Dave in Green

I can understand how a D1 team might get a little disrespect for playing non-D1 opponents. It would be just as easy to schedule a sub-300 RPI D1 team. Of course the Zips already have a number of those on the schedule, including within the MAC.The only real positive I can think of for playing a non-D1 team vs. playing a lowly D1 team is that it doesn't drag down SOS any further than it already is by virtue of playing in the MAC.It appears that other D1 schools that have non-D1 teams on their schedules almost always play nearby, in-state teams. So maybe it's a courtesy-type thing of contributing to smaller state schools by allowing them to play up.Doug brings up the best point of all, though. Butler had little NAIA Marian on their schedule, and the Bulldogs have played in the last two consecutive NCAA national championship games, as anyone from VCU must be painfully aware.

Bless you. I don't consider either to be real beers, and am pleased beyond belief that I won't have to consider drinking one to help raise the total.

Right. I'm crazy. Don't pay any attention to me.

I'm pretty sure that KD is going after bigs every year. Problem is, good bigs are in limited supply and generally end up with the top teams. UA is inching tantalizingly closer to the level where they have more of a chance to land decent bigs on a regular basis.I'd say right now that 6-9 is the magic number for the Zips. The only three players over 6-8 the Zips have had over the past five seasons have been Zeke, Bardo and Swiech. All of the top mid-majors have at least one good big in the 6-9/6-10 range, and most have more than one.With Zeke's college career now half over, it's becoming increasingly important to recruit at least one big with his talent level or greater. Otherwise it's going to be tough for the Zips to move higher in the mid-major rankings.

No real trash talking going on. Temple's fans know that they have one of the best teams in the MAC and that everyone rates UA in the cellar, so they're just taking a big win for granted. It would be really nice if the Zips could play even better than they did in their last three games last season.The most interesting comments were similar to some on ZN.O about fans wanting their team to jump from the MAC to a stronger conference, with Conference USA being mentioned. I suppose there's a lot of this kind of talk going on with many fan bases across the country. Everyone always wants to move up, and since the MAC is near the bottom of the college football food chain, there's probably even more talk on MAC team forums about wanting to move up to a stronger conference.

The offseason projections? That's nothing more than a way optimistic opinion of a couple of dreaming Zips fans. Don't you go pinning that statement up in the VCU locker room to inspire your team to bring their top game to Akron to put these pretenders in their place. The Zips will be lucky to do a little better than last season, so you can tell your team to relax and consider the trip to Akron to be a vacation.

I would like to respond to my esteemed colleague from Green in the matter at hand.I'm not looking for Coach I to be a great coach. I'm just looking for him to get the job done like the guy at Miamioh did last year.The gentleman from the Carolinas may have overlooked the end of my post where I stated that I'm hoping that Ianello develops fairly quickly into a solid head coach. So we are in total agreement on this issue.

NC State is an ACC team. Based on last year's lineup, all eight of the "unseeded" teams that don't get to play for the championship were midmajors. I find it hard to believe that NC State or any other ACC team would accept being thrown in with the "also-rans."

Nick Saban and Urban Meyer are two really good examples of great college head coaches. It's interesting that both got their first college head coaching positions in the MAC with experience only as assistant coaches and no experience as head coaches at a lower collegiate level. They were both able to instantly turn so-so MAC teams into good MAC teams. That fast MAC success was an early sign that they were both capable of greater things, and they continued to deliver on the promise.At this point, Rob Ianello isn't even in that discussion. His first year as a head coach in the MAC was obviously ugly. It remains to be seen if things will be better this season. It's still possible that he could grow into a great college coach. Some people are late bloomers who don't immediately show their full potential. It's also possible that he's simply not cut out to be a head coach. That's the gamble that UA took, and even though it hasn't paid immediate dividends, it still could.I know that some folks already think they have it figured out. More power to anyone who has researched the crap out of it and have reached a really thoughtful conclusion. I've done a fair amount of research and am not yet able to reach a conclusion. As time goes by and results continue to mount, it will become increasingly obvious to everyone if Ianello is cut out to be a head coach.The odds against UA picking a future great head coach are small simply because there are so few truly great ones. I'd be happy if UA simply had a solid head coach who produced consistent winning records, even if he didn't win the MAC championship every season.I'm hoping that Ianello develops fairly quickly into a solid head coach. If not, UA has to take another gamble on another assistant or a head coach from a lower division, and there are no guarantees that any of them will be good enough to satisfy Zips fans.

On the point about Ianello leaving UA for a better job if he's successful in turning the Zips into a winning team, that's pretty much a given. If he has dreams of someday coaching a national championship team, the chances of doing so at UA are infinitely smaller than they were for Porter in soccer. And I'm not aware of any ties Ianello may have to UA or Akron like Dambrot has that might keep him here if he gets good offers to go to a powerhouse football school with a multimillion dollar coaching budget.Back when the Ianello hire was first announced, I spent quite a bit of time researching his background. I went beyond the usual sports websites and tried to get some insights into his working style. What struck me the most is that he is widely credited with having good organizational and administrative skills.Best case scenario is that he uses those skills to create a solid system at UA and loads up on better and better recruits each season. That way, when a new head coach is eventually brought in, the cupboard really will be full and the new coach will have a lot to work with.

I'm assuming the 2K Sports Classic is where the Zips are supposed to meet Mississippi State, as they're one of the host teams along with Arizona, St. Johns and Texas A&M. Those four teams are automatically in the championship rounds at Madison Square Garden regardless of what the Zips or any other team does during the preliminaries.The 2K Sports Classic is brought to you by the same folks who promote the CBI -- the Gazelle Group.The format is pretty funky with the four host teams playing two each of eight other teams on the first two dates, then the eight other teams are divided into a pair of four-team subregionals where each team plays three games against each other while the four host teams move on to MSG for the championship rounds.Last season, Toledo hosted one of the two subregionals, and played against Charleston, Illinois-Chicago and Rhode Island, losing to all three at home.While the 2011 schedule isn't yet posted, you can see how how it works by going to the 2K Sports Classic website and clicking on 2010 Tournament Bracket near the top of the main page:2K Sports Classic

I just hope that Sporting News did a thorough analysis of this season's edition of the Zips and the MAC to reach their conclusion, and didn't just do a quick and dirty plug in of last season's champion. I'd like to think that a knowledgeable college basketball analyst could look at the current Zips roster and come to the conclusion that there's as much or more talent there this season than last.

Right, CK. One person's fluffy bunnies is another person's love tap. Note: Moderator editUser edit: Gee, I wonder which moderator?

There is a sarcasm emoticon on ZN.O and most other forums. It's the familar old "roll eyes" emoticon: Without the emoticon, your previous post was quite easy to misinterpret as serious. If you weren't being serious, then my response didn't apply directly to you, but only to anyone who seriously believes the words you posted as sarcasm. The comments you have made in subsequent posts have been fair and are shared by many. Same with the comments by Big Zip. As I've said many times, there's nothing wrong with fair and reasonable criticism. I'm in total agreement with GP1 that it's time for the personal attacks from a few posters to stop. It detracts from an otherwise fair and reasonable discussion about the very real shortcomings we all see in UA football. As Zips fans, we should continue to try to point out what we see as not working, and also give credit where credit is due for any improvements we might see.

By "stuff," you mean office gossip, right? In the last large company I worked for, I attended high-level planning meetings on a routine basis. After the meetings, I'd hear "stuff" from people who weren't in the meetings, but knew a friend of someone who worked in the same department as someone who was in the meeting. The "stuff" they passed on through the grapevine was inevitably distorted to suit someone's agenda. UA is similar to a large company. There are many departments full of many different people with many different agendas. In some cases you have some people who for, whatever reason, don't like other people and want to see them fail. They gladly pass on negative "stuff" about the person they don't like, and if nothing negative enough is available, they'll twist what's available into something negative. I have no doubt that there are UA employees who don't like Tom Wistrcill, Rob Ianello, and any number of other people on the staff. Maybe the feeling is mutual. Who really knows the truth? Certainly not those who are tuned into a single channel of negative gossip. Tuning into another channel might result in totally opposite "stuff." So when you say "we can all basically say that this hiring was a favor by Tom Wistrcill to his buddy Rob Ianello," you are dead wrong. I am not included in that "we," and I'm pretty sure there are others here who don't want to be included in your all-inclusive "we can all." If you applied a little independent thinking to your gossip channel, you might ask why Wistrcill would risk his own career on deliberately hiring an uncompetitive football coach when football is the biggest program at UA. Why didn't he get rid of Caleb Porter and bring in one of his loser soccer coach buddies? Why didn't he get rid of Keith Dambrot and bring in one of his loser basketball coach buddies? Why did he just bring in a new baseball coach who everyone seems to think is a winner? You know, there are real, experienced adults on this forum who have been around the world many times and heard all this "stuff" a thousand times over. You can pretend all you want that all the "stuff" you hear is real. But everyone with any real life experience knows it's just office gossip until confirmed by a credible source who doesn't have their own personal agenda. Listen, I have no problem with anyone criticizing Ianello, Wistrcill, or anyone else for what you think they might not be doing right. There are plenty of reasons for criticizing everyone, including me, you, and the man in the moon. We're all imperfect and we're all open to legitimate criticism. But when you go beyond legitimate criticism and pick sides in a fight in which you don't know all the facts, you're on your own. There's no "we" about it.

I'm not in either camp because I haven't seen a good, thorough analysis of which strategy has the best success rate. If there was solid data supporting the fact that the success rate of lower level college head coaches moving to a higher level was much higher than higher level assistants moving to head coaching positions, I'd be more inclined to lean that way. Obviously there are successful and unsuccessful examples of each. Ultimately you have to thoroughly analyze the individual candidates and weigh that along with the factor of which camp tends to have the higher percentage of success.

I stand by my original opinion in this thread that the Ianello hire was a smart gamble for UA. Doesn't mean he will work out in the long run. He obviously has not worked out in the short run in terms of team record. But any coach UA would have hired would have been a gamble. There are no sure things given UA's position near the bottom of the college football universe and the inability to offer the big bucks that would attract a sure winner head coach.

Lee, you should keep repeating that question. GP1 and some other ex-players have also questioned this. It's really a valid question. You would hope there's a good, professional journalist out there somewhere who would ask Ianello this question. Maybe there's a good answer, maybe not. The thing your question brings to mind for me is the fact that some pro teams are moving away from the traditional pro style offense and going to more of a West Coast offense. If the pros are moving away from the pro offense, how is it going to work for a team near the bottom of the college football food chain? I only wish that more ZN.O posters would be asking and trying to answer questions like this as opposed to trying to find out what style underwear Ianello wears so they can trash it.

Right, Zach. So you're saying that every assistant coach in charge of recruiting at every nationally recognized school with a nationally recognized coach is recognized as a great recruiter because great recruits are automatically attracted and the assistant coaches in charge of recruiting don't do diddly but get a great reputation for recruiting just by filling the position? You don't think there's the slightest possibility that Ianello has been recognized as a top recruiting coach for years because he actually did the job better than most other assistant coaches in similar positions? Really, it's OK to admit that Ianello has done some things right in his career without compromising your position that he's the wrong person for the UA head coaching job. Really, you don't have to demonize every aspect of the man to make your point. Unless, that is, you are aiming for a career in modern American politics. In that case, trashing every element of an opponent's character will serve you well. It may not serve the American people well. But it will serve you well, because that's what a lot of folks are buying these days.

Ianello established his recruiting credentials before he went to Notre Dame, not at ND. In fact, that's probably one of the reasons why he was needed at ND, which can no longer draw players to the school name the way they used to. He may or may not turn out to be a good head coach. But his recruiting abilities as an assistant coach were established over many years at several different schools.

If anyone is holding out hope that the Zips might beat Temple, it's only going to increase your level of disappointment with the team when they lose. I'm afraid the best we can hope for is that the Zips aren't totally embarassed by Temple. I'm just hoping the Zips look somewhat competitive with Temple at times during the game. The real key to measuring the Zips' season is how many teams they have a realistic chance of beating they actually beat. It's just not realistic to expect them to upset much better teams until they've shown they can beat a team that's closer to their current level.

Zach, you do understand that people don't always get along all the time, right? And you do understand that there is always more than one side to the story, right? You are going to be seeing this throughout your life in a variety of situations. Wait until you have your first encounter with a divorce between a man and a woman who you both know. He will say one thing, she will say another, and you won't know which one to believe. Or maybe you will think you do. Maybe you'll pick a side and say one was right and one was wrong. Maybe you'll be right and maybe you'll be wrong. Maybe you'll spread the latest gossip about that on an internet forum. Or maybe you'll grow up and be a responsible adult.

Way too logical. Where's your PRIMAL SCREAM, man? But seriously, today's performance did nothing to change the opinions of those who've already given up on Ianello, nor did it provide much encouragement to those who are still open-minded on the subject. I'll start formulating my opinion after two or three games against MAC-level competition. Realistically, that's all the UA football program has been capable of hanging with for a long time. The first step toward respectability is to start playing tough against the teams the Zips have a realistic chance to compete against. After that, maybe they can start playing more competitively against the tOSUs of the world.

Do we really need an "official" fire iCoach NOW thread when every football thread for the past year has been an unofficial fire iCoach NOW thread? By the way, the argument against Ianello is considerably weakened when it resorts to personal attacks on the man's appearance. I've met some of you folks on ZN.O, and, well, let's just say that our mirrors aren't telling lies. None of us is Hollywood material.

Many thanks for the thoughtful analysis. Nice contrast with the chorus of primal screams in the game thread. The game is playing out about the way the professional football analysts predicted it would. Looking forward to seeing how the Zips play against a MAC-level opponent.