All of the Rhabdo 13 have be been released

Great news. Yesterday evening a statement was released that all 13 of the Iowa football players suffering from rhabdomyolysis had been discharged from the hospital. Just two days before only 5 had been released.

Gary Barta (finally) and Kirk Ferentz also had statements as part of the University's release. Probably the biggest thing to come out from the statements is that Ferentz absolved the players of any responsibility in the events that led to the hospitalization. "They trained extremely hard and ended up in the hospital, and there is no indication they did anything wrong."

Barta goes on to say though, that we shouldn't be too quick to judge the strength and conditioning staff. "The staff and coaches who work with these young men are highly respected professionals who are dedicated and care deeply about our student-athletes. I hope those who follow our program will respect this process moving forward and refrain from any further unproductive rush to judgment."

Moving forward now, I hope all of the players make a full recovery and can play football in the fall. It is also going to be interesting to see how much is released about the cause of this all. Iowa doesn't typically like to released any more information than they have to, but in this case the people really want to know what happened.

Here's the full release:
All 13 of the University of Iowa football players who had been hospitalized with symptoms of rhabdomyolysis, a muscular syndrome, have been released from University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

"Getting all 13 student-athletes healthy and out of the hospital has been priority number one all along, so I'm very happy that they all are now back home and resuming their lives," said Kirk Ferentz, the UI's head football coach.

"These young men and their families have been through a difficult and trying time. They are under my supervision and watch, and I am truly sorry for what they've experienced. They trained extremely hard and ended up in the hospital, and there is no indication they did anything wrong. So I'm pleased they are progressing well and I look forward to seeing all of them being back to normal."

The University's athletics department earlier had confirmed the release of five student-athletes Friday. Six more were discharged on Saturday, and the final two were sent home on Sunday.

"Now that these students are out of the hospital and on the road to recovery, we can devote our full attention to determining what happened, and making sure it does not happen again," said Ferentz. "There has been a lot of speculation by those who don't have the facts and it is unfair and inappropriate for anyone to make wild guesses about what happened."

"We obviously are extremely pleased all of our student-athletes have been released from the hospital and can begin the return to their academic, athletic, and personal lives," said Gary Barta, the UI's director of athletics.

"We now can focus exclusively on discovering the root cause of this situation, and I'm anxious to work with President Mason's group to this end. We will review every aspect of the workouts and talk with everyone involved. The staff and coaches who work with these young men are highly respected professionals who are dedicated and care deeply about our student-athletes. I hope those who follow our program will respect this process moving forward and refrain from any further unproductive rush to judgment."

Nation Signing Day is coming

The end of recruiting for 2011 is in sight. Nation Signing Day is just 2 days a way now and Iowa is working on filling up the last few spots in this year's class. Just yesterday, Coach Eric Johnson tweeted that there is a new member. All signs are pointing to Jordan Lomax, a DB out of DeMatha Catholic High School. If true, that is very good news for the Hawkeyes. Not only is he a 3-star prospect at a position where Iowa has some needs, he would be continuing the DeMatha pipeline. The school produces a ton of D1 talent. Marcus Coker is currently on Iowa's roster and big time recruits Cyrus Kouandjio and Darian Cooper are being recruited heavily.

Also on the recruiting front, Iowa recently picked up a preferred walk-on kicker/punter. Marshall Koehn from Solon committed to Iowa last Friday. His stats aren't great, but solid: 49/56 on PATs, 13/18 on FGs, 37.8 yards per punt, 45 touchbacks on 85 kickoffs. What make Koehn a little more interesting is that he also played wide receiver. Having a little bit of a more athletic kicker/punter would at least threaten the idea of a fake (not like one would ever get called though).