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It has to work next year. By that I mean 6 wins. They aren't that far away. Miami wanted Martin fired after he started his first two seasons with 2 and 3 wins respectively. Everyone wanted him fired and players were revolting. Year 3 he won 6 and went to a bowl. Dave Clawson went 3-9 both of his first two years at Wake Forest. Everyone wanted him fired. I was worried about him but didn't want him fired yet. Year 3 he went 6-6. Wake Forest is more like Akron in that it's historically a bad D1 program. I've said it a lot on this board. There isn't a single thing Wake Forest does that Akron couldn't do. It was a black hole of football programs until Clawson. Think historically Rice and Kansas level bad. They have won the second most games in the ACC since 2018. Akron doesn't have to be this bad. I don't believe Akron is far away from where they could be as far as talent. The losing culture problem is a bigger problem.

That is very discouraging. The 2nd year for football and women's soccer coaches...is not going well. Thank you for sharing RPI info. I had no clue that there were 347 teams in RPI (men's number is 211). Looking at their schedule, the next game (Ball State - 4-0-2 MAC record) is probably another loss. Miami, E. Michigan and C. Michigan join Akron in the bottom of the standings. Hopefully, the women can keep playing hard and not finish 0-11-0. https://getsomemaction.com/standings.aspx?path=wsoc

Congratulations to Shooky.....College Soccer news player of the week https://collegesoccernews.com/akron-forward-jason-shokalook-college-soccer-news-mens-national-player-of-the-week-week-ending-october-8-2023/

This week's advanced box score: https://collegefootballdata.com/boxscore/401532418 No surprises at all. Total domination. The run defense went from a proud strength of the team to a laughing stock in one afternoon. I'm sure teams will hammer the right side from here on out. One thing that did stand out to me, was that Akron got the ball inside the 40 on 5 different occasions. It didn't feel like that many in game. It's funny, if not for the hold on George on our second drive, we were looking like we were going to punch it in with ease again. Would a 14-7 lead have made any difference? Probably not in the long run of that game, but that just goes to show you the importance of attention to detail and finishing. Put the ball in the end zone so you don't have to worry about getting stops on every drive defensively. My concern on the absence of Alex Adams is growing. He's dressed, but not playing. He is the most pro-ready receiver in the entire league, and now he is missing for one reason or another. After half the season, I have concluded that QB play and OL play are what have cost this team the most. The line is improved, but still is not a strength of the team. They allow far too many sacks and often no time to throw. That's part of the reason TB gives us the best chance to win right now, which isn't a good feeling at all. I will say, he looks more confident than the other two have at any point in time. I'm glad Joe is sticking with him and giving him a chance. NIU has a great defense, and the opening drive was cause for some optimism. The more reps, the better he will be. Hopefully. Anyway, the QB play has been bad. A competent QB gives us wins vs. Buffalo and Temple for sure, a competent kicker or WR to catch a perfect deep ball and we beat Indiana. It pretty much always comes back to the QB. With that said, the transfer portal is a tricky thing. Many people seem to think, moreso for basketball but now also football, that you can just change the filter on the Portal search engine and type in what and who you want and boom, you recruit them and get them. In reality, the list of players who enter the portal and are ever going to even take a call from Akron is short, and then from there you take out the players who aren't good enough to play at this level, and the list gets even shorter. Typically, portal pickups come from previous relationships that players have with coaches on the staff. So in Joe's case, the likelihood of a competent/good QB who is in the portal and also would fall to Akron is not great. For this reason, I would focus on Bullock and Wasel as the future. Bullock is still unproven as a thrower, and Wasel a true freshman, but as of right now, he is the only freshman prospect QB this staff has brought in. Jennings could be the guy at some point, but he was also a holdover from the early signing period when he was signed, so who knows how much he was being recruited at the time Joe brought him in. I have a feeling that Fessler and Moorhead are putting a lot of chips in on Wasel. It's more likely that the QB of the future comes through your system as a freshman than a guy from the portal. In the MAC we have Finn, Gabbert, and Rourke as the top 3 QBs in the league. All of them have been at their respective schools for many years now. NIU's Lombardi is a transfer, but he's been there for 3 years now, and almost never beats anyone with his arm. There is a lot of bad QB play in the MAC this year, and the teams with competent QBs are beginning to rise to the top.

I heard the coach on post game that when things go bad he expects somebody to step up and make some plays and nobody did that on Saturday. I just wonder if the transfer portal has a flaw in that when you have so many players from bigger programs transfer down to Akron that they thought this would be easy at a lower level school and when things go bad they tend to give up rather than play harder. And things have gone bad this entire season. I knew JD Brookhart and he told me after he was fired his only regret was bringing in players who thought they were too good to play at Akron and it killed the locker room. When you look at Akron basketball you have had 2 coaches in 25 years and you have a tradition of a winning program and players who want to be here and support their teammates. Same thing with our winning soccer program. For better or worse, we need to keep this coach and hope that his recruits whose first choice was Akron can mature and build a winning program.

I know someone who played with him in Atlanta. He said when the doors were closed and only the team was around he was the nicest guy on the team. Sanders was cool to all the guys. A person's true character shows when nobody is watching.

Preseason Mid Major Top 10 (Akron at #8) from the Athletic One quote from the article: Groce says this is the deepest team he’s had in his seven years at Akron, and it’s certainly the oldest he will ever coach. The best part, he says, is that the veterans only care about each other and about winning. Can this last dance lead to a spot in the Big Dance? Groce is simply trying to enjoy each step. “We’ve got a culture that’s unbelievable right now,” he says. “We think we have a special team and a special chance to do something significant with our group.”

The Zips take a short ride to Cleveland for a match against the Vikings. The game will be shown on ESPN+.

Zips need to continue the high-volume shooting. The more shots the better. Expect Akron to shoot at least 25 times against Cleveland State.

It’s interesting when you read the gridiron thread how discouraged the posters are but are not ready to fire the coach or shut down Zips gridiron. Seems to me that our Women’s Soccer Coach and team deserve the time needed to rebuild from the disaster TFC left. Jen has had only 1 recruiting class.

Oct 9 2023 Top Drawer Soccer Top 25 #5 Akron https://www.topdrawersoccer.com/college-soccer-national-rankings/men Oct 9 2020 College Soccer News Top 30 #4 Akron Akron holds steady at #5 in TDS ans moves up one spot in CSN. I don't know how much movement we see in the Top 5 in the coaches poll but I suspect there will be some Both #1 and #2 (Marshall and UCF) won 2-0 in their only game. #3 WVU had a 2-2 draw with JMU and #4 SMU beat Charlotte 1-0 and had a 2-2 draw with FIU. Akron's 3-0 win over DePaul could bring them up a spot but Im more inclined to think if anything happens its WVU and SMU trading places.

Way back, the University could have kept Dennison and justified it. Didn't thay make the I-AA playoffs one year when he was the coach? I'll go back and check. He also had the program winning consistently at the DII level. Two playoff wins in the 1976 season. Knute Rockne Bowl and all that. First overtime playoff game in the NCAA. Dennison was transitioning to recruiting DI level players as opposed to DII or I-AA. As we know all too well that takes some time. Faust is a real nice person. But, the University had to see he couldn't recruit at the college level even at Notre Dame. Otherwise he could have stayed at ND. And then you have to ask why he didn't get hired at another upper level DI program. As for the Acme-Zip game in 1987, they 'filled the Bowl' before Faust got there. The Faust name, not his record was why he got hired. The football program has gained little consistent traction since it went DI. From firing Dennison to firing Lee Owens when they did and I'll even through JD in there. Too many AD's using Akron as a resume builder, hiring who they want and moving on. Sad and frustrating.

So you guys always discuss RPI for the Men's team, I thought I'd look up the RPI for the women's team. The 2-11-0 team, that have lost all 6 matches at First Energy Stadium. RPI - 312, out of 347 schools. One of those wins was against Niagra, whose RPI is 338. Wisconsin-Green Bay is in at 323. Hmmm...where did our AD come to UA from? Pattern? or silly me. I was encouraged after the NIU game, but gutted after watching the WMU match. Maybe we should close down women's soccer and form a women's rowing team, or our team can play FIFA Soccer on the e-Sports team.

Your post brings up a good point people have to keep in mind in relation to TP and the outdated idea of redshirting. The transfer portal cuts both ways. If a coach wastes a year of a really good player as a redshirt, he may only be developing that player for another team if the player uses the TP to go to a P5 school later in his career after he develops more. A redshirt player is close to being a failed recruit in 2023.

If I remember right, freshman can play in 4 games without losing their redshirt. How many games until we see Wasel get his feet wet in preparation for the next 4 years?

Right now I'm in pain. What Zip football fan would't be? I've been trying to get my brain together to capture the right words following this loss. B & G beat me to it. Well done my friend! I still believe Joe will turn this round. I believe he has been a fantastic hire. I support him and his staff in the long journey in turning this around. I also want accountability and responsibility. That falls squarely at Joe's feet. The most important position in all of sports, a football QB, has been blown by him and his staff. Fix it and put a better product on the field. I'm ready to celebrate a winning team with Joe.

Horror genre?

Agree. However, Sanders produced more than a talent shift. He produced a cultural shift within an organization. The first thing he did was get the players who were complicit in the failure to leave without having to give them the boot. Basically , almost all of them. I don't use this word lightly, but what Sanders has done is truly brilliant. Organizational scholars should be lining up to study what he has done at Colorado and JSU.

The fire the coach crowd is very NE Ohio. Morehead has been here 1.5 years. To fire him now is Browns fans level stupidity.