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The Zips still play in the MAC, right? There's no such thing as a rebuild for the Zips. They won the regular season last year. Sure there's tons of new faces and a new staff .. but you re-build when you're at the bottom. This team needs to find 8 or so non-conference wins to guarantee a 20 win season. IMHO, this is a reload, not a re-build. Re-calibration to a new system, maybe. The Zips are gonna be really young this year .. and really loaded next year. If any team in the MAC wants to get over on the Zips .. they had better get it done now, cause it's only gonna get harder in 18-19. Remember, it's still the MAC. 9 home games. Win 7 of those, and beat the crappy teams on the road, and you're at 10-12 MAC wins .. it's not a Herculean Task. Jimond and the guys are up to it. Go Zips!

Few things here. Andre Williams had 2 great catches at approx. the 53 second and 1:37 marks. TW is suited up and playing. Bickley had a few TDs. It would be nice if he gave us something this year. He showed some promise his true freshman year but not much after that which is why I'm assuming he transferred the first time.

Pretty cool to see the Zips logo mic being used by all those VIPs.

Thanks for the info @Balsy

Of course I graduated 5 years ago at this point...so the big debate back then was how to do the switch. It appears that they are now going full electronic. But all I'll add to that point is our online revenue was 100x less than the paper print. Not sure what their current model is.

Balsy....Thanks for sharing all of your knowledge on the Newspaper. That's far more than I knew, or probably any of us knew. I guess that illustrates the reality of doing such a thing.

Randy Moss.

Does anybody even read print anymore? Seems like electronic delivery would be the way to go and obviously much cheaper.

We have several former student reporters on this site who have written and managed minor publications before, as well as a member or two have done it professionally. I wrote, edited, and helped managed production of the Buchtelite for nearly 3 years. Believe it or not, it took about $100,000 to operate per year (two semesters, twice-a-week); each issue would generate anywhere from $500-$1200 in revenue, a big chunk of the cost being printing/distribution. Needless to say, we had been losing money for years when I was there, well managed years before left us with a savings account with which to cover the gab. Advertising in publications just isn't what it used to be, and readership just isn't what it used to be. I remember floating the idea (because I was desperate to come up with SOMETHING sports related that could generate revenue), and suggested summer issue or sports specific preview issue and stuff like that where we focus on selling to alumni/season ticket holders. We were met with resistance because of whatever company Athletics works with, because it would interfere with whatever they do (which is BS...we were a STUDENT publication). But secondarily no-one believed that there was enough buyers to cover the expense of publishing it in the first place. To answer your last question, yes. Almost all of the major D-1 programs I've worked have a student newspaper/publication that produces their own magazine that they then sell to alumni subscribers, people on the street, etc, with season previews, team-by-team break downs etc. I know they exist, because I've worked with them before...Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Tennessee...providing them info on the Zips as well as photos (and credits) from my photographers. They sent us free copies in return...and they were marvelous, I was very jealous we didn't have something similar to it. You have to ignore the "student" newspaper part...because people want to assume it's somehow not serious...they are. They're businesses, it's just the business is run exclusively by students of said university, as part of their bylaws. I'll pardon you guys the rant. Some are independent (like the Buchtelite Was). Hope that was a little insightful?

I'm sure it's just a placeholder for now. My guess is they are shopping around the naming rights and we'll see something before the new scoreboard goes up. I'm actually very impressed and excited for those upgrades. That scoreboard obviously isn't as big as the Q's but its way better than what most colleges have. I'm interested to see how the other ribbon boards will be used.

AUDIO Zips' Bowden Discusses QB Competition http://wakr.net/personalities/sam-bourquin/item/162810-audio-zips-bowden-discusses-qb-competition

I think there are many of us who would contribute just as you are willing to do. On a related note, what the hell is going on with information about this year's preseason. There is absolutely nothing. That can't be doing the progrum any good, even if TB wants to keep TW's shoulder issue a mystery. After one game everybody will know what our status is at QB. I have long felt that Akron has the worst sports information dept in the MAC. They are horrible in content, creativity and quantity. Williams has got to correct that. The ABJ has shown it will not get the word out to its readers so we need to try something different. This is truly unbelievable that a DI progrum has put out such minimal information on the sport that is considered No.1 by most of the public.

There is nothing that will convince a kid to come to a MAC school more than seeing them on TV in front of a crowd of 437 people. MAC coaches are full of crap.

Important to note during this discussion. This article is a bit dated so the number may not be as high, but still close. There are 19 million Americans without high speed internet access. Hard to "cut the cord" or satellite if you do not have high speed access. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/22/fcc-rural-internet-access_n_1821478.html

Good, if they leave cable it could open up more and better time slots for us. I do think streaming will grow to become a viable alternative down the road, but still too many people rely on cable television to abandon it completely.