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The topic of Groce leaving interests me because he is really at a "precipice of a great crossroads" (one of Carmine Jr's many malapropisms from The Sopranos). First, I'll say this. He has made great money as a basketball coach. Kind of money over his time as a head coach and assistant at OSU that put him in the top 1% of incomes in the United States. As you get older, you start to think more and more about the end game (retirement). Groce is 50 and has from what I can tell is 12-13 years as a public employee in Ohio. Roughly 7-8 more years would put him at 20 and probably set up for a comfortable retirement on whatever retirement system Ohio has set up for public employees plus his investments. He might have one more run at a big time job, but he is getting closer to the point where that is probably unlikely. Akron could be a great place for him to ride out those last few years of years in the Ohio retirement system. He has a winning program and is in a pretty safe position at Akron. I wouldn't be in a hurry to go anywhere else. Heck, 8 more years at Akron, retire a legend and consult for a few years. Consulting or part time work is great for early retirement if all you are looking for is some extra scratch and health insurance. You don't want to pay for health insurance out of your investment principal if you want to go into early/semi-retirement. Not a bad life plan if you ask me.

For our friends in Muncie, their long national nightmare is over. And a new one begins.

You missed out. There is nary a more satisfying feeling than having Zippy stiff-arm the teeth out of the PCCC chicken.

Not sure why, but I just had a flashback to playing NCAA Football 2005. They had this Mascot mode where you're entire team was the respective school's mascot. I always had a team full of Zippy's vs whomever - Brutus, whatever the hell they named the bird with teeth to the east, etc. - in the Rubber Bowl. That 2005 Snow Bowl vs KSUcks was my favorite Rubber Bowl memory. Little did we know 2 years after that game came out, Zippy would literally beat all the mascots nationwide to win the 2007 Capital One Mascot Challenge.

It's good to know that, if this Ukraine thing doesn't play out well, Putin would likely still be welcomed by the Big Sky conference in some capacity.

We may have just gotten another verbal commitment.

Bowl games don't matter. Day of a Sweet Sixteen game does.

We sort of just did the same with Moorhead

For decades,literally.

Well, I guess any chance of the MAC getting multiple bids has gone down the drain! 🤷‍♂️😂

Twitter having Rubber Bowl nostalgia party! Maybe we can find a buyer! 😂

Our friends in Muncie are hilarious: https://overthepylon.boards.net/thread/4540/new-coach-hired

I think sometimes we fail to see how lucky we are as fans of this program (myself included). @LoyalZIP's post made me update my MAC records spreadsheet to include both last year and this year and the numbers are remarkable. I've updated this sheet periodically since the beginning of the Dambrot era (2004-2005), which I consider the start of the "Golden Age" of Zips basketball, so these totals are over the last 18 seasons. Really illustrates the differences between the old East/West divisions. If/when Coach Groce moves on, the pressure will be immense to get the right hire to continue the growth of the program. 20 win seasons (ties broken by winning pctg): Akron 14 Kent 13 Buffalo 9 Ohio 9 Toledo 7 WMU 6 BGSU 3 EMU 3 CMU 3 Ball State 2 NIU 1 Miami 0 (!!!) Winning Percentage: Akron .668 Kent .637 Buffalo .608 Ohio .599 Toledo .533 BGSU .490 WMU .484 Miami .457 Ball State .454 EMU .451 CMU .427 NIU .380

Absolutely fell in love with Groce at this moment. He wasn't going to let Buddy Mayborg and Bill Ek leave without hearing what they needed to. A win over Kent and a MAC tournament win @ WMU followed. AKRON CULTURE.

I have heard on good authority in the last couple of weeks that Groce got rid of his agent during the beginning of COVID, and hasn't hired one again. Good news for us, as nobody is showing him off and negotiating on his behalf with search firms at other schools. Let's hope it stays this way. While I would be fairly surprised if Groce was still here in 2-3 years, he talks a lot about how he's changed throughout his career. The first time I noticed this was in '19-'20 after clinching a share of the title after the comeback win over OU. He had a Super Soaker water gun in the locker room and was celebrating with the guys after a win like that even though they hadn't clinched the 1 seed and hadn't even beaten Kent yet. In his presser that night, he mentioned that in the past he would've been much more calm and focused on the next step and the next game, but he's learned to appreciate it more in the moment. I'm glad he did then, little did anyone know, that was the true championship celebration that year. Since then, and especially in these last few weeks, you hear him talk about appreciating and enjoying the smaller things. The regular season wins, the wins in the tournament in the first couple rounds, even his daughter's birthday. He said something along the lines of he wanted to focus more on enjoying things in the moment instead of always strictly being on to the next game. You can tell he genuinely enjoys coaching at Akron, at no point has it felt like his foot is out the door. The P6 money will most likely inevitably lure him away eventually, but I think he is starting to see that coaching at a good mid-major for $650k isn't too bad after all. To bring it back to MAC discussion, it's all about the culture. You can't win with culture alone, but I'm giving Akron Culture a lot of credit for these last three years, especially this one (Team 121). I have said numerous times, no other program in the MAC could overcome 2 no-shows from starters at the beginning of the season and do a single thing of significance. They would've given into Walton wanting to be Walton, they would have kept forcing it with Trimble (see: Pinky allowing Carry to lose them a title game), the teams would have fallen apart. It would have been easy to get cocky and let the noise get to you in the midst of a big winning streak going through the conference tournament. It would've been easy to let Kent get under the skin, it would've been easy to fold and pack it in during a trip to the Ypsilanti black hole in the midst of a 3-game losing streak. But Groce got his program of high-character guys to buy in and simply trust their process. They may as well have played NIU in the title game. They just played their butts off regardless of who the opponent was. That was one of my favorite things from the title game, they didn't give a s*** about Kent. They just went out and took what was theirs, and they celebrated for themselves. It was a thing of beauty. Akron Culture. It's a very real thing, that could be dangerous for the rest of the MAC.

Very well said, Captain. Guthrie will be here for a couple of years, as CK said, he’s done some great things so far that don’t necessarily add much to the resume…yet. While he did land JoeMo, JoeMo’s wife and agent had a lot to do with that, however Guthrie used his connection with Dave Roach, Fordham’s former AD, to really move that forward. He’s got hundreds of similar connections, it is quite impressive. It seems that he knows or has a connection with every visiting coaching staff that comes to play against Akron across multiple sports. And if he doesn’t already have a connection, he introduces himself and tries to start one His plan for UA looks to be about 5 years. Once Miller is retired in a few years, I think he will follow suit. If football and basketball really catch fire, he could be out of here sooner, but either way I think possible P5 suitors are going to wait and see how things play out first. The alignment we have at UA is something he talks about a lot. While he didn’t hire Groce, they are still very much on the same page. Miller likes and supports athletics, he hand picked Guthrie, who did well for him at Green Bay, and Guthrie has put together a senior staff with a few people who have been around for a while and some fresh minds. It wasn’t an easy transition for everyone, but people are starting to see the vision play out. It feels like a special time to be an Akron Zip. The whole Moorhead hiring process and the months following, combined with being back in the basketball championship in a packed Pizza 216 for a pep rally have given me new life as a Zip fan after it was difficult for a few years. Hopefully, it’s just getting started and those are a drop in the bucket compared to what we’re about to experience.

I love how Jay Bilas rants about how the refs are letting players get away with excessive contact yet Enrique gets whistled every time he breathes near an opponent.

Interesting that a major national conversation right now is how bad the officiating is this tournament. We were getting screwed before it was cool.

I know this is hard to comprehend, but I loved the Rubber Bowl. When it got new turf and a facelift plus new benches it was an impressive place. The Zips had enough good games there whereby you were always hoping they could do it again. My memories are also impacted because my dad and I would go to most of the games. He loved to see the Zips play and enjoyed every minute there. I miss him, the bowl and good Zip football.