Leading off today: Athletic Director Warde Manuel moved quickly in selecting a replacement for football coach Turner Gill, with the University at Buffalo announcing last night that Cincinnati offensive coordinator Jeff Quinn will take the helm after the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1.

   Quinn is the interim coach at Cincinnati following Brian Kelly's decision to take the top coaching job at Notre Dame. Quinn, who will be introduced at a news conference tomorrow, received a five-year contract.

   It will be interesting to see how Quinn fills his coaching staff, since Gill is likely to bring some of his staff to Kansas and several Cincinnati assistants could follow Kelly to South Bend. Quinn has coached alongside Kelly for 21 of his 26 college seasons.

   That could leave him scrambling in the short term, but also creates an opportunity to install his system and coaching philosophy in one big move. At the very least recruiting should be helped by his reputation as an innovative offensive mind following success with the spread offense at Central Michigan and Cincinnati.

   Quinn was a potential permanent hire at Cincinnati, but Butch Jones of Central Michigan got the job. It's likely that development created urgency for Manuel since Quinn would have been a logical candidate at Central Michigan.

   Schools on the move: Ichabod Crane will move to the Colonial Council in September, sources have told The Times Union.

   "As an overall program, it was a move we had to make," AD Paul Thompson said. "We're the only Class A school in the Patroon Conference. Down the road, this is a move that helps our program."

   The Patroon Conference consists of mostly Class B and C schools, and Ichabod Crane had played an independent schedule in girls basketball until this season in order to compete against large-school competition in preparation for sectionals.

   Thompson said the school hopes to continue scheduling some games against Patroon Conference opponents to maintain rivalries.

   Meanwhile, The Observer-Dispatch reports that the Utica and Rome school districts have submitted separate applications to move from the Syracuse-based Central New York Counties League to the Tri Valley League.

   Utica City School District officials reapplied to the TVL last month, and Rome followed suit earlier last week. Utica Proctor and Rome Free Academy applied for membership together in the eight-school league in February and were denied.

   With 1,266 students compared to Proctor's 2,070, RFA might have an edge in gaining membership. The largest TVL schools are Whitesboro (891), Camden (646) and New Hartford (624).

   "A lot of what we were hearing before was, 'That enroll-

ment number really scares us,'” RFA AD Mike Stamboly told the paper. "When we sat down and looked at it, we thought it was Proctor's numbers and how big Proctor was, so let's try to get in by ourselves and see what happens."

   Clinton Principal Richard Hunt, the secretary/treasurer of the TVL, said league officials will begin reviewing the applications next month.

   And one more note: Class D Hinsdale, which has been competing in Section 6, has received approval from Section 5 on its membership application.

   What's up with that? I wasn't sure I wanted to weigh in on the topic of national rankings because the NYSSWA certainly catches flak from time to time regarding its state rankings.

   However, I can't let USA Today go unchallenged on its East Region rankings for football.

   "The nation's newspaper" was very cutting-edge in the 1980s, producing national rankings and all-star teams -- and doing plenty of reporting -- on high school sports before anyone could even envision the explosive growth that would come about in the online world two decades later.

   And for a good many years, it was virtually impossible for New York schools to earn even a top-10 regional ranking from USA Today because of competition from schools in Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And when N.Y. schools did earn a ranking it was almost always the result of an undefeated season.

   At this moment, however, there are actually two N.Y. teams ranked in the region. No. 7 North Tonawanda is a bit of a no-brainer following its 13-0 season, though there has been some spirited debate as to whether Sweet Home (13-0) was actually the better team in Section 6 this fall -- particularly over the final month of the season.

   And then there's the other ranked team: No. 6 Freeport.

   This is not a knock on the Red Devils, but there is no way that a 10-2 team from New York can be ranked at all, never mind ahead of the unbeaten Lumberjacks. After all, there have been years when unbeaten or one-loss St. Anthony's teams couldn't break into the rankings. Though the regular-season losses were to quality opponents -- East Meadow and Farmingdale -- there were also four Freeport wins by a TD or less against schools with a combined record of 22-16.

   Yet Freeport wound up ahead of Hyattsville, Md., DeMatha (11-1), which is better known for its basketball team but has nevertheless been top-notch in football for more than two decades under Bill McGregor. The Stags were 11-1, with the loss coming by a 14-7 score in the playoffs to an 11-1 team they edged during the regular season.

   I'm confident eight out of 10 objective observers would pick No. 8 DeMatha by a touchdown or more on a neutral field vs. Freeport, so I'd be curious to know who's bending the ear of the guys doing the rankings for USA Today.