Dave in Green

It's a pretty simple formula, really. UA is trying to attract more smart students. The smarter the student the more likely they are to understand what polytechnic means. Less scholarly students are less likely to understand what polytechnic means and may tend to shy away from UA. Mission accomplished.

That's why I mentioned upsets. It would be foolish to take tOSU lightly even though they're on a 4-game losing streak after a 2-0-1 start.

Assuming no upsets along the way, that game with #7 Wake Forest looms large.

Arguably the most individually talented team the Zips have beaten was Mississippi State in Starkville in 2011. That Bulldogs team had three players that ended up on NBA rosters -- Arnett Moultrie, Rodney Hood and Dee Bost. They also had the immensely talented 6-10 Renardo Sidney, who ended up being such a head case that he never played beyond college. That was a shocker of an upset at the time as stories still to be found on the internet attest.

I believe that images are copyrighted, not patented.

You know better than that as I'm on record rejecting as untrue many words I read on this forum. You must get excited listening to yourself.

I wonder why no one is acknowledging this slide from UA's presentation:

With all the ABJ comments scattered throughout various threads in ZipsNation, maybe someone should follow their lead and start a continuing thread on ZipsNation entitled ABJ Quality Fallout.

An NFL.com story ranked Jojo #7 in its list of the 15 best smallest players in college football this year, ahead of #12 Ernest Calhoun (Can't). 15 for '15: College football's smallest players

He's really small (5-7, 160) with the heart of a lion. He can play running back, receiver and punt returner. The speed and moves he shows in this video are pretty awesome. The ESPN graphic toward the end of the video says he's the only FBS player with multiple touchdowns rushing, receiving and returns.

Zeke must have a thing for hot weather and sand. He's headed back to the Middle East, this time to Saudi Arabia: Zeke Marshall signs with Al Fateh in Saudi Arabia

Now that we have some agreement on the tOSU issue, let's take another look at the Zips' OOC road schedule this season: Villanova Arkansas Green Bay Cleveland State Iona UC Santa Barbara Marshall All of these teams were ranked higher than the Zips last season in one or more rankings except for Marshall, which was a top 100 team when the series contract was signed but fell apart over the last couple of seasons. So no one can accuse the Zips of trying to duck healthy competition on the road. Villanova and Arkansas certainly qualify as tOSU-equivalent teams. When we talk about adding another tOSU-equivalent team to the schedule, what we're really talking about is replacing a home cupcake game with another road game against a tough high major. This does not represent a major scheduling change and is not an unreasonable request. Even last season when the Zips lost their best player early in the season and had injuries to several top players late in the season, they still won 21 games. One more road loss against a tough team in place of a sure win at home against a cupcake would have still given the Zips a 20-win season.

So with all of that out of the way, you still don't think Coach Dambrot would risk one loss in one season for a chance to upset the Buckeyes in Columbus and make a major gain in Ohio recruiting clout?

Forgot to mention that if Coach Dambrot were in it just for the money, he wouldn't be fooling around with a small 20-win bonus. He would have taken the big raise from Duquesne.

As you are well aware, that Zips team was decimated by suspension, injury and illness for that game. Healthy Zips teams have played VCU close in several regular season games over the years. I recall attending a Zips NCAA tournament game against Gonzaga in Portland a couple of hours from the Zags' campus where the Zips were leading with 9:43 left in the game and more than 10,000 silent Zags fans were sweating bullets before Gonzaga made a run at the end. Anyway, if you think tOSU would be receptive to playing the Zips, send a request to both Keith Dambrot and Thad Matta and see what kind of responses you get.

Hope Coach Bowden is right again on his character assessment. Jojo had 3 strikes against him at Utah State. On the other hand he's a fast and elusive receiver and punt returner. Utah State football: WR/PR Jojo Natson dismissed from team

Here we go again. Remembering last season, Pohl took a long time to recover from that head injury and the Zips' season fell apart without him. Hoping the best for his health. Desperately searching for the smallest bright spot, at least Chapman and Woodson have similar styles so the team can focus more on running plays including the QBs as neither has yet shown they can pass with any consistency. Without Pohl the Zips have no choice but to put more emphasis on the run. Now all they have to do is execute.

Considering all the electrical gremlins in the rain at the stadium, maybe UA quietly farmed out operations to the New England Patriots organization.

It appears that Computer-Science-Schools.com uses presumably valid US Department of Education numbers and then applies a proprietary ranking algorithm that uses 61 different areas of measurement, including such factors as "campus safety." So it's no surprise that these may differ from other rankings that only include the quality of the computer science classes. I was unable to find any description on the website of who is actually performing this service.

Who would ever guess that the team just one spot ahead of the Zips' #127 and last place ranking in total offense is #126 Texas.

The rankings are for the 127 D-1A teams only with no FCS teams included. To put in perspective how skewed the numbers are after just 2 games in which teams have faced wildly different levels of competition, in total defense Can't is currently ranked #2 in the country behind #1 Boston College.

No O = more stressed D. Zips D is better than the #91 ranking, but O will have to spend more time on the field to help improve D's ranking to where it should be.

Hey, I just try to dig up the facts. Everyone's free to come to their own conclusions.

Sanctimonious! Perfect example of why I said I love your brand of shmack shtick. You do understand that Coach Bowden's previous two head coaching positions were at Auburn and North Alabama, two schools that had consistent winning records over the years. In both cases he inherited winning teams to build on. At UA he inherited a smoking crater left behind by iCoach. As The Donald would say, huuuggge difference. Since everyone on this forum is seriously worried about the Zips' offense, I guess that means we're all sane. Bring it on.

Let's look a little closer. In the 2006-2007 season, tOSU scheduled a decent Can't team that finished 21-11. The Zips beat the Flushes that season in all three meetings, twice in the regular season and also in the MAC tournament. Also that season tOSU scheduled a weak Cleveland State team that finished 10-21. In the 2007-2008 season tOSU played a return game at Cleveland State, which makes a lot of sense as the Cleveland area is one of the top in the country for HS recruiting. CSU was a little stronger that season with a 21-13 record. If the Zips played in Cleveland they might have a better shot at having tOSU agree to play them. In the 2008-2009 season tOSU scheduled a weak BG team that finished 19-14, split their two regular season games with the Zips and lost to the Zips in the MAC tournament. In the 2009-2010 season tOSU scheduled (maybe a two-for-one?) another weak Cleveland State team that finished the season 16-17. In the 2010-2011 season tOSU scheduled a weak Miami team that finished the season 16-17. Miami split the two regular seasons with the Zips that season but lost to the Zips in the MAC tournament. In the 2011-2012 season tOSU scheduled an even weaker Miami team that finished the season 9-21 and lost both regular season games to the Zips. In the 2013-2014 season tOSU scheduled a decent (25-12) OU team that split the two regular season games with the Zips and lost to the Zips in the MAC tournament. This may have been the strongest Ohio or MAC team tOSU faced over the past decade. Over the past decade tOSU also scheduled games with other MAC teams such as EMU and other Ohio teams such as Wright State. In all cases these teams had losing records. So after studying in more detail all the Ohio and MAC teams tOSU has scheduled over the past decade, it appears that they've somehow avoided the best Ohio or MAC teams every single season. In every one of those seasons the Zips had a better team than the ones tOSU scheduled. Could be coincidence.