Brands were the first wrestlers to demean their opponents by shoving them out of bounds routinely. It was promoted by Gable culture as “aggressive wrestling”.
Their antics as coaches are also a first and certainly have been developed. Followed by Doug Schwab as a close second. He was worse when he was an Iowa assistant.
I was talking about this with somebody today.
For reference, one of my first memories of watching wrestling was the night Randy Lewis dislocated his elbow wrestling Jim Gibbons, so I've watched the vast majority of Iowa's truly great wrestlers of the Gable era forward and even more of them in the YouTube age. Barry Davis didn't do that crap, and neither did Randy Lewis. The Banachs? Nope. Kistlers? Zaleskys? Goldman, Chipperelli or Heffernan? Negative. They were physical as hell and took no prisoners, but they were never dirty and they did their talking on the mat.
It didn't start until the Brands boys came to town. They showed up at a time when Iowa had just had their streak snapped and had lost a little of their mojo, so I think Gable was ok with it as long as it came with their return to the top. It's just grown from there and now it's manifested to where we are today. Last night was a new low, and I only expect it to get worse. Someday it's going to break down into an all out donnybrook and they'll have no one to blame but themselves...of course that won't stop them from throwing out their standard kid on the playground defense of, "yeah, well he started it!"