mrelegazna

Looks like they accidentally put Ball State's "key game" in that spot.

I read the first paragraph of this thread and wondered, "How much farther down the thread until we hear, "How dare it not be Akron?!?!"Answer: Second paragraph.I basically second everything CK says. This is no recruiting coup.

Neat.A year or two ago, I actually bought a MAC mini-football helmet complete set (super-mini I mean, just slightly larger than the ones you get in those gumball machines for 25 or 50 cents) at one the mall sports-collectable stores (I forget if it was the one in Chapel Hill or Summit).They now all reside on a shelf on my desk at work, withthe MAC East teams facing the MAC West, with Akron in the middle mounted on a bottle of white out...king of the hill!

Wow. Chill out everybody.I seem to be the only Zip fan on here with no inside information ("The players loved her! "No way, they hated her!"), but I think it's always pointless to bitch about departed coaches. If JD left to become assistant backup quarterback coach at Malone, I'd still rather focus on the feature than piss on the past.Wright may or may not have been a "bitch" in terms of her demeanor, her likeability, whatever, but she made a choice (to move on) that was hers to make. It might've been a dumb move, but she wasn't a "bitch" to make it. All this complaining is just a long-winded way of expressing shame that anyone would ever voluntarily resign from the school we love that we would rather keep. It feels like a slap in the face. But we're not Ohio State, we're not Duke. People are gonna go to higher echelon programs. We'll deal with it. Rise above it.And if it was a guy we'd be saying "asshole" or something instead of bitch, I don't understand the purpose of the gender-specific slam. Yeah, I know, go root for Can't you PC hippie....

Why stop there? Let's fire JD if we go 9-3 or 8-4. Or at least give him a"final warning" for 2007.

(Warning: Boring and irrelevant if you are not from the Akron area. Still boring even if you are).Thanks, UA fan, for posting this. To me it's big news. Since I no longer live in the area, Akron news that would be interesting to me only gets to me accidentally (like this).I grew up going to Central-Hower cluster schools and while I ultimately attended/graduated from North, I almost transferred to Central-Hower about 8 times because of their broadcast journalism vocational program. But it always still be the flagship high school of Akron to me....it never was in any real sense, but given the amount of friends and family I have who went there, and its approximation to downtown, it still felt like it to me.They had truly abhorrent football programs for most of their existence, but if IIRC they won as state championship in boys' basketball in the 80's. I know they went very deep in the tournament if they didn't. My cousin was a student there at the time, and even then, they were always hearing stories about UA's perpetual interest in buying CH from the city. It didn't start with Proenza.Sad, if for no other reasons than nostalgia.

The GMU/Larranage situation shows that it CAN be done.But still, that's the exception, not the rule. I would never begrudge JD for taking a big BCS job and I wouldn't hold it against the Athletic Dept. or University for "not doing enough" to keep him here either. Let's do all we can to keep him and hope that he doesn't define happiness by BCS bowls and boosters. But even if he does, we can and will move on and recover.

:blink: 26 wins??What has Cribbs been giving you? I'm all about confidence but... It wouldn't surprise me if we held our own next year against Syracuse or Pitt next year. I'm just saying that beating Mississippi State last year is hardly ANY kind of barometer of that competitiveness. It's a BIG stretch to say that Miss. State was "basically the same" as Pitt and Syracuse over the scope of the last ten years (and I didn't even bring West Virginia into it, so there's no point elaborating on them), but even if I grant you that point, last year we beat a team that finished one game clear of the SEC basement. Syracuse, by contrast, won the Big East tournament. Pitt spent much of the year in the top ten. The gap between Pitt/Syr amd Mississippi State is BIIIIG, no matter how many players they lose. They are on a different recruiting plane.That said (Zipsbandman), why is 26 wins next year such a big stretch? Everyone returns except Futch, Peterson, and Preston, and that loss is somewhat offset by the return of JW. 26 wins is only three more than last year. It's definitely doable.Again CK, I agree we could have a squad that could compete with almost anybody next year. I couldn't be more excited. I just don't think Mississippi State illustrates our progress very well. That's all. Anything we take out of beating them, Southeast Louisiana can take out of it, 'cause they beat them too. By the same margin we did. In Starkville, no less.

I think he was kidding. I think.

I'm not sure there's much to debate here. If the Big East were to invite us, 90% of us would want to make the move and I am positive that the administration would jump all over it.But I don't know how much sense it should make to have this as a "goal" because it's out of our control. We can't just show up at the Big East offices one day and say, "Hi, we are moving in." They have to invite us. And they wouldn't invite us now. I am as optimistic about the future as anyone, but not only are there CUSA schools, but several other MAC schools that put more butts in the seats in all sports than we do and have a longer record of success than we do, and would (AS OF TODAY) get invited before we would.So the only "goal" we should be setting is to do whatever possible to put more butts in the seats and win as many championships in as many sports as possible. Then we will be in position to get an invite. Since getting an invitation to any conference isn't promised to any school, all we can and should focus on is building a successful and profitable athletic department and let the chips fall where they may.Just as annoying to me as the cynics who would stay in the MAC are the people who are acting as though our promotion to the Big East is a foregone conclusion. If it happens, I'm sure those same people will say, "So when will be making the move to the Big Ten and assume our rightful place as the flagship university of Ohio?"And CK, you're not seriously comparing Mississippi State to Syracuse and Pitt, are you? I think we were even favored in the Mississippi State game.Ryno, the reason Texas, Florida, and California have more perennial top 25 teams than Ohio is that all of those states have populations at least 50% greater than Ohio, (and over 100% in the case of Cali and Texas). More people, more students, more booster $, etc to spread around. Actually, we an in BETTER college football shape overall as a state than some states ahead of us in population (New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, at least when Pitt is having a down year).

Even if he doesn't make it in Washington, expect to see him playing professionally, either in the CFL, Arena, or if the Redskins like him they might allocate him to NFL Europe.

Thank God we are getting another guard.

The paw has 5 digits because clemson sopyrighted the 4 digit paw before PSu did. That's a stupid workaround to the copyright. It's like UMKC was revealed to be the only college allowed to use a kangaroo, so Akron responds by adding a third eye to Zippy.

It's better than what came after it, worse than what we have now. All in all, just okay.Not digging the jerseys, though. They have a kid's pajama top quality to them.Your mileage may vary.

I think the game could be close but....38 points on the Penn State D? Do you remember how dominant their defense was last year? Granted, their run defense was more dominant than their pass defense, and the secondary is a question mark this year, but I still doubt we can just decimate their defense to the tune of 38 points. I also don't think Joe Paterno-coached teams are likely to be "looking ahead." He's been around too long to fall in to that trap.

I can (non-snarkily) answer 2 and 4. Don't know enough about 1 and 3.2) Originally it was gonna be @Texas, Cincy and NIU. It's pretty much par for the course for Big BCS teams (there are some exceptions like Florida State, pre-ACC) to schedule two allegedly easy OOC games for every "hard" OOC game, especially a road game like the Texas game will be. So then they announced only fairly recently that the schedules would be expanded to 12 games effective immediately, which made everyone scramble for one more opponent and created some interesting matchups.As an aside, I'll say to the OSU haters on this board, you can't have it both ways: Ohio State can't be pansies if they play MAC schools or unfair/scared if they don't play MAC schools. Anytime a big name school schedules MAC games I'm happy for the opportunity.4) Big Deal. We have Syracuse coming in a few years. We've had Virginia Tech in the past, while they were nationally ranked. I haven't looked into it but this may well be a 1-for-2 or something like that.. It just happens their 1 is this year. Even if it's not, I'm still not impressed. Minnesota football is not very profitable, they have a bad stadium situation, and they take deals that other Big Ten schools wouldn't because they are more "fair" or they just suck more. I'm leaning towards the latter.

We've already been over this and over this on this thread that was last posted to just a week and a half ago. At this point, 1-AA is likely our only choice. I don't like it either, but I also wouldn't worry about it being a reputation hit to us, since so many teams (including a ton of BCS teams) do it.

Aren't you the one who said although the pics are funny, it's emblamatic of a very serious problem?I bet you're the kind of guy that thinks the worst, lowest thing (there's all too many of you unfortunately) you can call a Can't fan (for example) is "hippie."Thanks ZipsAnalyst, for your post on this.

Why?

This isn't plagiarism. They didn't take her work and then attibute it to someone else. They took her work and attributed to nobody in particular, in accordance with not only Buchtelite policy but policy in pretty much every American newspaper that doesn't allow reporters to cover themselves. Her assertion that it counts as crediting someone else because she considers herself a freelancer and not staff is beyond weak.It'd be nice if all the writers for The Buchtelite knew basic stuff like that, but even if they don't, the editors certainly must. And they did.And as far as "They should've rejected it when she turned it in," that's not realistic. It's not like handing in a paper that an editor combs over while you stand and wait. If they were up against a deadline and they alloted space for her assignment, they would've had no choice but to run it - you just can't put out a newspaper with a big empty space, or obvious, distracting filler like GO ZIPS go zips GO ZIPS, and they probably didn't have time to rearrange the layout appropriately.I'm not saying the editors handled this perfectly...in particular, they either assigned her to a story they shouldn't have, or they allot space for reporters when they don't even know what story they'll be doing, and both are problematic...but the writer's beef is that she didn't get to see her name in lights, apparently, and that's not a serious enough conflict for the university to intervene on, especially since the editors were following written policy.

Interesting. Gotta side with the editors on this one, for two reasons.1. The conflict of interest in a reporter covering his/her own event for a newspaper that tries to maintain even the slightest amount of intergrity and neutrality is obvious, first day of Journo 101 stuff. It's a shame they let it slide in the past, but that doesn't mean they should be compelled to do it going forward.2. I don't understand why UA is siding with the writer here. Do they not even recognize or respect this basic journalistic tenet that's apparently written policy at The Buchtelite? That's not only stupid but unseemly, university heads micromanaging the student newspaper, no matter how much independence the Buchtelite does or does not have from the university.

There is more to progress than just a teams records. Yes, it's also measure in Championships. We happen to the reigning ones of the MAC.

ZipWatcher,I have to respectfully disagree that it was a bad 48 hours for ZipsNation. I thought last weekend was one of the best moments in the history of ZipsNation. Since I started coming on this board about a year and a half ago, the quantity and quality of posts has improved drastically. Last wekend Zips fans said, "We're mad as Hell and we're not going to take it any more!". Instead of going home mad and sulking until next season trying to gain some hope from the early season wins against Dennison and a bad conference this season, Zips fans stood up and let their voices ring out. I've been through enough losing in my years with Akron sports and I want some winning of championships. That means having a team show up and show some balls against a bad team like Toledo. If the players and coaches can't take some fan criticism, they should go to a DIII school where nobody gives a crap. I would bet that there are some posters out there like Captain Kangaroo, Zips Win! and King Zip that are almost as pissed off today as they were last weekend. Thank God for people like that.Nate Linhart? Will he improve? Probably. Does he have the natural ability to make significant improvements? Probably not. I asked the question last weekend pertaining to whom he could get playing time in front of at Can't State. I'm still waiting for an answer from anybody who thinks he could. Nate, because he was on the all MAC freshman team now has a bullseye on his back from every team we play. If you were another team, do you think he would be a difficult guy to shut down? As he gets older, he will need to become the "go to" guy for Akron. Does the prospect of that make anyone comfortable? Akron doesn't need a steady influx of "suburban" (you said white, not me) kids lacking the athletic talent to take them to the next level, they need studs who even on an average day are still better than the nonathletic players. We saw the benefits of "suburban" players during the Owens years in football, nine years of that misery was enough. It's not that criticism is uncalled for. It's not even that some of the criticism of KD's coaching wasn't reasonable (althouth I disagreed with most of it personally) It's that honestly asking whether KD is the right for this team, and implying that he's not, is just patently ridiculous considering we accomplished some things that we hadn't since 1989 and other things that we hadn't since joining DI. If this season wasn't good enough to vindicate the coach, then you're gonna run through a LOT of coaches in your neverending quest for a coach that never makes mistakes, or only makes on or two a year. They were emotional posts after we were angry after losing to Toledo. Those who want to fire the coach after every bad/tough loss probably aren't in a good position to evaluate mental toughness themselves.As for Linhart, it's news to me that he's gonna have to be our "go-to" guy, ever. I guess the rest of the 11 or so on the roster, as well as the recruits we have coming in and will have coming in the next three seasons, aren't as good as I thought they could be.And he'll have a target on his back because he made the all-freshman team? Give me a break. When MAC play rolls around next year, ask a few random players from different teams to recite last year's all-freshman team. The only ones they might get are Aker (who won Frosh of the Year) and anyone from their own team who might've made it.

6'10" jucos, other than total stiffs, can go anywhere they want in D1 land, pretty much. It'd be difficult to lure such a guy to Akron. The Zips best hope is to get "project" big guys as freshmen and develop them.And Balki, if your prediction comes true (and it will), screw the Big East, we should be able to take that permanent invite the Big Ten always has for Notre Dame.

True, and that has always bothered me (though I do like not just the logo but pretty much the entire package of logos, alternate logos, uniforms, etc). If there's one type of institution that shouldn't be outsourcing creative graphic arts stuff, it's a university. Hello, a pool of 20,000+ bright young minds eager to create! I'm absolutely positive that the students could've put something together just as good, if not better, than our current package. You could make it a contest. It would've been a GREAT pr move, and it's always good to involve students as much as possible. It's what a university is there for. As a side note, I liked the basketball throwbacks but I'm ready to go back to the regular ones now...er, next season.