ZachTheZip

What does their rating coming out of high school have to do with anything? A good recruiter shouldn't have to rely on some ranking service to find good players. But since you asked, i looked on Scout.com and here you go: Dayne Crist - 5* QB, rated 3rd best at position. Other offers from FSU, LSU, Michigan, Oregon, Stanford, USC. Anthony McDonald - 4* MLB, rated 8th best at position. Other offers from Boston College, Ole Miss, Nebraska, NC State, Oregon. Dan McCarthy - 4* S, rated 8th best at position. Other offers from LSU, Michigan, OSU, Oklahoma, Stanford Deion Walker - 4* WR, rated 11th best at position. Other offers from Cal, Florida, FSU, LSU, PSU, USC Brandon Newman - 4* DT, rated 16th best at position. Other offers from Cinci, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisville, Ole Miss, Stanford David Posluszny - 3* WLB, rated 31st best at position. Other offers from Northwester,n, Pitt, WVU, Wisconsin Lane Clelland - 3* OG, rated 18th best at position. Other offers from FSU, Maryland, Michigan Hafis Williams - 3* DT, rated 38th best at position. Other offers from Maryland, PSU, Rutgers What's better than recruiting rankings is actual results. These are all seniors who don't see the field. They've all had four years to at the very least become a role player and they barely see the field even in blowouts. Out of that list, I have no interest in Dayne Crist. He's a total bust and bringing in a one-year player only serves to screw up our QB situation even more. I also don't care for Anthony McDonald. If he hasn't managed to see the field after four years, he won't be able to supplant a senior Brian Wagner. The linemen I'm fine with. We just need bodies there at this point. But there's a reason most of these guys aren't playing, and it's not because of a lack of talent. Do you think that Rob Ianello will somehow be able to motivate these guys when Brian Kelly couldn't?

So he's relying on bring his past failures here to help him with his present failures. That would also wipe out a huge amount of depth down the road, when our next coach is trying to clean up this mess when one of your recruiting classes only has like 10 kids still playing because the rest left after only one year.

The link works fine, you just have to be signed in. And I'd rather keep the discussion over there until we get an official confirmation that it is happening. I am trying to keep the information in this recruiting thread confirm-able, with links to outside sources. As it stands, this last thing is just a disturbing rumor.

If this is true, we're in some deep sh!t.

Technically, a Can't win would help us more than a WVU win because we play Can't at least two times and the rest of the MAC also plays them so they would boost the RPI of half our schedule. But at the same time, Wouldn't you rather see Can't lose and then us go down to Morgantown and win?

I'm hoping that WVU kicks the crap out of Can't, and the we kick the crap out of WVU. And the we kick the crap out of Can't.

NIU has Western Illinois. Winner takes on #2 Creighton. Rough draw with Creighton, but they should win the 1st round game. They should be happy to get a fellow Illinois directional school. Might boost attendance and you get bragging rights.

What about NIU? Gotta support the other MAC school, at least until we meet.

I doubt anyone will be hearing from Wistrcill for a while. He's got a lot of things on his plate that were pushed onto him by the university.

The only person out there who could turn things around overnight would be Tressel. There's simply nobody else out there who could bring in a complete recruiting class in his first year that's better than anybody else in the MAC. Nobody else that would cause tickets to sell out with minimal marketing effort. Nobody else that would bring in media coverage like we were a top 25 team before he ever coaches a single practice. Anybody else and we'll have to wait at least two years before we are good enough to challenge for the MAC East. Still, if we hire a good coach we'll see progress after the very first year. If we don't, then we're in for another long, horrible time.

Duquesne blows out Green Bay 84-66, and Marshall is up on Jacksonville State 43-30 in a low scoring game.

The message was already sent. It was sent by the people who are not buying tickets.

Mel Kiper's top five coaches on the hot seat: 1. Ianello-Akron 2. Withers-UNC 3. Gill-Kansas 4. Wulff-Wash.St. 5. O'Brien-NC State.

TW was brought in for one purpose: to sell football tickets. He has failed at that. UA is bailing him out in that area, spending tons of money to buy our own tickets. Most of his successes people might list can be attributed to his predecessors. I don't think his job is as secure as you think.

The athletic department has a budget. And the university doesn't want to have to bail them out any more than they have to. An extra $1 million spent on paying someone not to work here just won't happen. Sorry, but this is the athletics department's problem. Think of UA like a corporation. When a department screws up big time, do the CEO and board of trustees look into specifics of what happened and spend all their time working on that, or do they go to the guy who was responsible for that department and tell him to fix mess? UA is telling Wistrcill to fix the mess because it's his responsibility as head of the department. The BoT and Proenza won't meddle in just one section of one department, they'll enforce departmental responsibility and if the guy responsible can't do the task they'll find someone new. That's as far as the university is going to go down this rabbit hole.

YSU notched a road win at Samford.

There are two ways to get the money to be able to do this immediately instead of having to wait another year. The first is to just fire the coach, and then start begging like the homeless guy on the corner of Goodkirk and Carroll. Ask for donations, tell people that they are trying to fix their mistake and firing Ianello is proof of it. We might get the money, we might not. If we hire a "name" coach, it possibly would help, but then you have an even bigger bill to pay so you had better hope that people are feeling generous. This is the most visible method and the one that every school does when they fire their coaches. The second way is for the Athletic Director to go out and start secretly campaigning big donors to pony up the cash in advance. You don't need to come up with the full buyout amount, because once you get enough of a start you can fire Ianello and start working on the begging part I mentioned above to cover the rest. But I don't think Wistrcill wouldn't do something like this.

My best guess is that the University had to actually purchase the tickets from the athletics department. So the AD can report in their internal numbers that they sold 15k tickets per game, but the university as a whole is paying for it. Corporations with many departments do this kind of creative accounting all the time, to make important departments look better than they are so that the shareholders see what the corporation wants them to see. It wouldn't surprise me if UA was doing the same thing, to please the "shareholders" like the NCAA and the general public.

It usually takes more than a bad record to force a change of football coaches. That being said, Ianello will be back next season barring a massive influx of income from donors. But what could spark what few Zips fans and alumni that still care to send in their money? When Soccer won, they brought in a lot of money, but it was all specified by the donors to be used for the soccer team. Basketball donations are the same way. The "big money" donations don't usually go to the Z-fund as a generic donation to be spent how the athletic departments sees fit. So a spark is needed. Something that can get the cash flowing directly to the football program; enough to afford Ianello's buyout or at least make it worth doing. What kind of spark can do that?

There's no doubt that the tickets were sold. The question is: who was buying them? Was it local businesses? The University spending money from the general funds in a desperate attempt to meet NCAA standards? Individual fans who confused invisibility potions for beer during tailgating?

Yesterday Valpo, West Virginia, Middle Tennessee, Marshall, and VCU all won. NC A&T and Florida A&M lost to far superior opponents. 5-2 on the day is not bad. Today, our only non-conference opponent playing is YSU at Samford.

http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/news/_/id...cation-possible I remember there was talk a few years ago of an MLS expansion team being located somewhere between Akron and Cleveland. But this is different. This would be an established MLS team. There are some areas of the country where the love of Soccer is growing much faster than others. The Pacific Northwest is the biggest, but I think that region is reaching its saturation point. Thanks, in no small part, to Caleb Porter and the Zips our area is another place that supports Soccer more than the average American city. And we're so starved for a winner, and so enamored with the "building process" that I can see a relocated MLS team capturing the attention of the Cleveland media where other cities might just ignore it.

It's gameday. Best scenario today is that both Akron and NIU win outright (not decided by PKs).

SF Jake Kretzer is supposed to be signing today. I get the feeling that the recruiting class will be announced right before the Hiram game.

My favorite line from that story: Akron coach Keith Dambrot said. "It's fair. Nobody in New York wants to see us." I would say that LeBron could drum up some friends to hang out in MSG, but I don't think it would go over well with the NBA lockout.