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Keener, if you had your way you'd probably vote for a fully exposed roo shootin the kanga on a helmet.

Who on this forum has said they hate Pohl? We're simply pointing out that with 2-years of Pohl at the helm, we've hit a barrier at the QB position. There's no hatred or emotion boiling over with a statement like that, it's stating observations and...frankly...the facts. I don't think there's a member on this forum who wouldn't love for Pohl to improve drastically in the off-season and beat out everyone on the roster...for him to stop throwing the ball to unopened receivers, making the right reads and leading the offense. The fact is, a drastic improvement for a 5th year player isn't likely. We've seen the best that Pohl can do.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the recruiting rankings perceived correctness amongst the ZN.o faithful might be given a lot more credence if the Zips were ranked higher. Just a hunch.

I know ratings aren't everything but even so, this is part of why I'm downright worried. LINK

Then it can't be said to be a fluke.

https://twitter.com/MBeavenABJ/status/563771230122442752 Michael Beaven says that Lockett will sign in August. Assuming the same goes for Tupta.

I buy that it is disappointing to have so few kids from W Pa and Ohio in the class. To some extent. Generally-speaking, the Zips name doesn't carry much weight locally. Yeah, he attended West Virginia, but he's always coached in the South. His Dad is a legend in Florida...not so much in East Liverpool. Bowden can walk into pretty much any Florida High School and the resident HS coaches get all weak-kneed. Not so much in Monroeville Pa. I doubt there is a high school coach in Florida that's going to tell a "Bowden" that he has a legit D1 kid that he wants him to sign, and that kid actually sucks. By the same token, the high school kids we've seen thus far from Florida have not made an impact. Most of them are still pretty young, and all were recruited off the epic string of 1-11 seasons, so I don't think you can condemn this Florida-based class because of their predecessors. For the most part, the signing day event was uneventful. Coach spoke for a long time when answering most questions, and in the end didn't say much. But those in the audience that were perceptive caught on to his interspersion of passion when the QB situation was brought up, and the fact that year #4 of the Bowden Era needs to be a leap forward. He was adamant about it. Zips recruiting is tough to follow. It is a completely different animal that almost anywhere else. You can't rely on Rivals or Hudl or Scout or 24/7 or anywhere else. These guys don't research squat. Some post nice videos, and they get the scoop on recruits commitments from the HS coaches. But recruiting sites just don't look into the kids the Zips recruit beyond the surface. Especially the transfers, who by necessity have made up the bulk of the impact players we've seen under Bowden. I have faith in the guy. The retention of the young recruits is my barometer that the program's health continues to improve. Having the aforementioned 3 "BCS Commit Quarterbacks" on our roster is an unbelievable thing for a MAC program...even if the local papers don't know it. Next year's QB situation should be light years ahead of 2014. RB too. If Bowden delivers the goods in 2015, I think the Ohio and Pennsylvania kids will take notice, and we'll see a few more next February. Until then, let's hope Ray Ray Smith gets his ACT scores up. If he does, look out.

Who gets a T first, Bobby or Kwan?

Pohl will not be the man ......................... Period It is currently Chapman's spot to lose ................. The way Bowden talks about him, you can tell that the job is currently his

I loved the "Z." I hate the full-size kangaroo.

Yes he will. He's been hurt off and on but when healthy reports are he's been great. He's got a great future.

Good plan. Don't know how many people on this board have actually seen a significant number of these recruits play in person,but I doubt its a significant number. So its really hard to make an intelligent assessment of how these recruits will perform at even the lowest BCS level. I note that 3 transfers from bigger schools were prominently noted. Recruiting at the MAC level in football is exceedingly difficult. You are recruiting against the high level BCS teams as well as the FCS(1-AA) teams. But at some point the coach has to go 'all in' and play the 'best' people on the team. Hopefully,2015 is that year. No reason it should not be at this point.

I feel bad for the kid also. Different circumstances, but we lost our best player too. So, I guess we'll see how the two teams match up right now with their remaining parts. Maybe the key thing here is that it makes that final conference game at Ken+ as a good possibility of a win, if we need it. And winning that final game at Ken+ has meant a lot in some previous years.

Truthfully, this whole business of ranking recruiting classes is silly. Some schools will need more recruits than others from losing kids to graduation. Second out of the thousands of kids who play high school sports, a couple of recruiting websites are entrusted with telling coaches who the best players are? Those websites don't give kids in smaller schools the time of day and size of the school might determine the quality of the program, but not the talent and athleticism of the kid. The Lemming Report was the go-to source before the era of web-based recruiting, but honestly, good coaches know what they need and what kind of player is the right fit for their team and systems, and even then, the chemistry between the coaches and players can make or break a recruit of any star level. It is not all the different front he NFL draft. How many teams go after these high dollar players only to have them bust? Look at a successful NFL team, like the Steelers and see how many MAC players they have on the roster: a bunch of them. This year seems like a very nice follow up to last year. It seemed to me that there was more of a sense of urgency and fire into he belly when Coach Bowden spoke yesterday and he seemed quite confident in the recruiting class.The breadth of his knowledge about our conference and the types of kids we can land and should land is reassuring. Our classes will improve as our record improves. He has done a very good job selling the, "be part of the Akron turn-around story" and he made mention of rebuilding generally being a 3-4 year process and the difference is very noticeable in that fourth season. It seemed, and perhaps it was just because they did a better job of marketing, that Coach Bowden himself was more involved in recruiting this year. He is the best salesman we have. One thing you hear from current players and recruits over and over is that they believe the coaches at Akron genuinely care about the kids. I think that speaks well of the program and if it is true, they are building a reputation of that within the schools where they are recruiting. And let me throw this out there about the uniforms and Tuesday nights - both are for the kids first, and the fans second. I get that we agreeing to build a fan base and the Tuesday nights really stunk for most people. However, when you recruit from FL and a kid can tell his friends and family they can watch his games on cable vs. ESPN 3, it makes a difference. RE: uniforms, we are all going to have our preferences and be convinced we are right, but it is really a matter of what the kids like and the coaches are pretty in tune with that, probably more than most of us are. If you have seen, both last year and recently when the pictures of the new uniforms and helmets hit Twitter, they generated a ton of buzz, pretty much all positive. For a school without a ton of money, I think they are doing a pretty good job making the most with what they have to make the kids happy and generate interest. What recruit doesn't want to Tweet a picture of a uniform considered cool by his peers?

I gave up years ago trying to decide the quality of football recruiting classes for the Zips. Unless we sign a kid who decided to stay home and gave up a scholarship to a BCS level school, the players we sign are all projects IMHO .

Peter (42) making a nice block in the big game: And fouling out against Giles:

Let's stick w/ the "Z".