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I have yet to meet the new AD. One seemingly small, yet impressive thing he's implemented is displacing some lower-reserved season ticket holders in the JAR and creating a lower-reserved student section. That idea was suggested here years ago and was dismissed as impossible. Likewise, selling beer at the JAR was suggested here years ago, and dismissed as absolute lunacy. Now we have a basketball student section as engaged and full as I've seen it in decades. And during a pandemic, no less? And I can have a $6 beer at my seat and watch the game, and shockingly...nobody has died because of it. There was a General Electric commercial a few years ago which contained the phrase "Ideas are frightening because the threaten what is known. They're the natural born enemy of the way things are." There are way too many people within UA that had clung to "the way things are" for decades. And believed issues like football game day attendance is just "the way things are." Why? It is a lot easier to say "I wouldn't have built that stadium" than it is to fill it. You're off the hook scot-free...it was the fault of the guys preceding you. It seems like UA may have finally lucked into an ambitious, engaging AD who can pull it out of it's decades-long death grip on the past. He made a great hire with Joe Moorhead. He's implementing changes that are seemingly simple, but on UA's conservative scale, are groundbreaking. I look forward to seeing InfoCision butts-in-seats increase appreciably over the next several years. Based upon the student involvement at the JAR this winter, I expect an immediate uptick in student attendance at football games this fall. Great things are going on at UA. Thanks to Guthrie for pulling us Zips fans off the ventilator. After a 3-24 three year stretch, I was ready to flat-line. Now I'm ready to party! 😁

I hope this works. Zippy Video.mp4

Tremendous praise for him via a Google search. LSU, Wyoming, Kansas, and Pitt experience in recent years. Hardly misguided. The greatest coaches of all time had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere almost always includes being a GA at the beginning of their respective careers. I'm not saying we have the next Nick Saban or Urban Meyer on this staff, but I do believe we have the right guy at the top to identify and develop bright football minds & leaders. Coaching starts at the top, and JoeMo is about as good as it gets at the G5 level. If you look at the staff, the GAs are surrounded by quite a bit of experience. Fessler, for example, will be directly under JoeMo, and surrounded by Reno Ferri and Terry Richardson (multiple decades of experience). On defense, DeLattiboudere and Bell will be under Toth. Not to mention all of the experience on the staff includes P5. It's the perfect mixture of experience and youth in my opinion.

I'm a little concerned that I'm not seeing any Ohio Athletic Conference or Southern Conference experience.

The anti-directional invitational.

Anyone else enjoying 3 games per week? I could easily get used to this.

Wish I was at the JAR tonight!! 😂😂

I made the mistake of going to the game tonight thinking the Zips would play well. I indicated how I hoped Trimble would learn how good he could be by driving to the basket and taking short jump shots. Well throw that right out the window. He missed 3 ball after 3 ball. I watched him shoot at the half and with nobody guarding him I watched him miss 12 in a row. He stayed on the court and kept shooting and finally made one. I thought this is not his night to shoot the 3 ball. Within 30 seconds in the 2nd half he shot and missed another 3. Groce should coach Trimble and tell him you hit 5 of 6 on Tuesday from short distance. Stop shooting the 3 ball you are killing our chance to win. That did not happen. I was also disappointed with Groce. Our full court press was pathetic. Why bother? Also, on one possession he had Trimble guarding Carey and it was ugly. Carey blew past him. Also, as somebody noticed, Clarke was terrible at the point. He dribbles the clock away, forced up a 3, turned the ball over, and just looked bad. Did not see him in the 2nd half. He was really good last year backing up LCJ. Where did his game go. Groce indicated we were not tough enough. Look at the stats on the 3 point shooting. We could not shoot the 3 ball. I hope this is not a trend that this team is going to suck on the road. Very disappointed in the game.

There's one thing I hate worse than losing to PCCC. It's a Covid policy debate in a sports forum. Maybe I am in the minority but I come to this forum to get away from a world where Covid policy and debates overwhelm the daily news narrative.

If all that Marketing blather means "script Akron" is not on our football helmets, I'm all for it.

FAR too many years of #ZippersDown !!!

Dambrot made it to 7 straight MAC championships. It seems a bit of an exaggeration to say he wasn't equipped for the MAC. Now to say he isn't equipped for the A10 is a very fair statement. I feel Dambrot is quickly realizing that at-large bids are given to teams, not conferences. You still have to put a talented enough roster on the court to get resume building wins. Without those it's actually more challenging to make the tournament in the A10 compared to the MAC as its easier to beat an Ohio, Buffalo, Toledo in the conference tournament to secure the auto-bid than it is to beat St Louis, VCU, Dayton. I have no ill will against Dambrot and am overall pleased we managed to get Groce. Without Groce this program could have turned south quick. This is now year 5 of Groce. If you're going to criticize Dambrot for making it to 9 MAC finals (winning 3) in his 13 years as head coach, you need to start considering criticizing Groce for having yet to make it to a Saturday in Cleveland. Edit: To clarify this post isn't meant to be anti-Groce. I just think the downplaying of Dambrot era is unwell. The only reason Akron had expectations was he built the basketball program have them.

Just popped over to say that was a fun game to watch. Exciting final 10 minutes. Definitely felt like a MAC tourney game. Freeman is an easy kid to root for as an opponent. Had some really very friendly Akron fans sitting around me and my wife. Should be a fun one in Athens. Hopefully with full rosters next time. Good luck and stay healthy!

Nothing official yet but he changed his profile picture to Akron Football

I'll weigh in since this thread has nearly completed a full swirly at this point. I have my vaccine and booster and regularly mask. I am confident I could survive the virus, but I don't do these things for me. I do them for my immune compromised spouse, my co-worker battling cancer, the senior that volunteers for me.... Like NWAkron said, there's a middle ground. Also, I opt to rely on the scientists as opposed to talk show hosts, grandstanding politicians and internet whackos. To get us back on topic, the current MAC Standings: Ohio 1-0 Akron 1-0 Miami 1-0 Ball State 1-0 CMU 1-0 Toledo 1-1 Brimfield 1-1 EMU 0-0 N. Illinois 0-0 BG 0-1 Buffalo 0-2 WMU 0-2

I've heard that Coach M sticking around Oregon to finish the season is generating positive opinions of him in high school coaching circles. Coaches want to believe a new coach is committed to a program when they advise a recruit to consider a school. His commitment to Oregon makes high school coaches believe he will be committed to Akron. Anything can happen, but this is a good start.

Washington State and Central Michigan were both in Arizona to play in separate bowl games. Both their opponents canceled out because of covid so they just decided to play each other. :-)

ROOCREW22: Cameron Wiley, RB, 6-2, 210 Las Vegas, NV, Minnesota transfer (2 yrs. eligibility) Devon Robinson, DL, 6-5, 300, Memphis, TN, Miss. St. & Memphis transfer (2 yrs. eligibility) Cam Threatt, DB, 6-0, 170, Lewisburg, MS, Mississippi State & Miss. Gulf Coast CC transfer (3 yrs. eligibility) Kerry Martin Jr., DB, 6-1, 185, Charleston, WV, West Virginia transfer (3 yrs. eligibility) Curtis Harper, DL, 6-2, 285, McKeesport, PA, Syracuse transfer (1 yr. eligibility) TJ Banks, TE, 6-5, 255, Duquesne, PA, West Virginia transfer (2 yrs. eligibility) Dijon Jennings, QB, 6-0, 180, Reynoldsburg HS, Reynoldsburg, OH Charles Kellom, RB, 6-0, 190, St. Xavier HS, Cincinnati, OH Tim Terry, LB, 6-2, 230, Central Catholic HS, Pittsburgh, PA, Buffalo transfer (1 yr. eligibility) Shocky Jacquez-Louis, WR, 6-0, 190, Dunbar HS, Fort Myers, FL Pitt transfer (2 yrs. eligibility?) Max Banes, OL, 6-5, 310, St. Thomas HS, Houston, TX University of Houston transfer (2 yrs. eligibility) Vic Jones, DE, 6-4, 245, Inderkum HS, Sacramento, CA Wyoming transfer (1 yr. eligibility) Alex Adams, WR, 6-1, 195, South Pike HS, Osyka, MS, (LSU transfer, 3 yrs. eligibility) Clayton Bone, WR, 6-1, 190, Avon Old Farms HS, Avon, CT Kiawan Murphy, DT, 6-3, 330, East Hartford HS, East Hartford, CT Noah Gettman, P/K, 6-5, 205, Mainland HS, Daytona Beach, FL, Sacred Heart transfer (1 yr. eligibility) Bobby Golden, WR, 5-9, 180, Miami Palmetto HS, Miami, FL Tyhler Williams, OL, 6-4, 305, Milton HS, Alpharetta, GA Ka'Marii Landers, OL, 6-5, 300, Fordson HS, Dearborn, MI Keylen Davis, OL, 6-4, 298, Ben Davis HS, Indianapolis, IN CLASS BREAKDOWN: TOTAL COMMITS: 20 Offense: 12 QB: 1 (Jennings) RB: 2 (Wiley, Kellom) WR: 4 (Jacquez-Louis, Adams, Bone, Golden) TE: 1 (Banks) OL: 4 (Banes, Williams, Landers, Davis) Defense: 7 DT: 3 (Robinson, Harper, Murphy) DE: 1 (Jones) LB: 1 (Terry) DB: 2 (Threatt, Martin) Special Teams: 1 P/K: 1 (Gettman)

So last night on the CMU broadcast the announcers referred to the Zips as the "Class of the MAC". So I wondered how true that was so I went back and looked up the stats (I am retiring in two more days so I have the time at work 😂). So I did a spreadsheet over the last ten years not counting this year (I didn't want to cherry pick and make sure I included all of Akron's titles since 2009) and these are the results: Team Avg Wins Avg Losses Regular Season Titles Tournament Titles Winning Seasons Buffalo 11.9 5.6 2.33 4 9 Akron 11.5 6.1 4.5 1 (also first seed when the tournament was vacated) 7 Toledo 10.8 6.9 1.5 0 6 Kent 9.9 7.7 0.33 1 (bastards 😂) 7 Ohio 9.3 7.9 0.5 2 (double bastards 😄) 6 BGSU 8.6 9.0 0 0 (since 1968) 5 EMU 7.9 9.3 0 0 3 WMU 7.9 9.5 0.5 1 4 Ball St 7.4 10.1 0 0 4 CMU 6.7 10.7 0.33 0 3 NIU 6.5 10.7 0 0 1 Miami 6.3 11.2 0 0 1 Kind of shocking to me that Miami is worse than everyone in the west. Their sole winning season was last year at 9-8. A lot of the West teams winning season are like 10-8, 11-7 records. And without the NCCA success Ohio is sort of a middling MAC team (but sadly I do expect that is changing under Boals). But from all of this its clear to me that the class of the MAC over the past decade has been Buffalo. Their one losing season was 7-9 a decade ago. With that and their NCAA tournament success I think it's pretty clear they have been the #1 team. If we sneak it back three more years and grab two more of the Zips tournament titles then maybe we have an argument. :-)

I am in the minority but I really enjoyed the game. First, the refs let them play. Very few whistles and very few foul shots. Both teams missed the front end on a one and one at crucial time. Very physical game. Because the refs did not blow the whistle, a lot of bumping and grinding. Although the Zips were the smaller team in both stature, weight and muscle, they won the battle of the boards. The Zips worked really hard on defense. When an Eastern player was about to get an offensive rebound, Tribble climbed his back and prohibited from scoring. They forced Eastern into a bad shooting night We won another close game. How many Zips team have failed to close a game. We just closed 2 close games in 5 days. Finally, a decent crowd. A first for the Zips season, a line in the men's room to take a leak!!!

Have no fear, ZipsWin! is here! I always enjoy my ride to BG and then a stop at Frickers...Then I remember that I have to watch a game at the most poorly constructed basketball arena, ever...Not one seat in the house was built at the correct angle or slope, but I digress...ZipsWin baby!

Call it wishful thinking, but it's time for the Zips to put Covid in the rear view mirror and play their best game since Wright State. Zips by 7 points.

Tavari Johnson update: Glenbard West Hilltoppers are #1 in Illinois crushing opponents by more than 25 points per game. Glenbard has 4 D1 college commits led by 6-9 forward and Gonzaga commit Braden Huff. In a big 32-team holiday tournament Glenbard was looking forward to playing Bolingbrook in the championship game. But behind Tavari's 28 points his Lyons team upset Bolingbrook. Glenbard overwhelmed Lyons in the championship game as Tavari is the only D1 commit on an otherwise mid-pack HS team. Led by Tavari Lyons is now 16-3 with 2 of those losses to #1 Glenbard West. Lyons is currently ranked #10 in Illinois despite limited talent behind Tavari.

Here's what I'm drawing up on the whiteboard during this TO: "LZip just posted 'This team sucks!' Are you going to take that?!?"

With all the positive news coming out of the program for starved UA football fans I think we should call him Coach MoJoe. 😉

Perfect! He doesn't say there is a "building process". Building what? Ever notice over the past 25 years nobody ever defined what the building process was supposed to entail? Saying there is a building process is a fancy way of saying, "I have no idea what in the heck I'm doing and I'm hoping something good happens before the public figures that out." John Madden had only three rules: be on time, pay attention and play like Hell when I tell you to. Why only three? The more rules you put out, the more a person is able to break the rules so you spend all of your time trying to get the person to follow your rules instead of playing football. I like JMoorhead only has four rules. It's very simple and is how you establish a solid base in a program. There is also discussion about making the program something people in the community can look to as a source of pride through winning. Presenting a good product and winning is something the university can control. There is some discussion of attendance. Attendance is something the university can have influence over, but cannot control because it's hard to control people in a free society. It's why winning on the field isn't enough. The university has to put a full-ass effort into, on game day, making the University a cultural center point for the players, students, alumni, fans and general community. The presentation of the University as more than a football game on game day is something the University can control and needs to control. Finding ways to benefit these five groups on game day needs to be the foundation of success for the University and athletics has to be a part of it but not the only department owning this responsibility. Lastly, it's encouraging to see the University is putting various people in a forward facing position to the citizens of NE Ohio in a way that highlights the positive things going on at UofA.

It's 8:33am and... CAN'T STATE STILL SUCKS! The above is from their recent Famous Idaho Potato Bowl appearance. Truly living up to the marketing tagline "Can't Read, Can't Write, Can't State."

Akron with a 66-53 win over Miami. Dawson led the way with 25 points.

He has to be good; he's already in the UoA athletic Hall of Fame. based on this, he may be out of eligibility

GT: “This is going to sound like a weird question, did you have to get used to having Bryan in the starting Lineup?” Xavier: “No.” GT: “Not at all?” X: “No.”

Wow this is a big get!! Probably will be or one of the highest ranked players coming out of highschool to suit up for Akron. I know, I know it's a transfer and I know, I know stars don't always equal success. Nonetheless this is huge! Joe is really turning this roster up a talent level.

Shocky's offer list coming out of HS Pitt, Kentucky, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Tennessee, Appalachian State, BUGS, CMU, Cincinnati, Coastal Carolina, UConn, FIU, Georgia, Indiana, Louisville, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon, Oregon State, Rutgers, South Carolina, Syracuse, UCF, USF, and Virginia 🤯

Hopefully all our future opponents get #CaughtInTheZipper

Zips take a bus trip to Portage County on a day’s notice and somehow hold on to win an ugly one. Big game for Dawson. Great win! Bleep Kent!

Also keep in mind all these colleges have a ton of offers out there. They may have 5 WR offers out but only 2 WR spots & depending on who they get to commit they pull offers and players don’t announce that info as the more offers the better you look but it’s possible at this point the options where no longer available

In no way have I ever downplayed Dambrot's accomplishments and trips to the final and championships in any way. I simply found the end of it to be embarrassing to have by far the best team for the last two years yet be completely out-toughed and out-classed by far inferior coaches, teams, and programs in back to back seasons, with the second coming to Senderoff of all coaches. And my view of that whole situation would be far different had KD not walked off the court without having the fortitude to shake Pinky's hand after the game. That was about as pathetic an act I have ever seen from a coach in this athletic department, and I still get to hear about it from my friends who are Kent people. In no way is that discounting his success he had at Akron, it was simply very disappointing to see from a coach that is the most AKRON person to ever coach at the school. With that said, Akron was not the same program it was in 2017 as it was in 2013. Josh Williams and Noah Robotham were transferring whether KD was going to leave or not. That is a problem that has now followed him to Duquesne. As for Groce? He took over a completely gutted program and has made it about values that I consider to be more favorable, but it's just flat out different and that has appeal in my eyes. There is no ego allowed. You must practice hard. You must take care of yourself. You must play defense. We may not have a Tree, but we also don't have a Harney. KD could develop a player better than most MAC coaches I have ever seen, but coaching isn't so much about that any more as it was ten years ago. Groce recruits a lot better than he develops, again the opposite of Dambrot, but the best MAC teams now are the ones that recruit, not necessarily the ones that develop the best players for 4 years. It is a discussion of nuance. I can love Dambrot and be thankful for what he did her while also pointing out his deficiencies. I love Groce and love what he's got going, but unfortunately it did take 3 seasons to meet expectations and I do think they could be better than they are. Like @Captain Kangaroo has said before, this situation has worked out pretty well for all sides thus far. Duquesne is a better, still not great A10 program, Akron is still a great MAC program, and both coaches seem to be happy.

What a damn ball game. I would have been a lot more upset losing a game like this a few years ago, but I try to keep cool now. Groce hit the nail on the head. They outplayed Akron tonight. Plain and simple. That would have been an all-timer of a stolen win had Akron come out on top, that’s for sure. With that said, it was great to see the fight from UA because it felt really hopeless at about 53-39. The Zips played tougher than them down the stretch to tie it up with 2 minutes to go and the Zips didn’t score again. I wasn’t a fan of any of those possessions down the stretch either. They played their scouting report on the Akron bugs to a T for the first 30 minutes then Freeman started to loosen up and figure it out a bit. Also fitting that as soon as Clarke plays his best game as a Zip on Saturday he turns his ankle in that one and wasn’t very good today, especially on defense. Dawson was a tremendous glue guy again and played very well outside of the dumb blocked three, he just got beat on the layup by Sears at the end. Total BS that Trimble couldn’t play tonight, but that’s above our pay grade. Fun game between the teams and coaches. It was nice to have the arena come to life the last 6 minutes or so. On to (maybe) Miami Saturday, which will be no easy feat. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Trust the process. Go Zips!

I heard he's going to be an unpaid grad assistant at Clemson.

Arth may well land a decent position in football and be very successful. Being a D1 football coach was just not right for him. Wherever he ends up I wish him well as he does seem to be a good guy.

Classic example of bringing in a sub that makes the starter look bad.

TEAMISM. That’s a culture win if I’ve ever seen one, and Groce said as much. One of the toughest wins since he’s been here, I can’t believe the Zips put up the point total they did after the first ten minutes or so AND without their best shooter. Zips got Williams out of the game and forced the rest of that mess of a team to beat them, and they couldn’t do it. Tuesday won’t be any easier. Put the team on your back, Ali! Go Zips! Happy New Year to all!

Now if you had this detail with bigjim's suggestion to group the assistants under their respective coordinators and got the post located on the first page of this thread you may be in line for some kind of award. I don't know whether it would be a Pulitzer, a Nobel, one of them buy-one get-one-free coupons from Mickey Ds, or something else but it would definitely be something cool you would want to include on your vitae.

The "common cold" isn't one virus, it's a series of viruses that tend to spread seasonally and have similar symptoms, as I listed above; and all have different characteristics such as HMPV which mostly impacts children, and appears to have been circulating for 200 years. The Human Coronavirus that you suggest was discovered in 1965 was actually discovered in 1961 by a Common Cold research laboratory. That doesn't mean it qualifies for being registered as a "common cold" virus, nor that it was the "original virus" for the common cold. It was a virus identified after samples from a patient with general symptoms. That doesn't mean it's classified as a "Common Cold Virus". I know this might sound arbitrary, but to researchers it isn't. Symptoms do not equal classification. The inability of Kendal et. al. to cultivate the virus was what led to the discovery of the new clade of viruses. Simply producing a fever (aka cold) is not good enough for combating disease. This is why the first SARS-CoV-2 patient identified in a hospital in Wuhan was labeled as "SARS?" because the symptoms pointed to an upper respiratory virus, but all tests (even SARS-1 tests) came up negative and could not be identified by viral analysis. The only evidence they had of infection was the chest X-Rays...the same method that SARS-CoV-1 was originally identified in 2003...and something researchers had been warning about for the nearly 2-decades since. The 60-odd years later...and the advent of RNA analysis, we've been able to trace viruses and their evolutionary clades. Clumping coronaviruses in with the viruses I listed in the previous post, as if to suggest they are something to be ignored or "common", is incredibly ignorant. SARS and MERS demonstrate exactly why they are a clade of viruses that should not be so ignorantly ignored or brushed aside as "common" because they jumping to humans are far from "common". From RNA analysis we know all Coronaviruses, evolutionarily speaking, originate from Bats. Which is why researchers became increasingly concerned about the encroachment of domesticated animal farms in rural China, India, Pakistan and SE Asia because of the overlap with wild bat populations. Ironically this is where Pangolins, the most trafficked mammal on the planet, come into our little story...but that is a story for another time.

Please stop comparing SARS-CoV-2 to influenza and flu-like viruses. It's not even close to a similar comparison. Rhinoviruses, RSVs, and Parainfluenza viruses are responsible for "the common cold" and comparing them to Coronaviruses is laughably ignorant. Like, not even the same phylogenetic branches of the viral clades, or in how they interact with our cells and how the immune system develops antibodies for them. Having similar symptoms does not equal similarity.