are made for and rightly so. Plus, we canned our guy weeks ago, team not playing especially well, voila - endless specutlation and chatter about who it is going to be. Understandable. Again, perfect message board environment. I'm fine with JF and anyone who thinks these agents aren't pushing all this stuff to get competition going and drive the prices up is just crazy. That's their job. First and top of my list regardless of the name - They TRULY want to be here, full stop. Proving that......I get it. But, hopefully we can ferret out the phonies from the really mean it candidates. Second - proven winner at the HC level, preferably over a longer period of time. Third - proven recruiter over a decent sized geography. Development of the recruits. I hope our list is being used to push BACK against the Sexton's et al with solid counter's that we have options that WANT the job and while negotiation is fine and part of the process - we are only going to negotiate so long and so much. I really hope those are some of the tactics being employed by our side. Having done this for a long period of time in my career you have to know a.) what they are most likely going to do - their tactics, b.) counters to the expected tactics and forceful replies based on our position and facts on the ground, c.) surprises - no matter how you plan these things out and role play, there are surprises that happen - off the wall crap. You have to be prepared for all of this and I HOPE our guys are battling in that fashion. One thing likely not working in our favor is most of these guys have the same agent. Its a small fraternity that manage these coaches and if Jimmy Sexton is the agent for "2" of the guys we are targeting - he KNOWS what our a,b,c's are. Even if the top 2 are represented by different agents - these guys are working together in a "I'll help you here, you help me there" type slimy unstated agreement. Colusion, if you will - plain and simple. MTH