Dave in Green

Zips are currently tied with Can't, with both teams losing 0-21 in the second quarter.

Good punt (46 yards), but porous Zips defense allows tOSU to roll down field for a quick 0-7 Zips' deficit.

The USFL won their lawsuit against the NFL, and were awarded one dollar in damages. Under antitrust law, the award was trebled to three dollars. Since the USFL was predicated on winning a huge monetary settlement from the NFL, the strategy failed and the USFL folded. There is no law of nature stating that new sports leagues will be inherently better than those they're trying to replace. A new college football league might be an improvement over the NCAA, or it could be worse.

Oh sure, it's not that big a deal to start a new football league like the USFL. The hard part is getting it to work well enough to stay in business and not fold with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. How long did the USFL last before they pulled the plug, four years?

I've yet to see a compelling case made that the NCAA is broken beyond repair and that there is some mythical ogranization out there just waiting to be funded so they can step in and immediately make everything better.

I can confirm that Terry Bradshaw was one hard-headed player who was totally focused on winning in both his college and professional careers. So Moore may, indeed, have some similarities. Playing on the edge can produce spectacular results, both good and bad. When you push the envelope, you occassionally cross the line. I remember watching Bradshaw run in college when he was flushed out of the pocket. He did not try to avoid defensive players, but tried to run over them. He actually broke a few defensive players' bones in college when he flattened them. Moore's HS coach was once quoted as saying that Moore sometimes thinks he's a fullback who tries to run over defensive players. No one really knows all the details that led up to Moore's HS coach dismissing him from the team in the middle of a game. The one thing from that incident that I like about Moore is the way he reacted in his public comments in the immediate aftermath of being dismissed from the team a week before the championship game. He was a true team player who wanted to keep the focus on his team and not on himself: “This week isn’t about me. It's about the Louisville Wildcats. They have a big game with Tylertown. I'm going to try to cause as least a distraction as possible. It’s definitely unfortunate. I wish my teammates the best. I was wrong for what I did. But there are two sides to every story and people aren't always as guilty as they seem.” ClarionLedger.com

As with most discussions, there's room for both agreement and disagreement. I agree that the college football landscape is evolving more rapidly these days, and that one day it's possible the evolving super conferences may split from the NCAA if the NCAA isn't reformed to everyone's satisfaction. If not, there will certainly be some sanctioning changes at some point simply because of the fact that nothing lasts forever. Whether this will only be in football or might include other sports is open to question. The NCAA is not nearly as criticized for the way it handles other sports as it is for the way football is managed. Now, the key question for UA and similar schools is whether it makes sense to remain aligned with the NCAA in the event of a super conference BCS football split. There would be pros and cons to every strategy, so it would pay UA to keep a close eye on the changing landscape, carefully study all options and be prepared to make the right call. For example, if the NCAA were to maintain sanction of all but the BCS super conferences, it might make sense for UA to remain aligned with the NCAA. Minus the super conferences, schools like UA would be positioned to compete for an NCAA college football championship with the remaining non-BCS teams. It wouldn't have the same cachet as winning the BCS title. But few imagine UA is ever going to compete for that, anyway. Jumping too quickly off a listing ship can be as dangerous as waiting too long and getting caught in the vortex if it goes down. If the ship can be righted, you're much better off staying with it than jumping into shark-infested waters in the middle of the night. The key point is to be smart and not rush into something you're going to regret later.

I don't think my concept of dealing with OT discussion is going to work every time. Same with trying to engage in reasonable discourse or trying to ignore it. Sometimes none of these work. Some people are so fanatical that they simply never will consider it off topic to bring up their personal crusades in the middle of any other topic. And when someone makes hundreds of repetitious posts with exactly the same theme over an extended period of time on a discussion forum like ZN.O, at some point it ceases to be contributing to open discussion and becomes a personal crusade. It really belongs in a personal blog and not an open discussion forum.

Wait a minute. CK didn't say that hard-core is bad. Planning ahead is good.

I think most would agree with CK that no matter how good the intentions, coaches are ultimately measured on results. There are some good signs in this story that Ianello is focused on doing the right things to produce longterm results. The question is whether or not he can deliver the kind of steady progress upward that his plan envisions and that fans are demanding. The best of intentions are quickly forgotten if not matched by the intended results.

An 0-12 season immediately following a 1-11 season would pretty much unite everyone in believing that Ianello had his fair chance and couldn't deliver, and that the time had come to find a new head coach. Most reasonable people want to give Ianello a fair chance to prove himself, though we may differ on exactly how much time is fair and exactly how much progress we need to see in his second season. Someone would have to be an even bigger extremist than you, Zach, to support bringing back a 1-23 coach for a third season, and I don't believe that's humanly possible.

In keeping with the concept of starting new threads instead of adding to off-topic discussion in a thread on a different subject, this is a continuation of the OT discussion in the Akron September opponent's coach in hot water? thread in the football forum: Ditching it is the better option. It is broken beyond repair. A new set of individuals with a new set of conflicting agendas is exactly what the ncaa needs. There are no new ideas and bringing in new people is the answer. Everyone at the ncaa headquarters should be dismissed from their jobs and the windows boarded shut because they won't listen to new ideas. A couple of weeks ago, I spent some time with a D-1 athletic director. I ran my idea of a new division and this person told me it would never happen because the I-AA schools would never go for it. They don't want to appear second class. The real concern for all non-bcs teams is the day the bcs schools leave the ncaa. It is getting a lot of attention right now and may be closer than anyone wants to admit. The writing is on the walls at the ncaa and the Titanic is taking on water. When that happens, there is no basketball tournament. When there is no basketball tournament, there is no ncaa as it is 75%+ of their revenues. The ncaa is a dying institution. It's dying because it isn't needed. Again Dave, we can stay on the Titanic and wait for another boat to come by or we can get on a lifeboat. Which do you want? You are welcome on my lifeboat if you wish...don't stay too long though as the Titanic is taking on water quickly. You are funny! You just want everyone's blind trust that you have it all figured out. Just trust me on this, you say. Sorry, I'm bombarded with that fast-talking sales stuff daily, from the robo phone calls to the junk e-mails to the silly pop-up internet ads to the "but wait, there's more" TV ads. They all want you to hurry up and buy their stuff before the Titanic hits the iceberg and goes down, which could happen at any second, and then you lose out on the super duper extra special deal. Broken beyond repair is a favorite slogan of all sales people to convince you that what you have isn't good enough and you need to buy what they're selling RIGHT NOW before it's too late. I'm a little tougher sell than that, as I would expect most thoughtful people to be. The NCAA college football ship is not going down anytime soon. It's generating a ton of cash, which means it's in play for everyone who wants to figure out an angle to get a piece of the action. It's more like the goose that laid golden eggs that people want to cut open to get all the gold faster. The NCAA is making changes. They may not all be the right changes, and they may not be happening as fast as we'd like. But the NCAA isn't static. They understand that the gold diggers are looking for a way to smash, grab and run. We don't even know the people who would run your hypothetical operation. Maybe they're from the Bernie Madoff school of investment. You know, the one where everyone makes money and no one loses. The one where you have to move fast before the Titanic hits the iceberg.

Good point on the OT. I'm moving my comments to a new thread. Here's a link to the new thread: Yet Another NCAA Football Thread

So, the NCAA isn't so bad in soccer that schools like UA should want to pull out, since the NCAA has a system in place where schools like UA can win the national championship in soccer. And the NCAA isn't so bad in basketball that schools like UA should want to pull out, since the NCAA has a system in place where schools like UA (i.e. Butler) can make it all the way to the national championship game. It's only in football where the NCAA isn't so good for schools like UA that are mired at the bottom, even though other non-BCS schools such as Boise State and TCU have become regulars in the national championship discussion. I wonder if those two schools had GP1 clones posting on their forums in the past that it was hopeless for their schools to try to compete with the BCS schools and they should just hang it up? Yeah, the NCAA is imperfect. All organizations are, just as all people are. So what's the better option, trying to improve the NCAA or ditching it and starting from scratch? Neither option would be simple. The NCAA is a huge, entrenched organization that would be as easy to turn around as a loaded supertanker on the high seas. Starting from scratch would bring in a new group of individuals with a new set of conflicting agendas and a whole new set of problems. The easiest thing in the world is to sit back at the computer keyboard, beer in hand, and tap out posts on internet forums pointing out flaws in people and organizations, because they all have plenty of flaws. It's so easy that hundreds of millions of people around the world do it on a daily basis, and internet forums are full of their critiques. The hard part is actually formulating a better plan and properly executing it, with no guarantees that things won't go wrong along the way that end up creating a worse situation. That's why one of the fundamentals of medical ethics is: first, do no harm. It makes perfect sense to have an ongoing discussion about the need for continuous improvement by all organizations, from the NCAA and other sports organizations to school systems, corporations, churches and governments. But before completely ditching one imperfect system for another imperfect system, we should at least be down to the level of detail of the new system where we can start shooting holes in it before it takes over, for better or worse. Presented with good options, people can make reasonable choices. Presented with half-assed calls for "anything has to be better than this," reasonable people are going to push back.

Zach, I'll give one reason not to stake your life on impressions. Stuff changes. You don't realize this when you're young. At least I didn't. I've seen a lot of things in my life. I've seen hopeless become sure thing and I've seen the opposite. I've seen a lot of overconfident speculators go down in flames. Nobody knows for sure what's really going to happen with anything. The more you've seen happen, the more likely you are to understand the full implications of that fundamental truth.

Because there's a proven path to the top for non-BCS schools in the NCAA. Boise State has done it in football. Butler has done it in basketball. The Zips have done it in soccer. How does the path to the top for non-BCS midmajors compare in your hypothetical system?

Gotta love it when someone on ZN.O owns up to being a smart ass. I can identify with that. No problem at all, johnnyzip84.

Progressive liberal? For shame, Doug. GP1 has clearly stated on many occasions that he favors libertarianism. Libertarians are against big government, big sanctioning organizations, any big organizations that trample individual rights. Just eliminate all authority, turn everyone loose and the free market system will straighten everything out.

How sad. One less person available for Jake to try to draw into a back and forth debate on whether a new basketball arena should be built on campus or downtown.

My bad. My wording suggested a formal agreement, which in fact is not in effect. Many stories were written last year about the NFL, NCAA, NFL Players Association and American Football Coaches Association meeting more than once to discuss potential solutions to ongoing issues with shady agents. The discussion expanded to include agreement from all sides on how the images of the NCAA and the NFL, as well as their players, are harmed when a college player bails out to the NFL to escape penalties for an NCAA infraction. The NFL was said to be especially interested in finding a way to effectively deal with this. The 5-game NFL suspension for Pryor is the first indication that the NFL is willing to take independent action, formal agreement or not.

Fewer wins in the short term in exchange for more wins in the long term? I'll take that tradeoff any day, especially when the starting point of the short run is pretty low to begin with. I'd call that a reasonable strategy as opposed to a personal agenda.

This is a creative twist on the wording in your previous one on the subject: No question that words can be spun to twist the meaning of any situation. Someone is choking in a restaurant. Another person comes up and applies the Heimlich Maneuver. One witness credits the good samaritan for saving the choking person's life. Another witness says one guy blind-sided another guy and hit him so hard that the food flew out of his mouth. Just as with politicians, when you choose primarily to speak to the party base with the most outrageous exaggerations about the opposing party, you lose all credibility with the independent moderates who are open to the more rational arguments from either side of the issue.

As mentioned in this thread's opening post, I started this thread as an extension of "The Lone Ranger rides for Akron" thread when it started veering off topic, and put a link to this thread in that thread. The purpose of this thread is to discuss ways to deal with OT threads in the future. My thinking is that all it takes is one person to start a new thread dealing with the topic that took the original thread off topic, post a link to the new thread in the original thread, and hope that the original thread then stays on topic while the off-topic discussion moves over to the new thread. Hope that explains it in a nutshell.

I wonder how many are in the group that believes iCoach is more interested in having "his guy" at QB than having the guy who he believes will give the team the best chance to win games at QB? I wonder if that group is as large as the group that believes that iCoach deliberately threw games last season? I wonder if some of these "groups" may consist of a single person?

Always good to get input from someone with forum administrative experience. One thing about ZN.O is that I think the adminstrators are pretty much on top of most threads and can see things going off topic without needing to be told. But having forum members report OT posts would at least give the administrators an opportunity to see how much unhappiness there is among the members. You make a really good point about different people being sensitive to different things going OT. If the general drift of OT discussion supports one's beliefs, one can be less likely to be offended by the OT drift. But there are also many people who just tire of the same old sniping over the same old subjects regardless of which side of the debate may happen to be prevailing. There's no reason that reasonable forum members can't get together and agree to try to do something about it without hassling the administrators.