Dave in Green

Bring on the MAC.

Nice to see FIFA at least investigating. Let's see what they actually do. Gotta love the way the story describes Costa Rica's head coach's defense:

I don't believe I've ever seen the criminal code of conduct stated so elegantly.

@a-zip, I am developing more of an appreciation for the game of soccer. But the more you learn about a game, the more sensitive you get to flaws. I consider it a flaw when compelling evidence of a flop surfaces, and exclusion of a player for an upcoming game is not reversed. For example, I think that NASCAR also has lots of flaws. But when a race team "flopped" last Saturday to get another one of their drivers into the championship chase and NASCAR didn't get to see evidence of the flop until well after the race was over, they made retroactive penalties that took the driver from the flopping team out of the championship chase and reinstated a driver who would have qualified for the championship race if the other team hadn't taken a flop. I think that's a sensible and fair way for a professional sanctioning organization to operate, and that soccer would have more integrity if FIFA did something similar.

Fortunately, Besler's ridiculously undeserved suspension didn't stop the U.S. from beating Mexico, 2-0. Turns out the official who made the bogus call against Besler is Mexican. Now who would ever suspect a Mexican official of having any motive for seeing the U.S. team have to play without one of its best players in a critical match against Mexico?

I agree that all sports share to some degree the problem of participants acting to deceive officials. In most cases the deception can't be reversed once the game is over. In this case, a player is being excluded from a future contest when there is clear and compelling evidence that the player being excluded is the victim of a flagrant deception. If FIFA cannot adjust to this situation and make things right, they are deeply flawed as a world sanctioning organization. The proper and fitting thing to do would be to exclude the offending player from the next contest, not the victim. At least the NBA is trying to clean up crap like this with their anti-flopping rule.

That's odd. I always test my links before posting, and I just tried the link I posted earlier and it still works for me.

The updated description of how Hirschman injured his knee is a lot less damning than the original: Nothing at all wrong with that, and a reminder that it doesn't pay to jump to conclusions based on preliminary reports.

This probably belongs in off topic. But I think it's mainly of interest to soccer fans, so I'm going to post it here. I'm trying to develop an appreciation for soccer, especially since the Zips program is so good. But when I see something like I've just watched in the video linked to below, I am in total shock that the "world's number one sport" can allow something like this to stand when there is crystal clear video of the incident available. People criticize NASCAR for being a sham, but at least NASCAR went back and corrected a similar situation from this weekend's race where a team had one of their cars deliberately spin out to bring out a caution to allow a teammate to qualify for the championship chase. Apparently soccer does not have a mechanism for correcting obvious cheats. This lessens my enthusiasm for soccer. I'd really like to have the soccer experts on here view the video at the 5:40 mark and talk about how you can tolerate BS like this at the highest level of the sport. Pathetic dive gets Team USA soccer player suspended (video)

When you're Akron and you have one soccer loss, every remaining match is critical.

Associated Press story leaves no doubt: Michigan Vows to Avoid Letdown Against Akron

Both sides can always find something to complain about when it comes to officiating, not that it does any good. Fans are generally more sensitive to what they see as bad calls against their team while overlooking similar calls against the other team. It's always more painful for the losing side in a close game where any number of things could have made the difference.

@Dr Z, I almost injured my knee jumping up and down when Pratt went high in the air to snag that pass for the TD. I was so focused on the receiver that I never looked back at the line of scrimmage, which was a long, long way from the end zone.

Language evolves over time. Unique was originally used only in the absolute sense. Dictionary.com has a usage note for unique that explains how it has evolved into multiple uses:

@GP1, thanks for that info. Thinking back a little more carefully, it was the hit on Pohl (not Hirschman) causing him to limp off the field I was remembering. I do not recall seeing how Hirschman was hurt.

I'm not sure exactly how college football officials are affiliated with conferences. There's some information on the website for College Football Officiating (CFO), LLC. I just ran some quick searches on those individual officials, and they mostly show up on crews for FCS games. Some of them also show up in a few games involving MAC teams.

I saw Hirschman limp slowly off the field after being leveled by a JMU player. I assumed that this is where his knee was hurt. I haven't read anything about him hurting his knee celebrating. Is there any validity to this or is this just another bogus internet scam?

As far as I could tell through my binoculars, the officiating crew did not have MAC patches on their uniforms. I'm guessing they were from the CAA. If anyone knows for sure, please speak up. All I know is that the JMU coaches and players seemed to be familiar with the refs and had lots of back and forth conversations throughout the game whereas the Zips did not. As for the fairness of the officiating, it appeared throughout the game that JMU was getting generous spots and the Zips were getting shorted. When it got too obvious and there was a protest, the on-field officials were overruled in favor of a legitimate call in the Zips' favor. On the final play, JMU obviously should have saved a final timeout for a field goal. But they didn't. That's on them. They could have still recovered. The running back was close to a first down, and was fighting for it but being pushed backward. The refs could have blown the whistle at that point. But JMU players joined in to try to push him forward. The smart thing would have been for the running back to deliberately fall down. In that case, they would have had time to spike the ball and get a field goal attempt. Bottom line to me was that this was a focal point of the JMU season, and they had a great game plan that almost succeeded. The officiating was not a major factor in them losing.

I loved the view of the field from my new club seat. But I didn't like what I was seeing on the field. I loved that the Zips won. But I didn't like seeing the stats when I got home because they confirmed what I saw on the field -- that this was one of the ugliest wins I've ever witnessed. A win is a win. But this Zips team has an awful lot of work ahead of it in order to produce a solid win that will make Zips fans believe that the team is a winner.

I hope this doesn't devolve into a "Winters was too sensitive vs. Wistrcill was too insensitive" debate. I agree with @Lee Adams that we can't really know exactly what happened in a private meeting. All that kind of debate would drag up is a bunch of preconceptions and prejudices. I think Coach Winters could have done a good job at UA over time, but I'm not sure he could have done better than Coach Bowden to date. I'm certain that Coach Winters doesn't have the connections to bring in the high-level transfers that Coach Bowden has attracted. But all the talent in the world is meaningless without putting up wins. I'm sure there'll be a long discussion here at the end of this season about the number of wins that Coach Bowden's team produces and maybe a little speculation about whether Coach Winters could have done better.

ThinK Bigger was a catchy, creative play on words. Back The Zips is a straightforward, generic statement. By themselves, the new words don't make a great slogan. But the most important element is execution. For example, they could play on the "got your back" concept with an image of Tree and Q standing back-to-back, arms crossed, eyes glaring at the camera. Extend the theme to include a little "circle the wagons," as in the underdog, disrespected Zips challenging the world backed by an army of rabid Zips fans. The biggest challenge is creating and executing a theme that energizes Zips fans to fill the JAR and make some noise. There's plenty of creative energy right here on ZN.o, so I'm sure we'll see lots of suggestions.

Kind of inconvenient for LeBron's locker to be in Columbus when he has to get dressed to play in open gym with the Zips. Anyway, at least the media always get his hometown correct.

Looks like there are already two threads going. I flipped a coin and picked this one. For those who take FCS teams lightly, consider this: Seven FCS teams cash in via upsets

I think that any consideration of dropping to a lower division in soccer or basketball is a non-issue when your soccer team has won the D-I national championship and your basketball team has made it to the D-I NCAA tournament in 3 of the last 5 seasons. I'm just looking at the narrow issue of a modern arena, either for UA alone or shared with the City of Akron. I'm pretty neutral on how it happens as long as it's done intelligently and doesn't put an albatross around the neck of either party.

@lance99, I'm not trying to dump on you. I appreciate what you posted. I believe that Akron's current total debt load probably is much closer to $1 billion than $80 million. With a population of about 200k, $1 billion in debt works out to about $5k debt per citizen. There's obviously more to it than that. But $5k per citizen is not out of line as long as the local economy can support it. A lot of the debt is in infrastructure, such as water mains, etc., that comes back in property taxes. Different politicians will tell you different things. Extreme liberals might say you can never borrow too much and extreme conservatives might say that not taking on debt of any kind is God's 11th commandment for which there wasn't room on the stone tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. All I'm saying is that the answer is somewhere in between. If a good financial case could be made for a new arena, the City of Akron could reasonably take on that debt. If the financial case is not there, the prudent thing is not to take the risk.