Ahh signing day! Mid-November! When the weather gets alot less autumnal and nice and alot more rainy and miserable. Today we talk about Basketball recruiting, and such and a little bit of drama (OMG) with the local media and coaching staff.

The music for today: The Kinks, a band from an era that, as this video will show, rock singers could be ugly as sin and still be considered sex gods.
ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE LINKS!

• It’s been three years to this day - pjstar.com
  Hey its college basketball signing day! The day when you could field a schooner in the America's cup propelled purely by the exhales of thousands of relieved Coaches. (That was a yachting reference, because this is a classy ass website.) While I wont go into why the actual act of signing a letter of intent is an important aspect of the recruiting process (See: Eric Gordan) I will use it as an excuse to point out how loaded of a class we have coming in next year. A class headlined, of course, by Jereme Richmond, the recruit that arguably turned the whole recruiting drought around. He committed even before any of the freshmen that are on campus right now. Think about it.

• Tate: I stand by my letter - IlliniHQ.com
  Loren Tate, a man who has no time to coddle or kid glove anybody, takes time to defend a recent letter to Ron Zook, or rather a letter published in the News Gazette that assessed the Ron Zook era rather negatively. It has caused a stir among the adults in town, so I figured it was worth my comment here. A word if warning to Ron Zook, Loren Tate has been writing about Illini football since the min 60's and this is his 7th coach in that time. He is like Fidel Castro, he will outlive us all and speculate on our replacements.

• Don’t misjudge importance of Jordan’s return to Fighting Illini | The Daily Illini
  I am comfortable with Jeff getting lots of playing time, even with a crowded guard lineup. He can pass the ball very well and could be the defensive stopper in the mode of Chester Frazier that Bruce is desperately looking for. He is going to have to work through the two game suspension first obviously, but more importantly he is going to have to get back to full conditioning, because the freshmen have already shown that they love to run and push the ball up court quickly, and taking the summer off doesn't really get you ready for an up and down the court game. I won't criticize too loudly though, the blogger/student lifestyle and diet has left me a doughy mass of a human. Ironic that its mostly out of shape non-athletes like me that spend so much time obsessing over other people playing sports. I think I need to get out more.