Dave in Green

It says right in the same story that "Students will scan their Zip Card to enter the game" which I believe they do at every game. That should send exact student game attendance straight into the central computer. It's hard to believe an assistant athletic director wouldn't be aware of this. I was under the impression that announced attendance for Zips home games was based on the number of tickets sold (including season tickets) plus the number of students who actually had their Zip Cards scanned.

Jake and Reggie could both start but then sub out and back in at staggered times in order to always have at least one of them in the game as a deep threat. Having said that, the Zips are going to have more deep threats available this season than just those two. The team's second best 3-point shooting percentage to Reggie (42.5%) last season wasn't turned in by Jake (35.2%) but by Deji (39.4%), who's also returning. Gone this season are Melo (25.9%), Nick (21.4%) and Q (34.2%). Melo rightfully had no confidence in his outside shot and didn't shoot many, Nick had more confidence than he should have and shot too many, and Q was only average from deep. As a group, BJ, Aaron, Noah and Antino will give the Zips better options as deep threats this season than the three departed players.

It can get a little confusing when the team has 2 A. Jacksons (Aaron and Antino). But assuming you mean Aaron, Blue & Gold just gave you the right answer. Aaron continued growing and putting on weight during his redshirt year and is now about the same height and weight as Nick Harney was before he left the team. It's also been discussed in other threads that BJ Gladden has proven to have good ball control, so he can play point forward and trigger plays. I'd expect to see him mostly at the 3, though he could easily play the 2 and is also strong and aggressive enough to sub a little at the 4 if needed. BJ's ball control may make him a good option to have in the lineup when the Zips' backup PG is on the floor.

It's pretty common conversational English to say that it's not fair to put someone in a bad position, which would include such things as ignoring safety/precaution when it's warranted. Anyway, that's the way I interpret what Coach Bowden meant when he said that. He's the only one who knows exactly the point he was trying to make and we're all left to guess, which always results in varying interpretations.

It all makes sense if you consider that Coach Bowden decided before the game that it wouldn't be fair to put KP in.

Keener, I would never dream of questioning your passion and support for UA and Zips athletics. We all share that common interest or we wouldn't be spending our time here. The Zips QB situation is going to work out for the best under the circumstances and we can all move on to other discussion topics, which I hope will be a relief to all.

Keener, I like you but you're really reaching.

Just a hunch, but I suspect that KP's medical condition was also on Coach Bowden's mind. Throwing a player just off head injury watch into a game for which he's had no time to prepare is a recipe for increasing the risk of more injury. Then again, I may be hypersensitized to this issue from all the medical reports I've been reading over the last few days about what's happening to the brains of football players.

Now that there's some science involved in examining the effects of football on the human brain, a lot is going to come out that we never imagined. I know a lot of people don't like to jump to links to read long pieces, so I'm going to copy a healthy chunk of a scientific article below while staying within fair use standards. But anyone who's really into football should follow this link and read the whole thing:

No, it's the end of the great conspiracy.

The really scary part of the CNN story is the part in bold below: It's great that they can monitor players with concussions and not send them back on the field until all the symptoms are gone. But what about all the players with undiagnosed subconcussions that have no symptoms to monitor? They're sent right back out on the field where another big hit could cause catastrophic damage.

I think he'd say that ZN.o is producing a lot of hot air.

Got it. My response was simply to point out that we need to try to objectively analyze the sources of various perceived facts in order to assign a credibility value to them. I hope my most recent post above made that point. We really and truly do not have access to all of the facts, which invokes the GIGO principle -- garbage in, garbage out.

It was really directed at everyone. Even the most basic things people think they may know about this situation are in question. Recall that the original report was that KP was cleared to play just prior to the OU game. Then it was reported that he was actually cleared to play in the middle of last week before the BSU game. I know people who don't believe either of those were accurate. I have multiple connections with different stories. Even people usually in the know have different opinions. The one consistency I find in all the stories is that KP's head took a hard hit to the ground that resulted in something that has been variously described as a head injury, a concussion-like injury and a concussion. Even those varying descriptions are within the context that head injuries are like snowflakes -- no two are exactly alike. Physicians who've done their best to analyze an injury that's among the most difficult to assess with a high degree of accuracy have shared their prognosis with the team, and the coaching staff is left with the final decision about when is the best time to allow KP to return to the field. There appears to be two main groups on this forum -- those who believe that it's more likely that KP suffered the type of injury where it's best to err on the conservative side and keep him out until there's no question he's 100% recovered and those who believe something funny is going on and the coach is using this as an excuse to play the backup QB who he favors over the former starting QB. Since there's not universal agreement on all the facts, there can't be agreement on the present situation and the tit for tat will go on unabated.

The Forbes article was written by James Taylor, an employee of the Heartland Institute, an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank that advocates free market policies and is largely funded by some of the big corporations most responsible for impacting the environment. In other words, the Heartland Institute exists to refute scientific evidence that may result in economic stress on their benefactors. For example, in the 1990s the Heartland Institute was paid by the Philip Morris tobacco company to question cancer risks of secondhand smoke and to lobby against public health reforms. Today the Heartland Institute is recognized as the single biggest advocate of climate change skepticism. Sure, there's a tit for tat for everything in the universe. It's easy be confused by conflicting debate points, and you really have to do your homework, dig deep and find which side of each debate has the most credibility on its side. When it comes to climate debate, I'm inclined to put more weight on the opinions of independent climate scientists documented by a scientific organization like NASA as more representative of "fact" than I am the opinions of a special interest group specifically funded to "disprove" what the scientists are saying. I'm trying to apply those same principles to the Zips QB debate. Everyone is throwing out their tits and tats and I'm trying to dig a little deeper and see what's more likely to be real.

Actually, there's a much bigger consensus on global warming among climate scientists who've studied it than there is on the Zips QB situation: 97% of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities 3% of climate scientists disagree NASA Source

Looking back on Melo's career, I remember one of the earliest things I read about him on a Puerto Rican basketball site was that it was thought he had a higher upside than Alex. The original plan was that he would be Abreu's backup through last season and take over as the starting PG for the first time this season. That all fell apart with Abreu's unexpected departure, and for whatever reason Melo never blossomed and never came close to his old teammate's overall performance level. I appreciate everything Melo did to try to help the Zips be a better team, and wish him all the best in whatever he elects to do next.

People keep saying they "know" things when they don't really know. They've heard or read something that may or may not be entirely accurate, make an assumption based on that and ignore conflicting information that also may or may not be correct. There's a lot of erroneous information floating around that's assumed to be factual when in fact it is not.

I take it you didn't read the Los Angeles Times story I linked to above, which refutes your theory. Here it is again in case you missed it: Pac-12 Football Coaches Hush-Hush About Hurt Players

The only official things GT can write about KP's health are what he's officially told, which he has already done. If he goes to unofficial sources to get unofficial information he will likely run into the same speculative stuff that fans are throwing back and forth at each other on this forum. Here's what the NCAA has to say about the privacy of student-athlete medical records: Bottom line is that while we fans may want to know all the health details about the players we support on the field, we have absolutely no right to know.

The Los Angeles Times had an interesting story a couple of years ago entitled Pac-12 Football Coaches Hush-Hush About Hurt Players describing how some college football coaches believe player injuries should not be discussed in detail publicly for competitive reasons and some believe the medical histories of college athletes are private matters that shouldn't be shared with the public: Coach Bowden's statement about it being "unfair" to throw KP into the BSU game is consistent with the above. First, it was an honest answer if KP was still showing effects of an injury because it certainly would have been unfair to put him in the game. Second, it was creatively non-informative from both a competitive point of view and the student athlete medical privacy issue. As far as I know, no one posting on this forum has any confirmed official word on all the details of any injury KP may have or exactly when or even if he's received full clearance to play. There are conflicting reports from fans who know people who say they know, and also conflicting reports from the media. The Chicago Tribune report, for example, says that KP has (not had) a concussion, and lists him as still questionable. Is this more accurate or less accurate than some of the theories being posted here?

You mean the ZN.o local report that Pohl is questionable because, even though he's healthier than a tea-totaling vegetarian, the coach doesn't believe he represents the Bowden Ball brand as well as the backup QB who throws lots of interceptions and loses games but better represents the Bowden Ball brand that is built on the concept of losing now and maybe winning at some undetermined point in the future, causing Bowden Ball futures to tank among speculators who rely on insider trading information from people who know people who know people?

Here's the latest semi-official report from the Chicago Tribune:

Sounds like a job for

Why would anyone connected with the Zips program want to broadcast an official statement on which Zips QB BGSU should focus on preparing to face until the last possible moment?