Hawkeye Nation podcast. Hawkeye Nation.com. Andrew Downs here with you once again on a Wednesday afternoon.

And this is going to be a fun podcast. You know,

as we get through the winter sports season, and obviously we've talked to a lot of football,

a lot of men's basketball. One sport that we haven't touched on a lot is wrestling. And why is that?

Well, even though I was a high school wrestler here in Iowa, I am far from an expert. And so

I need to bring on somebody to help me talk Iowa wrestling, but there's nobody better to do that than Cody Goodwin from the Des Moines Register. Cody, what's up, man? Thanks for joining me. No, thanks for having me. I know whatever I can do to talk a little bit more wrestling, and especially when it comes to Iowa wrestling, you know, because this year, next year, and really in the years ahead, this is a really exciting team that I think people are going to, you know, if they aren't already following them, there's more of a reason to maybe follow this team in this program. So thanks for having me on, man. Yeah, absolutely. And I know you covered the meat Friday night against Nebraska, the duel over in Carver Hawkeye Arena.

I read your piece in the Des Moines Register about this.

I guess I just want to start with this, how strange it must have been,

and you write about how strange it was to have a very limited crowd for a meeting,

especially a number one ranked Iowa team that there's a lot of hype and a lot of excitement about just a quiet, quiet Carver Hawkeye Arena.

Third, man, you know, they had the benefit of, you know, a really, really good home schedule

last year, you know, all the heavy hitters in the Big Ten, which is the wrestling conference

when it comes to college wrestling. They had the benefit of having all those

heavy hitters come to Carver Hawkins here. Just a tremendous home slate. They had 10,000 plus

fans at every single home duel last year, even for the opener against Tennessee Chattanooga,

who's not a strong program. You know, they're a program that's kind of in, you know,

the middle of smaller tier of Division I wrestling.

But, you know, still 10,000 people shut up for that duel.

They sold out the Penn State duel in late January.

They came close to selling out against Oklahoma State and Ohio State and a couple others.

You know, and then to go from that, you know, an announced crowd of less than 250 people against Nebraska,

who, you know, I think is a very, very good, Rock has thumped them pretty good last Friday,

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