Dave in Green

Right. That's why UA made him VP for Sports Success ... oh wait, it's VP for Student Success. None of the departments that report to him are sports-related. He's failing miserably because he's only a sports guy. UA is collapsing due to having a sports guy in a key non-sports executive position.

I did see Jason Taylor playing for Akron. I was living in Michigan at the time but visiting Akron on many weekends, and Hilltopper made sure I didn't miss a Zips football game whenever I was in town. The first time I saw Jason at the Rubber Bowl I said to Hilltopper, that's a man among boys.

When you're averaging a lot of points and still losing, the obvious thing that comes to mind is that your defense is not as effective as your offense. It does no good to score a lot of points if you allow your opponent to score even more. Since I haven't seen the Lady Zips play, I can only guess that they may need to put a little more focus on D.

Travonte is listed as a DE/LB. Based on watching the video, I'm guessing Coach Bowden sees him as a DE in passing situations. It's become a big deal in the SEC to have tall, lean, fast DEs for pass rushing. The first SEC player like that I became aware of was LSU's uniquely named Barkevious Mingo, who was drafted by the Browns. Travonte appears to fit that mold, and since the Zips are already loaded at LB, I can see him more as a DE. Since he wasn't widely recruited, he can be considered a sleeper. Hopefully he becomes fully awakened under Coach Amato's direction.

At 235 pounds he becomes the Zips' biggest linebacker ahead of C.J. Mizell (230). If he has speed to go with that weight, he could be a real force. The offers from Cincinnati, Illinois and Purdue listed on ESPN suggest he's not your typical MAC LB. The offer from Toledo took a hit on Friday.

@mes102, thanks for taking the time to try to answer some of my questions. I really do appreciate the fact that you are the most loyal fan of the Lady Zips who regularly posts on ZN.o. Hopefully others will also chime in. As for who has the tougher schedule, RealTimeRPI.com currently shows the Lady Zips #205 in SOS while the men are #17. I seriously doubt that the women will have a better SOS than the men at the end of the season. Oh, and if there's unintentional but natural and subconscious disrespect in every post, then I guess there must be some in mine. Good thing it's so microscopic as to be unmeasurable.

Again, my comments are not intended in any way to be disrespectful to the Lady Zips. But there's a good opportunity to discuss Zips basketball in general. The Lady Zips are an exciting team that averages close to 90 points a game and leads the country in assists. Fans of the men's basketball team have wished for something like this for a long time. The Lady Zips have a superstar player who's leading the country in scoring. Again, fans of the men's team have wished for something like this rather than the balanced scoring Coach Dambrot emphasizes. But with all the great things about the Lady Zips, they've staggered to a 3-4 start, and have lost 4 of their last 5 games. When something like this happens to the men, a number of Zips fans go ballistic here and write off the Zips' season. So the question that comes to my mind is whether or not it really matters to run up high scores, lead the country in assists and have the leading scorer in the country if it doesn't translate into wins? What would fans be posting here if the men's team was in this situation? Why have fans of the women's team remained so quiet here during this losing streak? I'm just curious about the big difference in the reactions we see to the results that these two teams produce in their own very different ways.

I'd say that most SOS data is flawed in that it's not based on exact science, and I'd also say that most opinions are flawed because they're based on flawed data which can be further degraded by emotional rather than logical interpretation. People are continuously trying to improve the data collection and interpretation, and it's gotten better over the years I've been following it. But it's never going to be perfect. So we have to kind of muddle along by considering all the different methods of ranking SOS and all the various interpretations, and then consider all the opinions and rationale that people express in various places, including this forum. Then you just make your own best estimate from all that, with the understanding that flawed input results in flawed output.

@skip-zip, I think everyone on here understands that I have no emotional involvement pro or con when it comes to tOSU. My only interest is data-driven. That is, I'm only interested in finding data that clearly supports or rebuts either side of the debate. I'm more interested in learning the truth than proving a point. What I can say after searching the internet at length and looking at many different SOS calculations is that even though most differ to some degree, they are unanimous in ranking tOSU outside of the top 50. The best SOS number I've found for tOSU is #53. Florida State isn't much better, as the best SOS ranking I can find for them is #42. So right now we're looking at a national championship game between two teams that are both outside the top 40 in SOS. The real question to which I'm not sure there's a definitive answer is how a top 10 SOS team with one loss should be compared to a #40 or #50 SOS team with no losses. It gets down to interpretation at some point, and that's where fans' likes and dislikes of specific teams start coming into play.

Can't remember where I saw it, but I stumbled across an interesting comment a fan made after a story debating relative team and conference strengths. The fan pointed out that Missouri is playing in the SEC championship game in only its second season in the conference, and that all of Missouri's talent was recruited while in the Big 12. He concluded that since a middle-of-the-pack Big 12 team can come into the SEC and kick butt that the SEC is overrated.

The band appeared to be at full strength at earlier games this season.

From the Sept. 4 Columbus Dispatch, it appears that all Bri'onte has to do to get out of the doghouse is to volunteer for special teams duty:

Back to whether or not tOSU or Auburn gets to the national championship game, tOSU has a small but clear lead over Auburn in the latest BCS standings. If both teams win next week, Auburn may need a convincing win over Missouri to jump tOSU. Interesting sidelight: NIU is #14 and poised to play in a BCS bowl for the second straight season with a win over BGSU. Jeff Sagarin's computer ranking in the BCS formula has NIU at #2.

I'll just throw in one more SOS calculation for consideration. Ken Pomeroy has said that he respects teamrankings.com for their use of sophisticated and accurate statistical analysis, and I have a lot of respect for Pomeroy. When you look at their SOS power ratings, you can see that the top 25 is absolutely dominated by the SEC and Pac-12. I'm not saying that this is all absolutely accurate. But a lot of people who are not fans of or opposed to specific teams and specific conferences do believe that this picture is not far from reality. Link.

SOS calculations may vary. But one thing is absolutely certain. If a team doesn't play in a strong conference, it must make the effort to sign up for a tougher OOC schedule than teams from stronger conferences in order to approach their overall SOS. The SEC is so much stronger than the Big Ten right now that tOSU would need a killer OOC schedule to come close to an SEC team's SOS. As long as tOSU continues to sign up for an ordinary OOC SOS, they will continue to get skepticism about the relative value of their regular season record from around the country and not just from a few Zips fans on this forum.

No one could reasonably expect an undrafted raw pro rookie to immediately outplay a 25-year-old NBA veteran who was good enough to be drafted and play in NBA games over two seasons. Zeke is a long way from being able to play at even a fringe NBA level. If he really wants it badly enough, he has the physical tools to get there. But the odds of late bloomers making it in the NBA are really long. I'm not optimistic, but I'll continue to track Zeke's efforts as long as he keeps trying.

For one thing, realtimerpi shows both FBS and FCS teams. Other SOS ranking separate FBS and FCS. But it's true that various SOS rankings posted on the internet vary quite a bit, with some showing tOSU with a slightly tougher schedule than the Zips. From the wide variation it appears that SOS is not a science. After looking at several different SOS rankings, there's enough variation that I no longer have any confidence in the numbers.

I guess my slogging around Chinese websites is the only source of information we have on what happened to Zeke in Taiwan. If I get anything wrong, maybe someone closer to the situation will step in and correct me. But here's my best guess from reading lots of poor Chinese translations: The Yulon Luxgens coach thought that Zeke was like a big kid who loved to play computer games. But he also thought Zeke had potential to help the Luxgens win games. Zeke was making progress and scoring and rebounding at a reasonable rate in exhibition games. Then 2-year NBA veteran center Solomon Alabi (7-1) was waived by the Philadelphia 76ers. The Yulon Luxgens jumped at the chance to grab a player of Zeke's size but with NBA experience and signed Alabi. When he arrived in Taiwan, Alabi's NBA experience helped him prove that he was a more advanced player than Zeke, so Zeke got dumped. After a somewhat slow start in which the Luxgens lost their first two games, Alabi has led the Luxgens to victory in their second two games, averaging 14.5 points and 19 rebounds per game. Bottom line is that there are a number of fringe NBA bigs like Alabi who are available on the international pro basketball market. Any rookie like Zeke is going to be at a disadvantage to any center who has played even briefly in the NBA. Zeke still has a lot to learn about pro basketball. If he's really serious about playing pro ball he's going to have to work his butt off in whatever gig he can get and try to learn from going up against other players with borderline NBA potential.

@trimmy10 was referencing SOS or strength of schedule, not RPI. SOS is used as one of the components in calculating RPI. A team's SOS is the average of strength of all that team's opponents. Overall, the Zips had a more difficult SOS than tOSU because tOSU had a weak OOC schedule and the Big Ten teams they played were not that strong this season.

The new Harris and USA Today Coaches polls are now both out, and #3 Auburn is close enough behind #2 tOSU to jump them next week by beating #5 Missouri. Depending on what the BCS computers come up with later today, it could be even tighter than the two voter polls are showing. Since Alabama only fell to #4, they could be back in the national championship game if two of the three teams ahead of them stumble. Next weekend's games are going to be fun to follow.

Virginia played a man down for all but 57 seconds of the match and still beat Marquette 3-1? If true, it's hard to be optimistic about what the Zips' chances against Virginia might have been.

Finally took the time to go back and reread every post in that thread. What a trip down memory lane. The most interesting thing to me is that the poster who got beat up the most in that thread turned out to be the one with the best connections. @marky, who first posted on ZN.o in that thread and disappeared shortly thereafter, absolutely nailed the Jim Tressel and Paul Winters sequence of events. He obviously had great inside connections at UA. The only thing he missed was that Terry Bowden was lurking in the background. It's too bad that @marky got stomped and discouraged from posting here. Who knows what else he might have contributed if he hadn't found ZN.o to be such an unwelcoming place to try to share good inside information with fellow Zips fans.

I haven't seen the Zips mentioned yet, but I did read one story discussing the possibility of Auburn jumping tOSU mention that while the Big Ten isn't as strong as it was in 2006, "it's not the MAC, either." If Auburn is close to tOSU when the BCS standings are released later today, they'll be in position to move ahead next weekend when tOSU plays Michigan State and Auburn plays Missouri. It's likely that Missouri will be either #4 or #5 in this week's BCS standings while Michigan State will likely be no higher than #10. So even if both win next week, Auburn will get a bigger boost than tOSU. The computers are going to love Auburn if they beat both Alabama and Missouri. It's going to be a real nail-biter in Columbus.

A realistic goal for the Zips is to be #1 in home attendance in the MAC and #3 in Ohio behind tOSU and Cincinnati, which have larger stadiums. Last season OU led the MAC in home attendance with an average of 21,844. That's paid attendance, not butts in seats. Assuming the Zips' average paid home attendance this season of 17,850 posted by @Balsy, the OU number should be easily in reach with a winning season or two. Fans are more likely to invest in a winning program than a losing program, and it's getting clearer to everyone that Coach Bowden is a winner. The more the Zips win, the more season tickets will be sold and the more likely fans will be to actually use the tickets they bought. If the Zips can be consistent winners and put on good, exciting shows for the fans, word will get around and more seats will actually be filled with butts.

Unfortunately, this is common everywhere. When I was at Louisiana Tech more than 45 years ago, the only college football anyone in Louisiana wanted to talk about was LSU. Even when Terry Bradshaw was racking up lots of wins at Tech and being picked #1 in the NFL draft, most folks were saying what a shame it was that he didn't go to LSU instead and lead them to a national championship. That's the difference. No one really believes that the Zips could ever win the national championship in football no matter how good they got. A lot of people believe that tOSU starts every season with at least a shot at the national championship. All you're going to hear on local news for the next week is that Auburn upsetting Alabama tonight sets up tOSU to play for the national championship. Any team that doesn't have a prayer of reaching the national championship in the top division is forever doomed to be a minor league sideshow to most people who follow college sports. It's just the way the world works. You can't fight it and you will doom yourself to a life of frustration if you think you can change it. Over the years I've learned to accept reality, so I can enjoy being a fan of Zips football without any delusion that it will ever remotely approach the level of support given in this state to tOSU. That in no way affects my appreciation for and enjoyment of Zips football. I just don't care what other people care about, and I don't care what they think about what I care about.