kreed5120

That must have taken quite a bit of time to produce. I solute your efforts. Akron certainly has been recruiting the northeast Ohio region, particularly Akron city, heavily over the past few years. The issue isn't quantity. It's a matter of getting quality. My comment last week about Toledo being the best team in the MAC last week didn't age well after losing to BGSU this past weekend, but their roster is loaded with NEO players who would most likely start for us. Mitchell Guadagni from Hudson being a prime example. It seems a lot of the guys we end up getting are players who are FCS level talent.

For a program like NDSU I think it's a situation of be careful for what you wish for. They kind of have a good thing going for them in FCS with fan support and being able to compete at the top of their division, which also brings them notoriety. Similar to what Mount Union has going for them in D3.

Not sure what you're arguing. What I said is factually accurate. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/acc/2019/06/10/terry-bowden-joining-clemson-football-coaching-staff-unpaid-intern/1411133001/

He's paying Clemson money to attend grad school.

By respectable I meant polls that are actually voted upon by people (coaches/media) that actually follow the league, not some random internet blogger.

Hard to say considering I haven't seen what he will look like in Groce offense or know how he will fit in with the other cast of players. Personally, I'd think Knapke, German, Sibande, or Graves would be the early season favorites. Edit: The more respectable preseason polls should be coming out in about 2 weeks. You should get a better sense of where people see him relative to others by then.

His sophomore year he was 4th in minutes played for a Dayton team that won the regular season A10 title. There was a coaching change his junior year and his numbers and playing time kind of took a hit. I can't recall who said it, but a poster on here who watched some of the practices last season said if he was eligible last season he would have been our best player.

We were in just about every one of those road losses last season. We just seemed to press too much at the end of the games and didn't close them out. We should be relying on a lot of juniors and seniors this season so hopefully they will be better adapt to performing under pressure. We'll soon find out.

They went onto play at Lehigh and Wyoming. I also think both only had 1 D1 offer. If anyone reputable believed they would turn out to be half as good as they ended up being they would have at least received A10 or MVC offers. Some guys just really develop and flourish after high school. Ja Morant & Steph Curry are other examples.

If he insists on playing in Akron on an annual basis, it would be nice if he'd actually schedule Akron once.

Our leading rushing is on pace to barely clear 200 yards, but at least the Plain Dealer found something Akron has done well at this season.

College ball just in general is a much different game. It's more comparable to the European game than the NBA. The NBA seems much more focused on individual performance and hero ball tactics. College ball is a much more team oriented game.

Every year some Akron player seems to be lighting it up at that pro am. The talent level at that pro am just doesn't seem to be that great. I'm not going to say he can't be a productive player for us as I honestly don't know. I want to see him do that stuff in practice or in D1 games before I start to get excited.

There seems to be a huge uptick in players transferring. There is no guarantee Gibson will even stay for 5 years. I'd say start Gibson if it's believed he gives us the best chance at winning.

I think you missed out on my main point which is that we need to do a better job of retaining the talent we have in NEO so they don't end up on other MAC squads. I don't care about stars either. It was just much easier to use that as representation than for me to look through 11 MAC rosters and pick out all the guys we've missed out on to other schools. Toledo looks to be the best team in the MAC this year and I'm counting 9 NEO players on their 2 deep depth chart. I'm counting another 3 from Pittsburgh which is another area we should be targeting. We'd be a better team today had we convinced a few of these guys to stay home. https://utrockets.com/documents/2019/8/25/Toledo_Depth_Chart_2019_Preseason.pdf

I'm in agreement with you that ~35 kids is a decent number to have. I have no problem losing out on 4* & 5* recruits to OSU, UM, etc. It's the fact other MAC schools are out recruiting us in our own backyard that I find frustrating. I'm seeing in 2017 the highest rated Ohio recruit we got was #96 in the state. I'm counting 10-11 NEO guys who committed to other MAC schools and have a higher grade than Akron's best recruit. I get we're not going to get everyone, but we have to do better than that. https://247sports.com/Season/2017-Football/CompositeRecruitRankings/?InstitutionGroup=highschool&State=OH

You must have missed the part where I said I'm not completely sold on Arth. Bowden wasn't going to have a winning record with this team. Have you not seen how little talent we have? This season would have lowered his winning percentage, not raised it. Once again you're back to comparing apples to oranges. If you want to exclude Bowden 1st year then you also need to exclude Solich first year not to mention you excluded his 7th season. In years 2-7 Solich record was 46-33 and he had a 10 win season. In those 6 years Solich had 4 winning seasons. Bowden had 1... The point I'm making is firing Bowden and hiring Arth are two completely different decisions. If Arth ends up sucking that doesn't mean firing Bowden was a bad decision. It means hiring Arth was the bad decision.

I'm sensing a lot of irritation on your part. A few mouse clicks might make your visits to this site a more enjoyable experience.

The California law just allows athletes to make money on the side for their likeness. I don't see that in itself forcing the MAC or other non-major schools to drop down as none of that money is coming out of the schools budget. I thought I saw a bill being discussed in NY that would require schools to pay athletes 15% of ticket revenue. If we get to the point of states forcing universities that are already bleeding money to pay student athletes a salary, I can definitely see schools cutting down on the number of sports they offer, dropping down to lower division, or just eliminate athletics all together. I feel it's too soon to see how this all plays out.

Akron didn't fire Bowden to hire Arth. They fired Bowden because he won only 40% of his games through 7 seasons despite playing in the worst division in all of FBS. No matter who the coach was this team was going to stink based off the lack of talent on the roster. If you want to say Bowden would have won 3-4 games with this roster I'm not going to bother arguing as that would be purely subjective, but there is no way this team was going to make it to a bowl game even if Nick Saban was coaching it. If through 5 games you're certain that Arth isn't the guy, I certainly had my doubts when they hired him (still do), that just means Larry Williams hired the wrong guy. There are other MAC programs that can perennially make bowls and their "good seasons" are 9-10+ wins. Why do you think the best Akron can do is a perennial 5-7 team with our "good season" being 8-5?

Yes, to me he just comes off as fake. I listened to a few of his shows while commuting home and he seems to agree with every caller and thinks everyone is doing a great job. He seems more concerned with placating everyone than offering real insight or offering an original opinion.

I actually went with the core improving as the #1 choice with X as #2. I'd have taken Xeyrius over any of the individual core players, but I was offered that group as a whole so I took that.

I'd say Xeyrius will have the biggest individual impact on our success, however, how much guys like Cheese, Riak, Banks, and LCJ improve from last season IMO will be what makes or breaks our season. Namely I'd like to see more consistency from Cheese, better late game decision making from LCJ, Riak being able to catch a simple dump off pass and dunk, and Banks emerging as a legit 3 & D guy.

The coin will be flipped then land on its side.

FF: Loser of this game will go 0-12 this season