Dave in Green

Godwin's Law

Simple in principle. The devil is in the details.

Dr Z, just for clarification here, do you believe that LR8 is getting adequate protection that he should be staying in the pocket longer than he is? The other possibility, of course, is that he has a good sense when the pocket is collapsing, and is bailing out at the appropriate time. Obviously, the one time he clearly stayed in the pocket too long is when he was blindsided from behind near the Zips goal line and the ball was recovered by Temple, resulting in a quick touchdown. That doesn't exactly instill pocket confidence in a QB.It takes some time for a QB to gain confidence in his teammates' ability to protect him in the pocket. It doesn't help that the Zips' first two games were against teams that were clearly way superior to the Zips. So it was almost a given that the opposing defenses would be pouring in on him.By all accounts, Cincinnati's defense is not at tOSU's level, and perhaps not even up to Temple's level. But I don't think you'd find many people who'd wager that Cincinatti's defense is inferior to UA's offense. So, again, it's fair to expect that LR8 will be under a lot of pressure in a pocket that may collapse faster than your average QB would prefer.I think it's best to be open-minded on this issue and not go into a game with preconceptions. We often have a tendency to see things that support our theories if we don't even acknowledge other possibilities.

As Roo notes, Sidney is apparently a monster of a talent with a poor attitude. If he can find himself, he could be an NBA superstar. If not, he could remain a project for the rest of his life. He's 6-10 and weighed 270 last season. Apparently Lucas got him to drop 20 pounds, so he's down to 250, which the scouts seem to think is his ideal playing weight.Both UCLA and USC were really after him until he visited, then all of a sudden they lost interest. Mississippi State was his third choice, and they took a gamble on him. Even with a bad attitude, he impacts games. What if Lucas got through to him and made an impact on his attitude along with his weight?It's all speculation right now. But the cool thing is that he will probably be the best raw talent Zeke will face this season, and Zeke needs challenges like that to show what he's got.But it's not clear if Sidney would go up against Zeke. Sidney is a 6-10 forward. Mississipi State has a 6-9, 260-pound center. They also have a 6-10, 249-pound forward. And they also have a 6-11, 249-pound forward. In other words, Mississippi State has a lot of tall, beefy players.Zeke's going to need a lot of help from the rest of the Zips' frontcourt in this game.

Anyone heard of Mississippi State's Renardo Sidney? Looks like he may be a real challenge for the Zips.Here's what John Lucas had to say about Sidney after the MSU player worked out with Lucas for two months this summer:"He's the third-most talented guy who has ever been in my gym, behind Kobe and LeBron," said former NBA player/coach John Lucas. "I had never seen him before, but now I see what all the fuss is about. He's got everything. He can do whatever he wants on the court. He's that talented." Kobe, LeBron and ... Renardo

GP1, I don't think anyone on this forum has ever summarized it as simply and with such crystal clarity as you just did.Nice work.

Good thread + politics = bad thread.

Absolutely brilliant mathematical computation, Rowdy.

Well, that opens things up a lot. Let's start listing options then:1. Hire a disgraced but winning coach.2. Sign up kids with awesome athletic talent but criminal backgrounds that make them so toxic that even Can't State won't touch them.3. Assign UA's economics department to research a really clever scheme to pay top-ranked recruits lots of money under the table without any possibility of getting caught.4. Assign UA's polymer department to research an undetectable physical performance enhancing chemical that can go in players' drinking water without them even knowing it.5. ?Everyone please feel free to add to the list (can't wait to see what Zipmeister might add).

As a matter of fact, I don't think any reasonable person should expect anything less than Moore and the rest of the Zips offense being more productive against the weaker defenses they will face in some of their remaining games than they have been against the two stronger defenses they've already faced.To think otherwise defies all logic.

I enjoyed seeing that a number of fans seated around us sat through the entire halftime show by the band before getting up and leaving prior to the second half kickoff.

Looking at it on the positive side, some of the reduction in football posts here may be due to the new ZN.O acceptable use policy. Some of the really nasty posts that used to appear here triggered nasty firefights that resulted in lots of posts that produced plenty of heat but not much light.Thoughtful forum members should be pleased that this kind of traffic has been reduced. Because, while traffic volume may be a little down, the average quality per post is up.On the negative side, it may be that as time goes on with no sign of significant improvement in team game performance, more and more of those who were willing to give the coaching staff and players time to develop are giving up in despair.I haven't totally given up on the coaches and players yet. But the weekly progress reports (game results) are slowly but steadily eroding my optimism and enthusiasm for UA football.

I guess I can claim greater expertise on sports event attendance than the average bear due to the fact that I was once responsible for producing the annual Goodyear auto racing attendance report. Each year I would compile attendance figures for all major auto racing events in the U.S., and the numbers were widely quoted throughout the sporting media as the most accurate numbers available. I personally counted seats from Daytona to Indianapolis, and could tell when a race promoter was fudging numbers.Back in the old days of auto racing, promoters would issue wildly optimistic numbers of spectators in attendance, and then report ridiculously small numbers of paid attendance to the IRS. The IRS eventually caught on, and nailed a number of promoters for pretty serious penalties. As the IRS began cracking down, sports promoters of all kinds began posting legitimate paid attendance numbers that matched what they reported on their tax returns.With that in mind, I'd say the odds are about zero that a state institution such as UA would announce inflated paid attendance numbers. Whatever they publicly announce as official paid attendance numbers must match up with the official paid attendance numbers they report to the IRS, or they risk an IRS audit that is not nearly worth the pain of whatever gain they might get from having the public believe there was more paid attendance than the actual number of tickets sold.While I have no direct experience with the finer details of how a university counts paid sporting event attendance, it would obviously include season ticket sales, walk-up ticket sales, suite sales, and some formula for counting students. In addition, any seat tickets that would be given to any season or game sponsors as part of a paid sponsorship package could legitimately be counted as part of official paid attendance.There is always a gap between official paid attendance and actual attendance (butts in seats). Paid admissions go unused for a variety of reasons. But, generally speaking, the gap is greater when a sports team is on the decline than when it's on the rise.So it's pretty obvious to me why there's such a big gap between UA football official paid attendance and actual butts in seats at games.

Obviously a year at a junior college did not prepare Moore to carry the whole Zips offense on his back against two clearly superior D1A teams.Everything I've read and seen about Moore suggests that he's intensely competitive. If so, these two smashings by clearly superior teams will really be grinding on him.I don't believe he will fold for the season as some other QBs might do after similar smashings. I'm hoping he has the kind of intensity that he'll really go for the kill against any team the Zips come close to matching up to as a team. I wouldn't be surprised if he produces one or more games this season of 300+ yard passing.Just a hunch.

Good analysis, Lee. As I said in another thread, the Zips look to me to be roughly where they were toward the end of last season. They might be able to hang with lower-tier MAC teams, but they're going to get blown away by any good teams they play. The Cincinnati and FIU games could be as ugly as the Temple and tOSU games.The only thing I really felt good about after the tOSU game was punting. After the 48-yard field goal last night, I feel a little better about place kicking.One thing that really disappointed me was the fact that the Zips are still penalty-prone, and that they too often kill their own chances of sustaining drives. I believe the Zips had six penalties in the first half to only one for Temple.Neither the players' play nor the coaching staff's coaching should get all the blame. From all I can see, the Zips do not have high level D1A talent, and the coaching staff is not getting the most out of what they have to work with.That's a pretty deadly combination.

Based on what I witnessed last night, the Zips as a team appear to be roughly where they were in the last three games of last season. That is, right now they may be capable of playing close with other lower-tier MAC teams, which means statistically that they would probably win some and lose some of those games.If they don't improve significantly over last night's performance, three wins would be about the most we could hope for. I do expect to see some improvement, especially from some of the younger, newer players. But it would take significant improvement across the board for me to even entertain the thought of four wins.Right now I don't see much hope for a dramatic tournaround this season. There's only the remotest chance that the coaches and players will hit on something that gives them a meaningful breakthrough.I'd feel pretty good if the Zips finished the season out of the Bottom 10, even if only 11th.

Now that I've actually seen Moore play, I have mixed feelings.On the positive side, he can scramble pretty well, certainly better than Nicely. He showed some nice moves on a couple of runs. He also appears to be at least slightly more accurate than Nicely. His passes appear to have a little less velocity than Nicely's, but he doesn't throw floaters, either.On the neutral side, he's fearless when he takes off running. As his HS coach once said, when Moore runs he thinks he's a full back. While impressive to watch, it makes him potentially more vulnerable to injury.On the not so good side, I was disappointed that he seemed too many times to lock onto his primary receiver. This telegraphed where he was going to throw, and the defenses read him well. Less often his head moved around scanning the field, and this helped deceive the defense. He needs to do that more.Moore looks to me as if he would benefit from an unpredictable offensive scheme. He seems to do better when he has to improvise, so why not tilt the offense toward more improvisation and fewer fixed plays? The Zips offense blocking is not good enough at protecting a pocket passer to allow him to operate that way. The classic example was when Moore was blindsided from behind near his goal line and fumbled, giving Temple the ball in scoring position.I can see the potential for him to do better in an offense designed around him, but not so much potential for him to adapt to an offense that doesn't play to his strong points.

Even though they just missed scoring the big upset and lost 27-22, congratulations to Toledo for playing the kind of game against tOSU that we Zips fans all wanted UA to play last weekend.Toledo proved today what a MAC team is capable of doing. It's not unreasonable for Zips fans to expect their team to be able to achieve the same level of play that a fellow MAC school with comparable resources achieved today.Comparing today's game with the one last weekend will only make frustrated Zips fans more impatient for their team to show clear signs of improvement.Everyone connected with the football program at UA needs to move forward with a greater sense of urgency.

Love the new acceptable use policy. Very well thought-out.ZN.O is going to be a much more enjoyable place to visit.You guys rock!

GoZips, check the date on the first post. This thread was started in the middle of the Carleton game as seen on webcast.

I did read the article in its entirety. While the team colors play some role, it appears that team ranking and shoe brand are even more important. The kid would accept ugly colors with Nike but not Adidas, and he'd also accept Adidas and ugly colors with a powerhouse team like Kansas. Read the player's quote carefully. The bolded parts of the quote sum it up:"Coach Scott Drew is a great guy. I love Coach Drew. They were one of the first schools that were recruiting me. But I didn't like that they were an adidas team, but that's not to say I wouldn't go to Kansas because Kansas is a great team. I can look over the adidas thing — I own some adidas stuff. [Goodwin played recent summers with the Arkansas Wings Elite team, which is sponsored by Nike] I didn't like their colors, either. I don't like green and gold. That's ugly …. When you got ugly colors like that, you gotta be Nike. …. Baylor has some ugly shoes, too."

Doug, as you discovered, you can't simply highlight in someone else's post what you want to quote in your response. What you have to do is go through and manually edit the quote to cut out all the parts that you're not directly responding to. Different people do this differently. Some include the entire post but use bold on the section they're directly responding to. I think it's cleaner to do it the way I do it, by manually editing out what I'm not responding to, include five dots before and after the quote I'm addressing, and post it like this: It's a lot of work to go through, but I think it benefits everyone to try to cut out all the clutter.The worst problem, in my opinion, is when someone quotes a post with 10 other post quotes in it. That's the main thing I'm trying to address here.Obviously, it would make it much easier for everyone if the software had options to take some of this manual editing load off of forum members.

On many of the other forums on which I participate, when you reply to a post by including the quoted post you're replying to, it only adds the comments of the most recent poster to your post.In other words:* One person makes a post.* A second person replies quoting the original post, so both the original and the response show up in the second post.* When a third person replies to the second post, the forum software only quotes what the second poster posted and not the original post.This is a great way to keep quoted posts from growing into massive, repetitive monsters.I wonder if the software ZN.O uses has this option available to be set up by one of the site administrators?

With 50% chance of rain, the fair weather folks may be discouraged.

It's not like basketball, where the best players from small schools go head-to-head with the best players from big schools in AAU competition.Football players from smaller schools simply do not face the level of competition that players from the big schools do.I think each college football recruiter has to decide exactly what proportion of attention to give to small schools vs. big schools, with big schools getting the most attention from D1A programs. The top universities really don't have to worry about the smaller high schools, as they have their pick of the cream of the crop from larger high schools.UA, like other weaker college football programs, has to focus on marginal players who don't quite make the cut for the top college football programs. Most of them may still come from the larger high schools. But a few gems can be found hidden at the smaller high schools who are worth the gamble for a school like UA even if not for an Alabama or tOSU.