All I can think about is the great Pete Weber.
By now you’ve seen Weber’s epic rant. It’s been floating on the internet for forever. It was a triumphant declaration of bravado and ability that made you care about America’s most popular Friday night high school date sport professionally.
“Who do you think you are? I am.”
What it means I’m not sure we will ever know. But it doesn’t matter.
A few years after that rant, Weber said goodbye to professional bowling. I could not tell you what happened between the rant and the end but I knew he was.
You know who he is.
In that goodbye, he signed off from the sport by simply saying seven beautiful words.
“Hate me or love me, you watched.”
He was right. It was and is a true statement. He made you care about bowling – even if you didn’t really care about bowling and even if you never watched bowling on television. It was a fascinatingly bold approach to a middle-class, average, ho-hum sport that got your attention.
No matter what, you watched. There was no one and there will be no one quite like Weber.
After Carter Starocci won his fifth individual national championship that propelled Penn State to its fourth team title in five years, there was Starocci on the mic again.
In his final real opportunity to hold wrestling fandom captive, he was harping – albeit gracefully – about ESPN’s decision to put his match first in last Saturday’s NCAA wrestling championship final round.
“I’m not sure why ESPN elected for the 184-pound match to be the first one,” he said. “You’ve got a guy going for his fifth title, and you have the reigning champ [Parker Keckeisen of Northern Iowa]. I think whoever wins that match is the Hodge Trophy winner.
“We’ve been dominant all year, and you put that match first?”
It was one final reminder of all the not-so-subtle reminders that there is only one Starocci.
In the ways that bowling may never have a Pete Weber ever again, I’m not sure we’re ever going to see Penn State have a Carter Starocci again.
To be honest with you, it even feels weird to sit here and type “Starocci.” Journalistic style dictates that after a first reference, you refer to someone by their last name.
But Starocci around these parts simply became “Carter.”
His ability to hold Penn State’s feverish wrestling audience captive – “Halloween” intro music and all – has made him one of the most fascinating athletic figures in the history of Penn State sports.
Forget the titles. Forget the accolades. Forget the 104 wins.
No one else could whip Penn State into a frenzy the way Carter did with one single tweet.
“Now let’s sell out the beaver stadium in November,” he posted last May, appending the eye-ball emoji.
Penn State wrestling is under this microscope of passion more intense than any other sport on campus. Sure, football is king in Happy Valley in terms of its vast reach across the landscape, but wrestling diehards are a different breed. So mixing the two – and having it come out of the blue – was just enough to get every Penn Stater and their brother salivating over the idea of watching Starocci pin an Iowa Hawkeye at the 50-yard line.
Of course, it never happened (yet) but when Starocci fired that tweet off in May last year, it caused so much of a stir that even Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft had to chime in, pumping the brakes.
Still, this was Starocci being the star and making you think about Penn State wrestling – in the midst of May when there isn’t much besides a football season to start thinking about.
It wasn’t the only time either. For as much as he could walk the walk, Carter could talk the talk.
There was the viral Instagram post directed as AJ Ferrari – an interesting character in his own right – where Carter recommended that if he were to beat Ferrari (should they ever wrestle), Ferrari should get a tattoo that says “‘Starocci is my NATTY DADDY’ in bold font” on his chest.
There was a pseudo-feud with Iowa’s Gabe Arnold ahead of this year’s BJC Dual – where Arnold called out Penn State wrestling as a whole and Starocci reminded Arnold that “the other guy was the starter” at Arnold and Starocci’s weight.
It’s one thing to see a professional athlete generate attention the way Starocci did. But it’s rare for a college athlete to do that. His social media feed was a never-ending feed of attention-grabbing.
Naturally, it angered and frustrated many of his rivals and their fan bases on message boards and in Twitter posts. For as much as Starocci was loved by Pennsylvania, he is detested in Iowa in particular.
But that never fazed him. Sure, it was a brash approach. Sure, it was different. Sure, it was arrogant.
But it was all within reason because, unlike his contemporaries, all Starocci could do was win, enraging opponents and their fans further along the way.
He won four straight titles at 174 – becoming the sixth wrestler ever to win four NCAA titles and even the fourth title didn’t come without some drama.
After medically forfeiting at the Big Ten Tournament due to a knee injury sustained in the last match of the season, Starocci would have to leverage an at-large bid and the ninth seed to make his way through two former NCAA champions before beating Rocco Welsh in a 17-2 victory for the title.
It didn’t matter that he had a tougher draw. It didn’t matter that he had a bummed knee. He was better than you and everyone else in the bracket and everyone else on your team and he reminded you of that.
It seemed like his journey would stop there but then he surprised everyone at Penn State and in the wrestling world when, thanks to a COVID year and an influence from the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club and NIL support, he announced he’d be back for a fifth season.
Making the move to 184, Starocci handled his wrestling just as well – if not better – at that weight, all of which culminated in that first match last Saturday night.
It was Starocci’s fifth national championship as he knocked off the weight class’s defending title holder in Keckeisen in a 4-3 decision. It’s a feat that no one has ever pulled off before. It’s likely a feat that no one will ever be able to pull off again.
The victory solidifies him as one of the greatest collegiate wrestlers of all time – and certainly one of the greatest ever to suit up at Penn State.
But it’s what came with all of the glory that made him so interesting.
Of the Olympic sports popular in America, wrestling faces its heavy share of growth challenges.
It’s a much more regionalized sport similar to lacrosse than baseball and soccer at the youth levels. Its rules are often confusing and unlike most other sports, its most well-known professional ranks are glorified, scripted soap operas for men.
The superstars of the sport – not of the entertainment brands – mostly train, develop and grow for four years at mostly midwestern – and mostly blue-collar – universities. They may glimpse back into focus during the summer Olympics every four years, but unlike baseball or even other combat sports like boxing, the pinnacle for a lot of wrestlers is at the (now) amateur(ish) ranks of the NCAA.
For those who are not among the diehards, it’s hard to make the sport interesting. Aside from regular coverage on the Big Ten Network, you can’t just flip on ESPN – the sports bar default – at any given moment and see two guys going at it in singlets.
You have to be in the know to know to a degree.
Through Starocci’s antics, but even moreover through his ability on the mat, Carter made you in the know.
Rather, he made you know him. He entertained you. He made you interested.
He made you watch.
And whether you loved him or hated him, you sure as hell watched.
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