Cael Sanderson recalls own recruiting story choosing Bobby Douglas over John Smith

Before he dominated the college wrestling coaching ranks, Cael Sanderson was recruited as a wrestler himself! A four-time NCAA champion, going 159-0 in his collegiate career, Sanderson is a legend in Iowa State history.

Initially, he began his coaching career with the Cyclones before going to Penn State and turning the Nittany Lions into, arguably, the most dominant college sports program across Division 1 athletics. But Sanderson did have an interesting recruiting choice on his hands when he was a wrestler.

He wrestled for the legendary Bobby Douglas and Iowa State, but Sanderson revealed he had to reject John Smith at Oklahoma State. Oh man, what might have been had Sanderson been in the Cowboy orange under the six-time World and Olympic champion.

“I had a pretty good relationship with Coach Douglas,” Sanderson said on The Money Round. “He was awesome to my family, awesome to my brothers. They both had a great time there. Yeah, we met him going to an Arizona State camp when we were, I think, I was in sixth grade, so my older (brother) Cody was probably in eighth grade, and then I had a brother, Cole, who was in seventh grade, so three in a row there, and we met him there. He was good to us, obviously. 

“We really loved the wrestlers there. They had some really good teams at that time, too. But yeah, I took a visit to Oklahoma State. You know, John Smith was my obviously my favorite wrestler growing up, and, but you know, I was I was really, really comfortable with Coach Douglas and the staff there, and obviously with my brothers being there, so yeah, I was just playing around a little bit, and you probably shouldn’t have done that to him, but it was, you know, I was a little kid, I didn’t know any better.”

Cael Sanderson almost a Cowboy? Not so fast

What a kick to Smith right there, right? Sanderson went on to have the best collegiate wrestling career and followed it up with a Gold Medal in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens under Douglas. He was also a Silver Medalist at the 2003 World Championships.

Sanderson took over for Douglas at Iowa State in 2006-07 and coached the Cyclones for three seasons before making the move to Penn State. From there, Sanderson changed college wrestling forever.

Who knows what the landscape would’ve been like had he gone to Stillwater out of high school? Funny enough, David Taylor, who was Sanderson’s prized recruit at Penn State, ended up taking the Oklahoma State job two years ago and has rapidly resurrected them as a college wrestling power in the post-John Smith era.

Coach-athlete relationships are everything in wrestling and Sanderson proved that with his choice. Maybe others can live in an alternate universe.