Five alumni will be inducted into the Dr. and Mrs. Edmond J. Gicewicz Family UB Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday, Sept. 17 in the UB Center for the Arts Atrium on the North Campus. In addition, three others will receive honors for their support of and service to the UB athletics program. The induction ceremony will begin at 6 p.m. followed by a dessert reception with open bar at 7:30 p.m.
Turner Battle, BA ’05, of Amherst, NY, the most decorated of all UB basketball players in the Mid-American Conference, was its player of the year his senior season and an Associated Press Honorable Mention All-American. During that 2004-05 campaign, the Bulls finished with a 23-10 record, were beaten by one point in overtime by Ohio in the MAC Championship game and advanced to the second round of the NIT Tournament. Battle averaged team-highs of 15.5-points and 4.4 steals and logged the most minutes (1,160) by a Bull during a single season. Additionally, his leadership on and off the court was immeasurable, leading the Bulls in scoring his last three seasons and finishing his career with 1,414 to stand fifth on the all-time list. He also topped the Bulls in assists all four years and in steals for two. In 2003-04, he was chosen a MAC second-team pick after earning honorable mention as a sophomore and all-freshman in his initial campaign. When his career ended, he was among the top five in eight of 11 categories.
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ESPN’s Adam Schefter is in Pittsford today on his training camp tour covering the Buffalo Bills, and is reporting that the team will release veteran defensive end Aaron Schobel on Wednesday. Once that happens, Schobel will be an unrestricted free agent.
Schefter also reports that Schobel plans on continuing his playing career, and will begin talking with teams “soon.” Of course, the Houston Texans were the first team mentioned.
Unless the Bills decided that they wanted to do Schobel perhaps the biggest favor of his life, I don’t get the logic behind this decision. As an unrestricted free agent, the market for Schobel’s services could be significant, and Buffalo didn’t technically have to do anything with him. On the Reserve/Did Not Report list, he didn’t count against the team’s active roster, and the team could have left him there indefinitely. Schobel could have forced the team’s hand by reporting, but he told BuffaloBills.com on Monday that he wouldn’t pursue that course of action. It’s unclear whether the team would have had to pay Schobel while on the DNR list, which might have been a factor in the decision.
Schobel was due to make $8.28 million in 2010, and any team that would have traded for Schobel would have had to take on that salary. That fact alone makes it highly unlikely that the team would have been able to swap him for even a very-low-round draft pick. Still, it’d have been nice to see them try. If it wasn’t clear Monday, however, it’s certainly clear now – Schobel’s career in Buffalo is over.
(Brian Galliford is the leader of Buffalo Rumblings, the best Buffalo Bills’ fan site on the web, period. He’s generously allowed us to run his positional breakdown series. You can see this series as well as countless exclusive news and columns by clicking here)
