Dave in Green

If you do some reading on municipal debt levels, you'll find that Akron's debt load is generally considered to be "moderate," and the city has "A" ratings from credit rating services like Moody's. All cities get things done through borrowing. It just has to be done intelligently, in moderation and with a viable longterm plan to pay off the debt. Akron has and continues to do that. A billion dollars sounds like a lot, but it's not an unreasonable debt load for a city like Akron.

People may have seen buckeye trees without knowing what they were looking at.

Wow. Bison rally from 2 TDs down to beat defending Big 12 champ K-State 24-21 in front of the second largest crowd in K-State history.

As always, the Zips looked good controlling the ball. But you soccer experts are going to have to tell me if I am wrong to be concerned that they couldn't score against this opponent until after the red card.

Zips lead shots 19-5 but no score.

@Dr Z, good point about the QB calls at the line of scrimmage. Last season the Zips had a cool, calculating veteran QB (Dalton Williams) who was better equipped to handle those situations. Pohl is talented and has a stronger arm than Williams, but still lacks experience.

This is an extremely painful, brutal beatdown. I opened the checking account to upgrade to club seating this season in anticipation of Coach Bowden's magic starting to work. As much as tonight hurts, I'm not giving up easily.

If he was recruited and signed by Kansas, where he backed up Ben McLemore, he's obviously a major basketball talent. If his future lies in junior college, he's obviously not a major academic talent.

I don't know why there's so much secrecy about what Tree and Reggie accomplished on their European tour. But an interesting little tidbit finally slipped out at the end of this Elton Alexander piece: I've thought Reggie had huge potential ever since I saw his performance in the Ohio HS championship game, in which he almost singlehandedly willed an underdog Elida team to a near upset of an undefeated and loaded Dayton Dunbar team. You never know how a HS star like that is going to develop at the next level. But I still think Reggie has a chance at being a college star.

That's the makeup game for last year when Princeton filled the Marshall date with the Zips so Marshall could play in a tournament instead.

It's a mystery story. The story says the Zips should not still be playing in the Rubber Bowl, but InfoCision Stadium represents the university’s biggest miscalculation in a decade. The mystery is where would the Zips be playing if both of those sites are eliminated?

@Blue & Gold, thanks for posting that link. The ABJ article was pretty balanced in reporting both positive and negative viewpoints about Tressel, same as we see on ZN.o and elsewhere (no surprise there). I thought the story did a good job of briefly outlining some of the challenges UA faces in the current and future environment, such as the declining enrollment trend being due in part to the surge of adults into college in the recession being largely over and high school population statewide continuing to fall. Whoever becomes UA's next president will have major new challenges to overcome. As traditions fall, non-traditional thinking becomes a bigger asset.

@GP1, it's really hilarious watching you try to sell snake oil about me when you have no idea what you're talking about. I didn't work for a big corporation until I was in my 30s. They came after me because I had first established my own reputation with my own small business. A second big corporation came after me because of my performance and reputation at the first corporation. When I left the corporate world I became a partner in establishing another successful small business. Go peddle your imaginary corporate survivor profile elsewhere.

@zestycoyote, sorry, but saying that anyone who disagrees with your personal opinion is being ludicrous does not fall into the category of reasonable and intelligent discussion. We should encourage, not discourage, others expressing their opinions because we may learn something that could cause us to better formulate our own opinions. From what I see, no one is arguing the point that ex-football coaches with master's degrees in education represent a deep pool of potential university presidents. On the other hand, a few exceptional people from many different professions may be as well suited for the job as the traditional PhD academic lifer. Discussion on the changing attitudes about hiring non-traditional university presidents is fairly extensive in the academic world. For example, a 2012 story in Inside Higher Ed called Searching for an Answer gives specific examples and reasons for the increasing number of non-traditional university presidents. And the same trend has been going on in Canada, as documented in this 2009 story called Another University President Without a Ph.D. The question should not be whether an ex-football coach with a master's degree in education is qualified to run a university, but whether or not Jim Tressel is qualified. His performance in his current position as a university VP should be a primary consideration, same as it should be for any other candidate.

@zestycoyote, here's what I know: I personally know the contacts @Hilltopper has at UA outside of the athletic department, and they are high enough in the executive ranks to have proven in the past to be solid sources of valid, high-level information. I know from what you've posted here in the past that you are a grad student in English at UA. I know from what @GP1 has posted here in the past that he's a professional salesman who's always trying to convince everyone to buy whatever it is he may happen to be selling at the moment. While I respect everyone's right to express their own opinions, I normally place more weight on intelligently expressed thoughts based in fact from those with a proven track record and who aren't always trying to sell something. I also usually discount opinions that rely on insulting and belittling others. In the past I've considered you to be a solid contributor to ZN.o, offering thoughtful opinions without expressing insulting disrespect for others as you've done here with @Hilltopper. In this case, @Hilltopper was not expressing his opinion, pushing a personal agenda or trying to sell something, but merely sharing with other Zips fans what he heard from his proven UA executive sources. Shooting the messenger has never been considered a productive strategy.

@Hilltopper, why are you rambling so far off topic by regurgitating here what you're hearing directly from "people who work with JT on a personal level everyday at UA?" What possible relevance could the opinions of academic professionals working alongside him at UA have in this discussion?

Tonight's game is going to be streamed live on Billiken TV. You have to register, but it's free.

@Z.I.P., VP of student success is the plain English term for the formal office of VP of strategic engagement at UA. The plain English description of that position's job responsibilities, as described in the original UA press release, is as follows: The formal job description is probably contained somewhere in official UA documents. Since this was a newly created position, the specifics may have evolved over the past year. There's a Student Success Center on the UA website, and I'd assume that Tressel is responsible for a lot of what you find there. Student success is the single most important goal of not-for-profit institutions of higher learning,

@taxpayer, I can tell you from personal experience that the track gets pretty congested at times. I can't imagine the traffic jams that would be created by having media tables and chairs set up at mid-court on that narrow track, especially at halftime. I really doubt that would get the fire marshal's approval. I do like your idea about encouraging season ticketholders to turn in tickets for games they don't plan to attend so that they can be resold and the lower seats filled.

@taxpayer, I would prefer to see UA cater to the media in the interests of getting more and better coverage for the Zips, which benefits the program longterm. I think that moving the media from the best seats in the arena to the cheap seats might be counterproductive to that. I would not be opposed to making sure that everyone currently sitting at the courtside media table is legitimate media. But I'd rather see more than fewer legit media at Zips basketball games, and taking away their best view of the on-court action is not the best way to achieve better media coverage.

@skip-zip, I agree with you that sweet 16 is a pretty bold prediction for a fan to make at this early stage. I suspect that's still a goal for the Zips as @GoZips told us it was with the team two years ago. @Sean Carroll, welcome to ZN.o, and thanks for contributing to the basketball discussion with your first post. Most of the folks who post here have been at it a long time, and we all have a pretty good idea of where everyone stands on most Zips basketball issues. It's always good to get a new perspective, so we'll look forward to hearing more from you.

I have no problem with the team setting a goal for themselves of being a sweet 16 team or better. But there are way more question marks about that actually happening than just Nick's performance. While the Zips do look strong at the 2, 3 and 4 positions, there are big question marks at the 1 and 5. There's no doubt that Q proved 2 seasons ago that he could be an effective backup PG, and Nick also performed remarkably well last season as an emergency fill-in at a position he'd never played. But the 2 players who are actually PGs (Melo and Nyles) have yet to demonstrate that they can consistently perform at a high level in D-I college ball. It's the same at center where Pat has only proved so far that he could adequately backup Zeke for short minutes and Big Dog has yet to play in a D-I college game. I've watched the current Zips lineup practice (though nowhere near as much as GoZips), and all I can say at this point is that they have good potential. But many of the 350+ D-I teams each year start the season with good potential, and there just aren't enough spots in the sweet 16 to accommodate them all. There are so many things that will have to go right for the Zips to actually win NCAA tournament games this season that it's easy to be pessimistic about their chances. I'm pretty confident that Tree and Q will have great seasons, and that Nick is getting closer to demonstrating his full potential. That's a pretty solid veteran core. And if everything falls into place, the Zips have a chance to be as good or better than last season.

A really simple oversight of inadvertently leaving some language out of a bylaw when it was rewritten. Not really a big deal as long as the NCAA has the ability to respond quickly and correct their obvious error. It only becomes a major problem if the NCAA can't respond quickly and do the right thing.

Everyone who reads this GT story is going to have a slightly different perspective. In my case, through a series of situations in my life, I was able to experience firsthand more of a hint than the average white person of the unique obstacles black people face in trying to lead normal lives. I lived through some humbling experiences more than 40 years ago that helped define who I am to this day, and gave me an appreciation for how difficult it is to judge those who walk in different moccasins. Anyone who doesn't understand the profound difference between a house and a field is going to have a hard time understanding all the dynamics going on here.

@Legend Of Zippy, the way I interpret Dr Z's point is that the MAC at one time had several seasons when it had a higher number of top-level players that ultimately resulted in the MAC receiving at-large NCAA tournament bids, and that having more top-level players in the future would increase the likelihood of the MAC receiving at-large bids. I don't see how anyone could disagree with that basic point.