All Activity

Tomorrow night is the Tip-off Reception. Every year, one player is on the stage with Groce. The last couple have been Nate and Enrique. Who will it be this year? My bet is Tavari.

RPI Rank 14 Akron 104 Marquette 45 Creighton

Oggi is really 6'9"?? Can't wait!!! 😁

I would amend this to say that recruiting rankings only exist to stimulate interest in the off season and to suck a few more dollars out of the few fans who live and die with college football and have lesser or no interest in college basketball or professional spring and summer sports.

Yes, there is still value in continuity. College football is not much different than the NFL now. The NFL teams that most often succeed are those who draft well, can retain their talent, and then look towards free agency (in this case the portal) to just plug a few missing gaps. Also, like NFL draft classes, you can't really grade how good they are until 3 or 4 later. Recruiting rankings are more educated guesses than a factual guarantee.

To me, this is more of a statement about the dangers of the transfer portal and believing recruiting rankings.

The margin of error is really thin in the SEC now that Texas and Oklahoma joined. There are at least 7 programs (Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, and LSU) who expect to be in the playoffs every year. There are another handful that expect to make the playoffs every 2 or 3 years. Then you randomly have programs like Kentucky or Vanderbilt who can surprisingly be good at times. When you consider only about 5 of these schools can make the playoffs each year there is going to be a lot of disappointment. The B1G is a different animal. In recent years only OSU, Oregon, and Penn State have been consistent top 10-15 programs. With Franklin gone who knows what happens with Penn State. That makes it easier for a program like Indiana to emerge. Maybe at some point USC and UM will get their sh** together and live up to their blue blood names, but right now it's much easier to succeed in the B1G vs the SEC.

It's very common.

Tough to predict a record because I think this team could beat last year's team, but I think it's a tougher OOC schedule and the MAC is up a bit from last year.

They had the top-ranked transfer portal class coming into 2025 along with no lower than a top-12 recruiting class each of the last three seasons: 2024 (7th), 2023 (5th), 2022 (12th) The problem isn't getting talent or keeping up with spending, it was a coach who has never been able to win at the levels of the truly elite in CFB. To have that kind of talent and not even get in to an expanded playoff is frankly embarrassing.

That might be. For example, the 1997 game in Lincoln was only a 59-14 loss for Zippy.

The data AI looked at in my post included OOC play. Perhaps that's where the numbers differ.

As for "expectations," difficult to surpass 17-1. 2 recruits from different schools in Westerville?

Per the AP on 10/22/25: In that first season of NIL in 2021-22, the margin of victory was 18 points for the Big Ten, 15.7 points for both the SEC and Pac-12, 15.2 for the Big 12 and 14.1 for the Atlantic Coast Conference. Now the ACC has an average margin of 13 points per victory with the Big 12 at 14.5 points and the Big Ten at 15.5 points.

You're right. I forgot he fled Notre Dame for LSU on his own accord.

“Again”? I don’t think he’s ever been fired?

I don't think anyone is arguing it wasn't a problem before, but it has grown worse. The average margin of victory this season is the largest it has been since at least 2000 based on what AI is telling me. Before if there were 4 or 5 games on TV at least 1, maybe two or 3 would be good. Now it's a struggle to find one game.

Zipped Up's season preview- https://akronzippedup.substack.com/p/akron-zips-mens-basketball-2025-2026?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2970576&post_id=175211323&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=52p862&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

This should've been the final nail in the coffin for Brian Kelly's coaching career. Glad that scumbag is out of a job (again). He needs to be done coaching for good. I love that he hilariously flopped at LSU which also produced an all time embarrassing GIF.

Are common blowouts really all that new with college football, though? I think that's kind of always been the issue.

I think that's fair. 6-6 would be enough to keep him and hope he can figure out the first half of the season (@ Wake, @ Minnesota, Robert Morris, UNLV is a reasonably similar noncon schedule to 2025). Certainly not enough to consider extending given 14-34 is still the record.

Yes. When I got home Saturday night, I tried to find a close game on television. It was around 9:30. There wasn't a single game on TV of any interest that was closer than 10 points. College football is rapidly becoming a bad product. Unless some type of restrictions can be placed on players, there will be decline unless the drunks and degenerate gamblers they market it to can keep it afloat.

If you think about LSU in the world of college football 10 years ago, yes, they should be a contender. They are going to struggle mightily moving forward in a poor state with the best class of money they can bring in being car dealership money. In many ways, much of the SEC has this problem.

I wouldn't be terribly heartbroken if he decides to leave on his own free will. Getting to 5 or 6 wins is kind of his ceiling at Akron IMO. He comes off more as an old school coach and not the smooth talker who can get boosters to open up their checkbook. In this NIL era you need a salesman. Not someone who just complains about the shitty hand they're being dealt. Edit: All that said I'm also not cheering for him to leave either. We can and certainly have done worse.

They a surrounded by schools within their conference who they will never be able spend as much. There are lots of schools like them. I just named a few. I could have included VA Tech, Florida State and many others. The college football playoffs will become much like Major League Baseball. We all know who is most likely to win and a few underdogs sneak by into the post season periodically, but they lose in the end. Like MLB, the drivers will never agree to a salary cap of any sort.