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For the life of me, I don't understand why this has to be Bowden OR Arth. One could have thought it was time for Bowden to move on AND be unhappy with how things have gone so far with Arth. Thank God basketball season is here so that we can switch over to yearning for the golden days of KD.

First of all, I made a comment on a different thread related to Coach Arth and I wanted to clarify it was not directed at him. My comment about dumbass decision making WAS SQUARELY DIRECTED at the UA Board and the ones who ultimately make decisions on spending and the hires at the executive level (including Presidents, ADs, Coaches, Deans, etc.). My comments below are not negative to any of our coaches, I have met them all and believe they are trying their best. I was taught about ROI and analytics in business school at UA – our board seems to have forgotten what all of that means. While I love the new buildings and stadiums, things have to be done responsibly. UA is accumulating a tremendous amount of debt from dumbass decisions. I want our teams to win and go to postseason play more than anyone and I would like to see enrollment up and even become more selective but the powers that be don’t seem to have a clue on how to do any of this. The school has accumulated a tremendous amount of debt, period! That needs to be addressed before you go paying TWO head football coaches at the same time. There is no way anyone could justify to me firing a coach when you still owe him money on his contract? Not in the financial situation we are in. We can't afford it and Bowden was not that bad. Regarding Bowden, if they didn't have the belief in him to begin with…why extend his contract? It was a dumbass decision to either 1- extend his contract to begin with or 2- fire him and now pay twice as much with a new head coach. Regarding Coach Arth, IMHO it would be a dumbass decision to fire him if we would then owe him money on his contract. We have to cross our fingers and hope he succeeds for however long we are obligated to him or if he succeeds, however long he stays with us. When did this debacle start? Around 1985. On another thread, kreed5220 posted tenures and records of our last 6 coaches. If you go back one more year you would have seen a 13-year winning record with Coach Dennison at 80–62–2 and before him Gordon Larson with a 12-year winning record of 74–33–5. Hmmm. Both of these men were loved by the Akron community and loved being a part of it. This whole skid started when Coach D was fired for Gerry Faust!! Things have never been the same. We have also gone through 7 different presidents at UoA during this timeframe ? After all of these dumbass decisions, the board had the solution right in front of them. A gift was with Jim Tressel, Keith Dambrot, Terry Bowden and Jim Dennison on campus. They had a chance to bring in the Akron community with beloved leaders and right some wrongs. Since I joined ZN I have posted my belief that UA would be served better by home grown leaders.....people that want to be here and not just as a stepping stone. If we would have made Jim Tressel President, Jim Dennison AD I guarantee you they would have kept Keith Dambrot and Terry Bowden. You pair those four gentlemen with Lebron James…..now we are talking some serious fundraising and enthusiasm from the community. They are the type of people the Akron community could identify with and get behind. These are men that would have STAYED at UA and would have taken pride in solidifying their legacies in Ohio at UA. They are the type of men that could have figured out a way to get basketball the facilities it needed. They are men with common sense. Could you imagine the reaction of a top football recruit if Terry Bowden, Jim Tressel and Bobby Bowden walked in to their living room?! How about a top basketball recruit with KD, Lebron and Tressel walking in (with top notch facilities)? I realize this is a lot of hindsight but I have been saying this same on ZN since I joined. There seems to be panic with the Board at UA. They are making bad decisions to try to fix previous bad decisions. Leadership is to blame. It’s kind of reminds me of the Redskins since Daniel Snyder bought the team and is now running it in to the ground. It’s all about poor leadership and financial responsibility. So, what next? Learn from mistakes, use ROI, analytics…. Hell, use common sense!!

It takes talent to recognize the skills and value of others. Those assistants need to be managed efficiently as well.

Can't believe the season is here. Go Zips.

Actually having a full bench should help a ton this year. It should better allow us to push the ball in transition while also still exerting the same level of energy on defense.

Do you really think things were going well with Bowden? I get the Arth criticism, but damn, they couldn't even get lined up for a kickoff correctly. I could understand a "things were better with Bowden" response, but to say things weren't going badly is revisionist history.

I always enjoy this game. It's our season preview. It doesn't have pole dancers and Snoop Dog like Kansas, but it's still a nice warmup.

I don't know what is in the contract and I am not a Bowden fanboy. It was just a thought - if we are paying him, and he has not taken a new HC job, maybe we can bring him back. And fire the AD. I don't care if we will never be National Champions, I want us to be respectable, which we certainly are not at the moment.

That was also in the Dark ages of 1979. It's been 30-years. Contract law, especially in sports, has changed over that time.

John, c'mon...no they didn't wake up "bad", they just were never D1 material, sorry to say. The lateness that Arth came into the recruiting process, the guys who stuck around from Terry's regime that also never saw the playing field, and the fact that the team needed to fill a lot of spots on the squad just to be able to practice! You act like this is the first time in NCAA D1 history that players on a roster never got PT. I know you are coming from this based on us being winless, but is that any different than when we were in the midst of losing 5 straight last year under Bowden and we didn't ever see the likes of Youssef Barakat, Gavin Blunt, Zach DiLauro, Caleb Green, Nick Kopczak, and dare I mention Alex Ramart, who was supposed to be better than Kato? These are just a few of the 2018 Zips that never saw a stitch of PT, and it's not that different at other schools who have losing records, have no chance of going to a bowl game or placing in the top half of there conference standings. There are guys on all teams that are just not good enough, but they bust their butts every day, and try and try, and help the team in many ways, like running the scout team. But their rewards don't include real game PT. Stop making this sound like it's a conspiracy by the current staff. It's not. And yeah, you can always find a player in the NFL that everyone passed on....that's nothing new either.

FOXNews: Ohio facing troubling trends when it comes to prep football Article stating Ohio high school football isn't quite what it used to be. Declining number of youth participating in football compounded by the fact that Ohio is one of the slowest-growing states in the country. ...But Ohio also has one of the slowest-growing populations of any state and there are other troubling numbers: The number of high school football players in Ohio dropped by 28% from 2009-10 to 2018-19, according to data tracked by the National Federation of State High School Associations, and NCAA stats show the percentage of Ohio players competing at the highest level of college football has slipped from 5.9% in 2013 to 5.1% in 2018. That's still enough to rank fifth among the 50 states, but fourth-place Georgia has pulled away and states such as Louisiana (sixth) and Alabama (eighth) have gained on Ohio over the last 10 years.

Frank Solich wins because he surrounds himself with great assistants. Look at the staff he has had. Many great HCs do very little coaching. Like it or not thats reality.

"Excitement is building." - @NWAkron (probably)

ABJ/GT: Zips change offensive style for upcoming season Nice article, GT! ...The Zips will open their season Tuesday at Rhodes Arena against Malone University with plans to unveil a look that features speed, athleticism and the ability to score. Groce wants to run the court and earn more possessions. He plans to play up to 10 players a night, utilizing a bench he considers deep. ...But the new style might come with a significant tradeoff — turnovers. In playing two preseason scrimmages, the Zips flipped the ball to their opponent a combined 39 times, something that wouldn’t bode well for overall success during the regular season. Groce said he’s willing to “live with” 13-14 per game... "Nineteen, 20, 39 combined in the two is too many." ...“I’m into running and striking more in transition and having more possessions,” [Groce] said. “I’m even into understanding [that with] more possessions might come some more turnovers. I’ll swallow that, but I’m not going to tolerate poor defense.”

Incorrect. Bowden went 1-11 his first season. There was zero chance to become bowl eligible after the 7th game. Bowden started off his second season 2-7, before winning the last 3. We were eliminated at this point then as well.

He also didn't inherit a program in the dredges of utter despair. I figure it's been covered here at length so I won't go into it further. But I doubt going forward ANY Zips fans can hope for us to realistically have any "success" let alone a bowl game in the next 2-3 years...which will be 4-5 years total since we last had success. No matter what it is for the Zips we're going to have to be PATIENT. Unlike the Browns, who have incredible talent/potential but shitty coaching...the Zips have neither.

I was watching the SMU/Memphis game the other night and the announcers mentioned that SMU had 30 something transfers on their roster. Something Bowden did do well early on in his tenure is supplement the roster with transfers. I don't know how fair of a shot Arth had last year, but I really think he needs to make a conscious effort to get players in here that can play right away, and be plus players. OL, DL, DB, RB, and QB could all use some immediate help unless we get lucky and some of these young players really take a jump next season.

should be just 1..Idaho. That happened just recently.

That is not totally true. There is a lot of politics goes on in college sports. There are players that are as good or even slightly better than the starters on all teams but may never see the field until they have earned their "stripes". Hope this is not happening at Akron but it sure seems like it may be with the coaching staff's reluctance to even try other player combinations at certain positions especially Oline. On top of that, you have coaches not wanting to eat crow over bad recruiting decisions so they stick with sub-par players for much longer than they should. In my mind, if a player consistently outperforms a starter, whether a walk on or scholarship kid, regardless of years on the team, they should be elevated to put the best product on the field.

Akron certainly has had issues finding and hiring quality coaches. I don't feel the issue is they have been moving onto new coaches too soon. If anything they have a track record of holding onto sub-par coaches too long. Below is a list of coaches they have had since 1987. Gerry Faust - 8 seasons (1987-1994) (36-49) Lee Owens - 9 seasons (1995-2003) (40-61) JD Brookhart - 6 seasons (2004-2009) (30-42) Rob Ianello - 2 seasons (2010-2011) (2-22) Terry Bowden - 7 seasons (2012-2018) (35-52) Tom Arth (2019-???) Everyone of these guys got 6+ years to prove themselves (besides Ianello). I know there is a contingent here that is still pro Bowden and I'm tired of beating that dead horse so I'll exclude him from this discussion. Do any of you think we needed a 9th season of Faust, a 10th season of Owens, or a 7th season of Brookhart?

To me, the problem in the past 15 years with football has been overly-ambitious AD's prematurely firing coaches to advance their own career by trying to hire the next MAC Urban Meyer or Brian Kelly but not having the experience to recognize good candidates. Of the last 4 coaches (Brookhart, iCoach, Bowden, and Arth), two were terrible candidates (iCoach and Arth) and were arguably not at all qualified to coach at this level. I felt that Brookhart was ready after serving as offensive coordinator at Pitt, and Bowden won everywhere he coached including a P5 school and a smaller D-1AA program he turned around. I recall when iCoach was fired, it was late in the process and there weren't many (if any) qualified candidates. Then Bowden threw his hat in. We got lucky. Firing a guy like Bowden who literally saved this program got us another weak pool of candidates and there wasn't another Bowden waiting to save us. Hence Arth: a terrible hire. This rolling the dice for the next great coach has to stop. Bring competitive football back to UA!

Just....wow.