever was, “Brands said. “Other than the guys in the room every day who used to beat the living tar out of me when I was younger, with John Smith I felt handcuffed.”
Smith beat Brands 14-4 at the 1991 U.S. Open in their only meeting. Smith said he remembers feeling Brands’ strength. Brands said he remembers the ankle-lace Smith locked up that caused a knot in his calf “the size of a rock.”
“I respect him tremendously, “Brands said. “There’s a lot of respect there — a lot more with him than other greats in the sport. It’s because how he trained, how he approached the sport, his mentality. I read everything I could get my hands on about him because he was at the top of his game, he was the best on the planet. Not just his weight class, but he was the best on the planet — all weight classes.”
Smith went on to win another World title that year. He won each of his matches at the World Championships by technical fall. The following year he won his second Olympic title, continuing a string of American gold at 136.5 pounds that started with former Hawkeye Randy Lewis in 1984 and ran through Brands in 1996.
“It was really a kid against a man (in 1991), “Smith said. “I really enjoyed watching him do what he did when he had a chance to really focus on freestyle. It was fun to watch him keep that string of Olympic titles going at that weight class.
“I think you have a real appreciation for how hard you had to work to beat someone, that somebody made you go back to the drawing board and get better. I think those are the great memories. … Randy Lewis really made me go back and rethink some things. In the end, it made me a much better wrestler. Maybe I did that a little bit for Tom (after) the one match we had.”
Smith and Kenny Monday took over as Oklahoma State’s co-head coaches in 1991 when the program was entering a phase in which it was ineligible to compete at the 1992 and 1993 NCAA meets and some of its top wrestlers transferred.
Smith won Olympic gold in 1992 and then took control of the Cowboy program. His first team went 4-7 in duals.
“I come off the Olympics and I’m in a parade all over the city, all over the town, being driven around a hero, “Smith said in March. “Three months later, I can’t win a dual meet. I’m like, ‘What have I done?’ And these people were going, ‘Well, he was a good wrestler, but he can’t coach.’ Those words aren’t taken very lightly. You’ve never gotten that criticism before.
“That first year when we couldn’t go to nationals, I pulled kids out of school that may have been sophomores in school, but they hadn’t wrestled since their senior year (in high school) to fill my team. But the public didn’t know that, they don’t care. You’re Oklahoma State, you’re supposed to win. You can’t complain about it in the paper (that) you have a kid who’s been drinking beer at Eskimo Joe’s for the last two years.”
Smith said he wouldn’t have taken the job if he knew the struggles he was getting into at the beginning of his coaching career. But in hindsight, he said the experience helped him enjoy the view from the top as a coach.
“I’ve probably been rewarded more in my personal life for those years rather than today’s years, “he said in March. “I needed some of that in my life. I needed some of that experience to maybe humble myself a little bit or understand a little bit about losing and how to motivate kids and how to pull yourself up when your chin’s dragging on the floor. My chin, during some of those years, was really dragging — questioning yourself, questioning your ability, questioning your drive.
“But I regret none of it. I’m so fortunate to have experienced that and to have gone through the disappointments. Really, it calloused me and gave me a little bit of armor and it allowed me to let things bounce off a little more.”
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