Butch Jones Agrees to Extension and More

When Butch Jones turned down every job under the sun but one, everyone thought that the one school left was going to offer him an extension. That happened. Jones agreed to a 6 year deal yesterday. Money details haven't been released yet. We do know one thing, Butch Jones is gonna get himself paid. Like any coach contract, chances are it's not going to last. The important thing is that it's keeping Jones around for at least next season and maybe the year after that. He gave Koch some choice quotes. 

“We say we’re building the best college football program in America. We have a great thing here. There’s a lot of excitement here.” 

“I believe in what we’re building. I think there’s so many great things to building a really successful football program and not just a successful team. We have great practice facilities now. We have very good facilities. We’re in a conference that we can be extremely competitive in. We have a great fan base. We’ve got a great place to attract the top-caliber student-athletes to.” 

Great news to get us started.

Zach Collaros is seriously proving he's a zombie by every report making it seem like he's starting in the Liberty Bowl. Koch got some quotes from Butch Jones and Zombie: 

“He made it through the entire practice and we really pushed him. Now we’ll see how his body responds tomorrow. It’s very encouraging. He’s about a month ahead of schedule. We put him through everything - quarterback runs, flush from the pocket, scramble drills and then just playing football today to see how he could move. Now we’ll see how his body responds after going through a hard practice today.”

“It still hurts a little bit when I push off and go in a different direction,” Collaros said. “I didn’t think I was going to be able to heal this fast. It’s still 12 days until the game so I still have some time for it to heal. I think I’m definitely ahead of schedule.”

“It would mean a lot playing with a guy like Isaiah (Pead), being able to be out there one more time with him and the guys I came in with, especially the offensive line. I’m real close with those guys.”

The man Paul Dehner Jr has a good Butch Jones quote:

"Obviously, his knowledge base and all of that puts him ahead of Munchie (Legaux) a little bit. One of his biggest strengths is to keep plays alive with his legs. So, can he extend plays and play like Zach Collaros plays? If he is able to do that then we will play him; if not then we're very fortunate to have the amount of reps we've gotten with Munchie. We want Zach to be Zach. We are going to error on precaution, everything is safety first, but I am very encouraged by what I saw today."

Speaking of the man, he's got his 4th podcast up today. It stars Mo Egger. I haven't heard it yet, but assume it's very good. 

Way late on this, but congrats to Derek Wolfe for making the AP Second Team All American team. That's quite the honor. He made second teams on SI, Scout and Yahoo. He's the first Bearcat to be honored for more than special teams play since Mike Mickens and Trevor Canfield in 08. Mardy Gilyard was the last Bearcat honored period in 2009. 

UC announced their awards the other day, straight from Go Bearcats, here are the winners. 

Scout Team Players of the Year:

• Offense: Daniel Murray
• Defense: Silverberry Mouhon

Special Teams Player of the Year: Pat O'Donnell

Specialist of the Year: Tom DeTemple

Brig Owens Outstanding Back:

• Offense: Isaiah Pead
• Defense: Drew Frey

Most Valuable Receiver: Anthony McClung

John Pease Outstanding Lineman

• Offense: Randy Martinez / Alex Hoffman
• Defense: Derek Wolfe / John Hughes

Most Valuable Linebacker: J.K. Schaffer

Ray Sheakley Most Improved Leader Award: John Hughes, Randy Martinez, Walter Stewart

Jim Kelly Hold the Rope Award:

• Offense: Zach Collaros & Evan Davis
• Defense: Wesly Richardson

C-Club Strothman Award for Academic Excellence: Austen Bujnoch

Glenn Sample Represent the C Community Service Award: Jordan Luallen

Claude Rost MVP Award: Isaiah Pead

UC has a lot of tickets on sale. You can go to Go Bearcats and use the code SANTA to get $10 dollar upper deck back seat tickets for the games this week, and/or $15 dollar tickets for many Big East games. Attendance is sort of an issue. 

Everyone's favorite Andrea Adelson at ESPN wrote about UC piling up the championships. The key stat, the only BCS league teams to win a (share) of it's conference title has been Cincinnati and Oregon. Of course Oregon has gone to the Rose Bowl or National Title game the past 3 seasons, while UC is playing the Liberty Bowl. Also keep in mind that 5 teams have 'won' the Big East the past 2 seasons. Yeah, 5. 

Andrea also has her reaction to her preseason predictions. She did have Cincinnati and Louisville tied. For 4th. 

Tony Miliano played fill in the blanks (gross) for Cincinnati.com. 

Shaq Washington and Stephen Weatherford have left the UC program. Like Matt from Down the Drive, I think Shaq is going to a MAC school in northern Ohio. I hope all the best for Shaq and Stephen. Things couldn't work out at UC, but that doesn't mean they won't work out anywhere else. Best of luck. 

Matt took a look at the UC offensive freshman. It's a nice read. 

Chris from Bearcats Nation debated about who should start in the bowl game, Zombie or Munchie?Obviously the answer is Collaros. But what did Chris say? Keep in mind this is the same man that thinks Kelvin Gaines should be starting every game and playing 45 minutes, even though most games are only 40. 

A couple of recruiting things. First, UC got a commitment by Middletown's own EJ Junior. Nice write up at Bearcats Nation. However, UC commit Ti'on Green has had some new offers from Arizona, Maryland and USF to put things in a little doubt. Arizona especially seems interesting according to the piece. That's as far as I got because I don't pay for that insider shit.