Leaderboard

I want the best coach available. I don't care if that coach is 25 or 85. Last year Fleck was the best coach in the MAC and was therefore desired by bigger schools. Minnesota offered him a rather large raise and better resources so he took it. I have no issue with someone taking great opportunities. If a MAC school wants to keep a young coach they can always double down and prove that their school is the right place to be. It very rarely works, because it is very rarely true that it is better for the coach to stay. I don't understand why people feel that loyalty means something here. History has shown that the best teams in the MAC don't have there coaches stick around. Many OU fans are getting tired of their current regime because they have not done anything. When is the last time the OU won a MAC title? I would much rather have a coach that comes in, raises the standards at UA, and then moves on instead of continuing to wallow in this .500 record bubble that we seem to be in.

I'd like to see this be a matchup each and every year.

^^You guys are talking past each other... Kidd from Garfield is 6-7, 330 Brimage from East is 6-2, 265 Brim is the one who's presently a bit undersized for D-1 DT. But he'll easily put on 20 pounds, maybe 25. As it stands now Brim's a bit of a tweener; too big for DE, too small for DT. But he's a player, so hopefully we'll find a place for him. I'm sure we will.

$4M (split with MAC?) for playing in the Cotton Bowl. Plus: In addition to the payouts detailed below, each team participating in a playoff semifinal (Peach and Fiesta Bowls) or the Cotton Bowl receives $2.16 million for travel expenses. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristidosh/2016/12/31/college-football-playoff-payouts-by-conference-for-2016-17/2/#6478ea2b24a4 Some of that nothing, please!

Great point! I personally lost interest around November, so I guess I'd be included in that (but it was with...other...things going on in my life that caused that, though the University was a player in it). I still watched every game. But OBJECTIVELY I though I would have (and am) upset the Zips weren't able to cash-in on a golden opportunity, I can step back and realize the true circumstance of this season; and had we made a second bowl game I would have in the end considered it a success. 5-7 is definitely a down year. 6-6 for a program that hasn't had consecutive .500 seasons...really ever in D-1 (maybe back in the Lee Owens era we did...almost 20 years ago), it should be viewed as a success.

This is actually a great question to Poll among the fans here, and elsewhere. If we had notched that 6th win, which certainly would have gotten us to a Bowl Game (some 5-win teams got in), would we have looked at this as a successful season? Would we have mostly celebrated the 2-straight bowl appearances? Or, would we have been disappointed that the 7 or 8 win season which looked very attainable at one point had nosedived. I can't answer for all fans, but most of the people I know had lost interest even before the OU game. They really didn't care if we became a .500 bowl team. Maybe the expectations after 2015 created that.

You'd be wrong.

Why so we can be a one-and-done like Kent? No thanks. Bring in (or Keep *cough* Bowden *cough*) someone who wants to build something.

If WMU achieved nothing this season, the MAC should disband immediately and all member schools drop football altogether. The Broncos enjoyed arguably the best season of all time. The odds are incredibly slim that Akron will ever experience a season like the 2016 Western Michigan Broncos. That's nothing? That is how far out of whack this country is that as a fan, if a team doesn't win it all as absolute undisputed champion that it doesn't mean crap while we give everyone coming up a trophy for outstanding participation. Unbelievable. Pooh poohing a 13-1 season.

What's with this turning on Bowden? Let me remind everyone that we had our most successful season as a D-1 program last year. This year was, most certainly, a disappointment. But we lost a ton on D & would have still made a bowl game and (I'm going to say) won the MAC East if Woody hadn't been hurt. And this year's recruiting class is shaping up to be the likes of which we've been looking for since we moved to D-1 (can't believe it's taken so long to begin to get the local talent to buy in).

Interesting story, especially in that he started at YSU. A much better story than the one I read about the WMU guard charged with murder.