Huge Financial News for Smart Wrestlers and Recruits!

This is gonna cost the University of ILLINOIS a lot of money. 

They are moving forward with economic incentive packages for student athletes who make progress in their education. As you may recall, Zac Braunagel was a Scholar-Athlete of the Week this past season; Lucas Byrd earned that honor twice. Moreover, there were seventeen (17!) wrestlers who made the Academic All Big Ten team. Here's the scoop from FightingILLINI.com: 

At Illinois, the Alston awards program will take effect for the 2022-23 academic year, with the maximum award of $5,980 made available annually to Fighting Illini student-athletes in all 21 varsity sports.

Fighting Illini fans who want to provide financial support toward these academic incentives for Illinois student-athletes can visit jointheifund.com.

If my math is worthy of a white paddle, that would be 17 x $5,980 = $101,660.00. That's assuming an Academic All Big Ten athlete would max out on the award. Now get this, there were thirty-six athletes on the ILLINI wrestling roster last year. They might not all get the maximum amount, but you can bet that nearly all of them--if not all of them--will be making progress on their degrees. 

Here were the seventeen Academic All Big Ten:

Do you hear that? 

There. Off in the distance. You can easily make out the anguished cries of coaches from the ACC, Big 12, EIWA, MAC, PAC-12 and SoCon. Sorry, boys, but the United States Supreme Court has spoken.