His success is no longer measured in victories.<\/p>\n
Lincoln McIlravy is a businessman now.<\/p>\n
In a few months, he’ll open his first venture in Coralville: an 81-room Comfort Suites hotel, equipped with a pool and a 100-foot water slide for the kids and all the necessary amenities for the business traveler.<\/p>\n
Typical McIlravy. When he jumps into something, he doesn’t spend much time dipping his toes to test the water.<\/p>\n
He was the same way about wrestling for nearly 25 years. He left Iowa with three NCAA titles and the second-best winning percentage in school history. He won the bronze medal at the 2000 Olympics. He was viewed as an up-and-coming prospect to become a big winner in coaching, too.<\/p>\n
But there were only a handful of programs that McIlravy considered places he would want to coach one day.<\/p>\n
“Those jobs probably only come open once in my lifetime, “he said. “It was something that was completely out of my control. Not to be cynical about it, but I just didn’t know what my odds were of ever being a head coach at one of those schools I would like to go to.”<\/p>\n
As his competitive career came to a close in 2003, McIlravy began to consider a livelihood outside of wrestling. He contemplated opening a restaurant. Then, a couple of friends steered him toward hotels. In the past three years, he’s been learning the intricacies of the business.<\/p>\n
“I wish I would’ve gotten a business degree, “he said. “But I’m getting the real world version of it right now.”<\/p>\n
— Andy Hamilton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
His success is no longer measured in victories. Lincoln McIlravy is a businessman now. In a few months, he’ll open his first venture in Coralville: an 81-room Comfort Suites hotel, equipped with a pool and a 100-foot water slide for the kids and all the necessary amenities for the business traveler. Typical McIlravy. When he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-go","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}