Dave in Green

Beating an FCS team gets you a one-week reprieve? Time to beat a couple of FBS teams and get off this list for the rest of the season!

Rain now not predicted to arrive until after 9 p.m., so the fair weather fans may turn out after all.

@GoZips, that would be great if MTSU is on the rise and gets back closer to the 100 RPI level. I hope they win their conference and go to the NCAA tournament ,,,,, after they lose to the Zips.

The bad thing about scheduling Middle Tennessee State for the next four seasons is that their final RPI for the last four seasons has steadily fallen from 115 (2007-08) to 170 (2008-09) to 186 (2009-10) to 216 (2010-11). So MTSU over the past four seasons has gone from the equivalent of a fairly strong MAC East team to the equivalent of a middling MAC West team. I suppose this might be considered a fairly decent thing if MTSU replaces one of the 300+ RPI OOC games on the Zips' schedule.

Miami is superior to tOSU in ice hockey.

Digging a little deeper into the ESPN stats, I see that when I mentioned there were only 117 FBS QBs listed, there are actually more. But there are only 117 listed on the "qualified" list, which I assumes means those who have a certain minimum amount of playing time. I forgot to point out that #117 and dead last on the list, behind even Zack Stoudt, is the Can't QB, Spencer Keith with a 74.2 efficiency rating. Qualified FBS QB Ratings Can't is also featured in Punting, with Matt Rinehart having the second most yardage in the country. His 1,441 yards make Zack Campbell's 822 yards look like Zack's been on vacation.

Current weather forecast for tomorrow is 40-50% chance of rain from 1 p.m. right on through midnight, so some of the fair weather fans might be discouraged from showing up.

Akron and Canton share a major commercial airport that is much nicer than either city could support on its own. And, best of all (for me), it's conveniently located in the City of Green.

As I stated earlier, if you announce more "official" paid attendance than you actually have and then try to claim a lower number on your tax form than you annnouce as "official," the IRS will be after you to pay on what you claimed as "official" plus penalties. In this instance, you really can't have it both ways. The IRS really does check because it's a well-known scam for promoters to announce astronomical attendance numbers to inflate the importance of their events, and then claim as few paying customers as they can get away with on their tax returns in order to keep extra bucks in their pockets. I can't imagine a state-supported university taking that kind of risk.

Hammer and chisel sounds like a great combination for a fullback and tailback who are both performing at a high level. You wouldn't want to waste a great combo name like that unless they were both performing at a pretty high level. The potential is there, though, so let's see how they deliver.

Chisel -- carves through solid material such as wood, stone, or metal.

Audi "dope" stickers: Cool or Lame?

I wonder how much Rossi's blocking has to do with Chisholm's running success? If the coaching staff has studied all the game film and found that Rossi and Chisholm work well together, I'd hesitate to break up that combination. The Zips running game is currently one of the team's stronger points.

Hmm, this is the same University of Maryland that barely lost to West Virginia, 37-31, and beat Miami (Fla.), 32-24 -- the same Miami that whipped tOSU, 24-6. Temple may be the best team UA will face this season.

For a little perspective on Moore's 148.69 (rounded to 148.7) QB efficiency rating against VMI, that single game performance would rank 35th in the country against the season averages to date of all other FBS QBs: 32. Landry Jones, Oklahoma, 149.5 33. Matt Barkley, USC, 149.0 34. Barrett Trotter, Auburn, 148.7 **. Clayton Moore, Akron, 148.7 (VMI game only) 35. John Brantley, Florida, 148.1 36. Kirk Cousins, Michigan State, 147.9 Moore's season average efficiency rating of 110.8 currently ranks him #102 of 117 FBS QBs rated. Obviously his first three FBS games against tough competition dragged him way down, especially the 53.35 against tOSU. In order to reach the 50th percentile point of all 117 rated QBs, Moore would need to continue averaging efficiency ratings in the mid-140s for the remaining games on the schedule. By the way, Zach Stoudt of Mississippi, a QB who some Zips fans seemed to prefer over Moore, is currently ranked #116 of 117 with a season average QB efficiency rating of 86.9.

We probably all agree that both the fan support for, and performance level of, UA football are currently depressing. We might disagree on whether our best experience was attending the Motor City Bowl to watch UA play against Memphis or attending the MAC championship game and witnessing that magical last second TD pass from Getsy to Hixon that got the Zips to that Motor City Bowl. I was fortunate enough to attend both, and they were both great experiences. We probably all agree that we want the opportunity to savor both of those experiences again.

@skip-zip, thanks for pointing out QB rating. I had only been looking at team stats and not individual stats. Connecting on only 13 of 28 passes while generating a QB efficiency rating of 148 is actually pretty unusual and impressive. It means that every other aspect of Moore's performance was high, and overall performance (efficiency) is the best measure of a QB. I think the way to look at it is that individual player performance in any specific area is secondary to that player's overall performance, overall individual performance is secondary to overall team performance, and overall team performance is secondary to game results. In other words, as long as our team is oustscoring the other team by at least 1 point, we don't need any other steenkin' stats.

@Big Zip, using @ to respond to a previous poster is a great idea. I like this much better than having to scroll through mountains of quotes from previous posts to get to a response. There will still be times when it may be less confusing to quote one small part of a previous post you're directly responding to in order to avoid confusion. But using @ before the other poster's name will work in a lot of cases without having to include any quotes at all. Thanks for pointing this out.

Attendance numbers presented on sports forums by people trying to prove a point are generally unreliable, because people on sports forums are generally more interested in making any interpretation that "proves" their points and ignoring anything that doesn't suit their purposes than they are in researching reliable numbers. The best information on sports attendance generally comes from objective parties who have no stake in what the numbers "prove," and are only focused on the accuracy of the numbers. Trying to look at it objectively with no interest in proving a point, I do think it's interesting that the average number of butts in seats for a national championship college soccer program is at least in the ballpark with the average number of butts in seats for a losing FBS football team with a long history of mediocre attendance. I think this could only happen at a school like UA. If Indiana won the college soccer national championship and their football team was 1-11, for example, football would likely still far outdraw soccer. As far as what paid attendance represents vs. butts in seats, higher paid attendance generally represents more income being generated by the program whereas more butts in seats generally represents more interest in the product on the field. At UA, there should be no doubt that the current level of soccer being played generates much higher fan enthusiasm per capita than football. If the Zips were having even modest success in football, even a multiple national championship soccer program would be unlikely to outdraw the football program given the current level of interest in the U.S. for soccer vs. football.

Unfortunately, I had to miss seeing this game with my own eyes due to being out of town. So I first took a look at the final stats before visiting ZN.O. Some of the stats were pretty impressive. The Zips running up 534 yards total offense while holding VMI to 239 certainly caught my eye, as did the Zips' dominating lead in first downs (29-12) and time of possession (37:44-22:16). I also noticed a few negatives, such as Moore's not-so-hot passing percentage. Coming to ZN.O to see what people who witnessed the game were saying, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at the focus on negative stats and failure to mention many of the above-mentioned good stats here. If you focus only on the negative or only on the positive, that's all you're likely to see. If you try to look at both the good and bad, you'll tend to see both. Lots of people here are focused on the negative and appear not to want to acknowledge anything positive. At least a few fans here mentioned some good along with the bad. Stats and firsthand impressions aside, what's the real overall meaning of this game? Well, for one, it means that the Zips are capable of soundly defeating an FCS team, which they couldn't do last season. That's at least a baby step forward. It's certainly more than the Zips' loudest critics expected -- the ones who flatly predicted that the Zips would lose this game or, at best, barely squeak out a narrow win. But beating an FCS team reaches only the minimum standard for being an FBS team. To take a full step forward, the Zips are going to have to beat at least a couple of MAC teams. To be assured of accomplishing that, they're probably going to have to play even better than they did against VMI. Some are predicting that's not possible, while the rest of us at least think there's a chance. That's about all I can conclude from reading about the game rather than seeing it in person.

If I were serious about tracking UA football attendance, the first thing I'd do is check in with UA and ask them how they count attendance. They might have a reasonable explanation if you tell them it didn't look like there were that many people were there.

It's not uncommon for some fans to prefer one QB over another for reasons not necessarily related to performance. And it's very common for fans of losing teams to prefer the QB on the bench to the one on the field.

This is great news. Dials is a winner, and I'll bet he learned a lot working alongside Charlie Coles at Miami. Don't know if volunteer assistants get any kind of compensation. If not, hope he works his way into a paid position. Not that I'd wish for one of the other assistants to leave. But you never know when an assistant might get a better offer somewhere else and move on to create an opening.

I think it's safe to say that football is the prime motivator of most of the movement, with basketball also playing some role with schools and conferences where basketball is big, i.e. Big East and ACC.

He's back home where he belongs.Do you know something that you're not at liberty to be specific about?