I am on the phone with Schiano TODAY!

He is a program builder. His rah, rah style plays well in football. He has some ties to the area after coaching on the Bears.

This is just the kind of bold move that you will never see at Illinois.

He is most likely going to Penn State.

What the Illinois AD needs to do is get his head out of his ass and upgrade the baseball facilities. Baseball is quickly becoming a revenue producing sport for many Colleges and it's only going up as ESPN broadcasts more and more games.

There was a recent study that showed Illinois High Schools produced the 5th most professional baseball players in the country behind California, Florida, Texas and Georgia. Only one of this years top twenty Illinois High School players is going to a school in Illinois and he's going to Illinois State.

Colleges are upgrading their baseball facilities all over the country seeing the future of the sport while Illinois sits back and does nothing and lets star recruit after star recruit go to a College out of state.

Why the hell would a big name guy want anything to do with Illini football?

Why the hell would a big name guy want anything to do with Illini football?

I think this is a great idea. Illinois should stop focusing on football and basketball. Let Baseball be their sport.

College baseball is an atrocity.

Not at successful schools it isn't. Indiana and Michigan are making a huge push to join southern schools in the party now. Many schools are selling out entire seasons now & the sport is becoming fairly profitable.

The sad thing is that it really wouldn't even take much for Illinois to routinely battle for a Big 10 title or CWS berth. They are just clueless recruiting and promoting that sport as they are in seemingly every other.

Indiana and Louisville both win, promote (& sell tickets) with a number of Chicago area prospects and Michigan will be soon.

Summer wood bat leagues > college baseball. No game with the *PING* is legitimate in my baseball world.

They have taken so much out of the bats, it really isn't much different than wood now.

I'm not saying college baseball is going to be the next big thing but it is gaining in popularity and smart schools (like Purdue) are going to cash in on that popularity. As Reader said it wouldn't take much for Illinois to be a consistently good baseball program but for some reason they have no interest in taking advantage of a huge home state advantage. Instead they let schools like Louisville, Indiana, Notre Dame, Purdue and Missouri take all the top talent out of state.

Are there Title IX rules that make it hard for schools to run top-flight baseball programs? Didn't Wisconsin discontinue a pretty solid baseball program because they had to extend the same scholarship benefits to softball?

Are there Title IX rules that make it hard for schools to run top-flight baseball programs? Didn't Wisconsin discontinue a pretty solid baseball program because they had to extend the same scholarship benefits to softball?

I really wish they'd simply go to wood at every level now. I'm so tired of seeing the cheap opposite field gork "shots" that aluminum still allows.

And I love to watch the goofy looks on kids' faces when they get sawed off on inside pitches.

Yeah. Purdue is so smart they spent money on baseball and swimming and diving while the football stadium still has bleachers.

I don't disagree, but you have to admit the home run numbers were way down last year and have been for a couple of years with the changes they have made. I just don't know from a cost aspect if they ever will go to the wood bats.

I don't think they ever will either, cost & offensive concerns combined. Although I actually don't mind the lack of home runs.

Then again, I'm of the group that still finds the triple to be the most exciting play in baseball.