Soxbadger

Its strange to say but I still feel OSU has a chance. They just need to stop trying to prove that they can be like an SEC team. Troy Smith also needs to make quicker decisions if he feels the pressure he has to be decisive.

A Wisconsin newspaper is reporting Clay is going to be a Badger.

I have not heard that OSU is involved in Hughes and the last Scout article http://story.scout.com/a.z?s=162&p=2&c=605565 said: Almost every Wisconsin fan believes that he will be a Zook.

The battle for John Clay between Iowa and Wisconsin will be over tomorrow with Clay announcing at the Army All American game. Its getting pretty intense at the Rival and Scout sites with different posters offering thousand dollar wagers on where he is going to end up. Both Wisconsin and Iowa fans claim they have inside information that Clay is 100% going to their school. It would be hard for me to imagine Wisconsin losing Clay, but the RB situation at Iowa is much easier for him to step right in. Also should be some other recruits who select a hat tomorrow.

I wanted BSU v ND. That would have been a fun game to watch.

I also would rather have ND than a Big East team like WVU or Rutgers. The teams on LSU's level either were in better bowl games or could not be selected.

When you win against a good program does it really matter how you do it? OSU gave up a ton of yards versus UM, but the only stat that really matters is that when the plays counted the most OSU made them count. Many of the stats in the Wisconsin v Ark game are abberations. You point out the difference in yards, but then you dont point out that over 130 yards came on 2 plays for Ark. Ark played a 5 man front the entire game this held Wisconsin to -5 rushing yards. But when you look closer PJ Hill actually had 36 yards, Stocco had -41. This was in part due to play calling and the way that Ark was playing the game. They wanted to stop the Wisconsin run game and they wanted to run the ball. Wisconsin was not going to get caught up in trying to throw the ball constantly or doing trick plays and moving away from their offense, because Ark had proven that they could not score on the Wisconsin defense. So why would Wisconsin play risky and maybe turn the ball over when they could play for field position and win the game? Outside of 1 bad loss to USC, these were the losses for ARK: 11/24 #9 LSU L 31-26 12/02 at #4 Florida L 38-28 01/01 vs #6 Wisconsin L 17-14 Seems Wisconsin palyed them about as competitively as LSU and Florida, and you seem to suggest that Wisconsin could not play with LSU.... In fact the difference between the LSU game was a kick return for a TD. Good teams win close games, Wisconsin was ahead the entire game except for 9 minutes in the first half. While Wisconsin did not play as dominating as I would have liked, they won and that is all that really matters in the end. I just dont see why Wisconsin would not have played LSU closer than ND. They played Michigan closer than ND and were away as compared to ND playing at home. I know the rules are such that Wisconsin was never in consideration and I am fine with that. But they won their game, and that is what you set out to do when you play the game. Does not always have to be pretty if you lead the entire game after the first quarter.

Thats just crazy. I doubt the D-Rays move Baldelli unless they are getting atleast 1 of the pitchers that we have traded B-Mac and Garcia for, and probably they would want 2.

Its been down to Iowa and Wisconsin since a late season visit to Iowa. Clay is announcing at the Army All-American game, Wisconsin fans will say that he is a Wisconsin lean, but Iowa fans will say hes an Iowa lean. Basically it could go either way, but my guess is that he will remain in state.

I also doubt that Bonds will be on the list of players who used steriods. The real fun is going to be when all these other players careers are ruined because the fed is still pissed about Bonds not testifying against Balco how they wanted. This seems to be excessive for a case about perjury, but then again the govt can get pretty petty.

Id give him a Leiber style contract (back when he was coming off arm troubles), but I just think that Mulder is a huge risk to ever pitch successfully in the majors again.

Danks is not Santana or Liriano. All this projection stuff is meaningless. I wonder where Mark Buehrle projected in the rotation?

Well B-Mac is going to Texas which is a pitchers park, and its also a park that does not give up a lot of HR's (which is B-Macs weakness) so the transition should be smooth. (Hope you can sense the sarcasm, but not sure why Texas wouldnt look for ground ball pitchers.)

That would mean he would have been the White Sox best pitcher this year or next year. How many pitchers even make the all star game, and when is the last one to come from Texas? B-Mac first needs to pitch with a sub 4.0 era for an entire season.

I never was a huge fan of B-Macs. Its not that he does not have the talent, its just that none of his stuff wows you. So B-Macs ability will be almost entirely dependent on how is mental game progresses and how well he can work batters. I read some one say that B-Mac will outperform Vaz, I really do not think thats likely.

Have you watched Oden play? Hes pretty good on the defensive side of the ball. I would be shocked if OSU is not a top 5 team the entire season.

I can only hope the Brent news is because Wisconsin has made a late push and some how changed his mind. He was at the Wisconsin-Pitt game over the weekend, so while its unlikely, maybe he has had a change of heart.

Yeah if its a head to head league, higher seed gets the tie breaker. If its a point league, the higher regular season points. If both of those are ties, then you have a problem.

I never said that you were one of the Illinois fans who flys off the handle. I specifically did not attribute that to you, because I know that you are not one of them. This is not what I said at all. I said that of the big time recruits Illinois has so far, only 1 of them even listed Michigan as a team that was interested. Now Brent, Martez, do have UM and OSU. But I feel that if UM and OSU knew last year that Zook was going to be this successful in his recruiting of Illinois that UM and OSU would have stepped up their recruiting. As it was many were very suprised that these players chose Illinois, even going as far as claiming that Illinois is doing something wrong. I dont believe that, but I do believe that UM, OSU, and ND completely underestimated Zook's recruiting abilities. They thought they could just swoop into Illinois and grab the best players as they usually do, and not even have to worry. Thats where I think you will see the biggest change. Not only has Zook taken some of their recruits, but now he has slapped UM and the entire Big 10 in the face, basically saying "the SEC is better." It looks to me like Zook stabbed the Big 10 in the back. He could of been like Spurrier and said "Hey I went to UF, Im gonna vote Florida."

You can spin it however you want, but I have seen Illinois fans get more upset over far less slights. Its also my opinion that when you slight a college football team/coach, that there are going to be ramifications in the future. Now perhaps Carr wont set his whole agenda (I dont see where I said that), but you know in the back of his mind when hes going up against Zook in the future he will think back to the time when Zook moved UF over UM for no reason. Perhaps it wont mean anything, or maybe it will be the little extra motivation Carr needs to make sure that he lands the Martez and Josh Brent's of the world. And I have no problem with that as well. But Ron Zook himself said that it was the fact UM did not play a 13th game that made him chose UF. So either he is 1) a liar or 2) he completely disrespected the Big 10.

Michigan barely recruits in Illinois. If you look at the guys Zook recruited he beat out teams like UF, FSU, and ND. He almost never went head to head against UM and OSU. And if you dont think being dicked by a fellow conference member will change UM's philosophy, I think you are wrong as well. UM, OSU, did not care about Illnois this year. Look at U of I's top recruits: Mccray, No OSU or UM. Benn, No OSU or UM. Only Morris so far has been recruited by either UM or OSU. Now that may change with Martez and Brent who both were recruited by UM and OSU, but for the overall class that would mean Zook only took 3 players who either OSU or UM wanted and every single one of those players were from Illinois, meaning Zook was only retaining in-state talent So it is unseen whether or not Zook can hold his own against UM and OSU. He has beaten Urban Myer and Charlie Weiss, 2 coaches who are pretty new to the recruiting scene at major Universities. It will be interesting what happens next year when OSU and UM start to challange Illinois for its own recruits. As for voting UF over OSU, I really dont see how you can defend it. If it happened to Illinois you would have a thread about how it was bulls*** that another Big 10 team screwed them, etc etc. Its hard for me to believe that Zook finds UF the better team, unless he believes that the SEC is a better conference (which would be a slight to the entire big 10). On the other side every single SEC team voted for UF #2. I hope Illinois is never in the position of needing help from its conference in terms of voting, because I have a feeling Zook burnt a few bridges. Also Zook's reason for moving Florida from 3 to 2 the last vote was that UM didnt play a 13th game. I dont understand how if you watched the ARK-UF game you could honestly say that UF deserved to be ranked higher for winning that game. If Zook had voted UF 2 constantly then I could see an argument, but docking UM for the fact the Big 10 doesnt have a championship is ridiculous, especially coming from a Big 10 coach.

I cant believe Zook voted UF over UM. UM may be rivals as a Big 10 member, but when it comes to everything outside of the Big 10, they are one of us. I believe Zook is the only Big 10 coach to vote UF over UM. The only thing that makes sense is that guys like Leaf were his recruits so he wanted to give them a chance at the NC. But on the other hand UF ran him out of town, you would think that the last thing he would want is Meyer to get a chance at a NC. Or you would think that Zook would not want to piss off UM, because if they start really setting up shop in Illinois I have a feeling this may be one of the last great classes Illinois gets.

Well hopefully the great people of Lake county will realize that this case can be heard Feb 5, 2007. Shouldnt really be to much of a problem to delay the case that long.

Asterisk! Asterisk! All the games played with the now defunct ball should be thrown out. Haha stupid new ball.

When you say no one would give Gil Meche money to negotiate, you dont consider the fact that if Gil Meche played in Japan his stats may be much better. Japanese players do not always translate well to the US, its hit or miss. The fact that Boston will have to pay over $100mil to have a player who has never even pitched an inning of ML baseball is somewhat insane. There is a chance that Boston could have signed Zito and potentially saved money. Its hard to suggest that a better investment is $100mil to Matz over proven MLB talent. I believe Matz can wait until a time when he does not have to post. That means the 51mil that is going to his team will go directly to him. Right now that would have been 51mil + the reported 22 over 3 years. Making it an absurd $20mil per year. Boston made an insane bid, now its down to how badly does Matz want to play in the US.