Dave in Green

Read my post more carefully. In addition to saying no high majors will agree to come to Akron, I also said that not many good mid-majors will agree to come to Akron. Coach Dambrot told me of one specific good mid-major who some on this forum would consider easy to schedule a home and away series with because they previously played at the JAR, but now absolutely refuses to come to Akron and will only play the Zips at their place. He won't do that because he recruits against this team and it would send the wrong message to recruits. Coach Dambrot typically has a fairly tough OOC road schedule and wants to offset that with a mix of different strength OOC home games each season. Middle Tennessee and Marshall are the two strongest this season. UMBC, Bryant, Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Western Illinois, Blufton and Coppin State are lesser challenges. But they fit with his philosophy of scheduling less tough OOC opponents in seasons when less experienced underclassmen will be playing significant minutes for the Zips. As for A-10, Horizon and MVC teams complaining that they can't get home and away series with quality opponents, you'd need to ask each one of them if they'd do it with UA. The Zips coaching staff has already spoken with some of them and gotten turned down.

This raises fundamental questions of how the MAC operates as a conference. Do member institutions get a vote on major decisions affecting them or do conference executives have dictatorial powers to conduct business without oversight? If the institutions vote, how can they do so intelligently without having access to the details of what they're voting on? Approving a contract as far-ranging as this one would first require reading the details in the contract. If member institutions have not had access to the contract, then they have put their fate in the hands of those who run the MAC and no longer have control of their own destinies. Any journalist who isn't intrigued by getting answers to these questions probably belongs in another profession.

True, and lack of relevant knowledge almost never leads to wisdom.

Shame on me, I fell for whatever passes as the Ianello charm and defended him in the early going as a reasonable gamble for UA. I think what I fell for was that he was a great political animal. Ianello was elected by his fellow coaches to the board of trustees of the American Football Coaches Association, which formulates policy and provides direction for the AFCA. He was the only assistant coach on the board of trustees, and also chaired the AFCA's assistant coaches committee and was the general chairman of the AFCA's all-division assistant coaches committee. He was well thought of by his fellow coaches for these political positions. With that background, I can see where he could dazzle ADs, many of whom are also by nature political animals. Unfortunately, none of that translated to the real world of football coaching. The abject failure at UA totally exposed his coaching weaknesses, and only fellow failure Weis bailed him out. The now well-documented failure as receivers coach at KU was the final blow as even Weis finally gave up on him before Weis himself was flushed. Some people are masters at self-promotion, and there's never a shortage of buyers. I frequently give myself a swift kick in the butt to remind myself that I went way too far in trying to defend Ianello's selection against what I thought were some premature and unfair criticisms from some on ZN.o. It didn't take too long before I realized that they were right and I was wrong. Coaches need to be evaluated exclusively on their coaching ability without consideration for their political achievements.

Hilltopper has been telling me all about Jimmal for years now, and it was a real pleasure to finally meet him. What a great personality he has. He's the kind of person you could talk with for hours because he has so many interesting stories. For those who'd like to take a little nostalgia trip, here's the original 1996 AP story of Jimmal's performance in the triple overtime game against #17 Xavier.

Good point about being a rim defender. His Twitter handle, #blockit, is a pretty good clue about where his priorities are. Despite being only 6-6 last season, he was one of the leading shot blockers in Texas HS play, averaging nearly 6 blocks per game. Emmanuel was recognized in the Adidas Gauntlet Dallas as one of the Top Rebounders, right behind Cleveland's Carlton Bragg. The Zips tried to recruit the 5-star Bragg, but so have all the top schools in the country (Kentucky, Kansas, etc.). High majors land all the established, polished big men, and schools like UA are left to find the unpolished gems that have the potential to develop into something special. Here's another description of Emmanuel from the Adidas Gauntlet:

Amazingly similar to Peter Agba -- Nigerian heritage, undersized PF playing C in HS, hard worker, strong rebounder, started playing basketball at a late age and has been developing rapidly, under the radar with top programs. Looks like the Zips have just doubled their odds of having a player to fill the big hole that Tree will leave after this season. Video of Antino to Emmanuel here.

Name some exciting opponents who would agree to play the Zips at the JAR. Coach Dambrot is not opposed to scheduling home and away series with quality programs like Middle Tennessee. Not many good mid-majors will agree to come to Akron. No high majors will agree to come to Akron.

I finally had a chance to talk with Coach Dambrot about this at some length and get his philosophy on scheduling. Calling up a specific school like North Carolina or Kansas and trying to schedule a game in the next year or two wouldn't be so easy because they tend to schedule games further in advance. But it's true that it wouldn't be too difficult to arrange marquee road games against different big-name schools if you called a number of them and tried to schedule several years in advance. But that's not Coach Dambrot's scheduling philosophy, so it's not likely to happen no matter how much some fans might want it. His scheduling philosophy includes playing some high majors, but it's based on what he thinks his current players have a reasonable chance of winning. For example, in a season like this one where the Zips may be relying more on unproven underclassmen, he'd likely schedule a little less tough than when he had a proven veteran team. The type of tournaments the Zips have been entering in recent years offer opportunities to play high majors on neutral courts where the Zips have a better chance of winning. The disagreements we fans have about the Zips scheduling is not unique. The same discussions go on within the Zips coaching staff. They all have different opinions on OOC scheduling. Coach Dambrot considers all of the different opinions before making his final scheduling decisions. He doesn't take these decisions lightly. He's looked at all the same data we fans have and more. He's thoroughly analyzed what other schools with similar resources and similar talent levels have tried and what they've accomplished. He understands why some fans disagree with his philosophy and that all coaching decisions are debatable, but sincerely believes that what he's doing is the right thing for UA.

Hilltopper and I were sitting through a relative's wedding ceremony conveniently scheduled right on top of this game. We sneaked as many quick peeks at our smartphones as we could under the disapproving eyes of our spouses. I'm sure that Hilltopper appreciates seeing these nice images as much as I do.

Bottom line appears to be that the big MAC-ESPN media deal was built around MAC schools producing their own media coverage for ESPN3 when only 3 MAC schools were prepared to produce media coverage quality acceptable to ESPN. Buffalo, for example, brags that all their home basketball games this season will be broadcast live on ESPN3 -- a nice recruiting advantage over the Zips and other MAC East teams. It appears that the money that ESPN is paying the MAC may largely be the money that ESPN saves by not having to produce their own media coverage. No wonder the contract is locked up in a vault where no one can see the details except the deal-cutters who make the big salaries. I'm sure that GP1 will have some colorful comments to make about this latest abomination.

Coach Bowden deserves all the credit he gets on this forum. I'd just like to see Coach Amato's name mentioned more often. The Zips defense held high-scoring Pitt to just 10 points, which no one in their wildest dreams saw coming. As great an overall job Coach Bowden is doing with the whole team, Coach Amato should get a ton of credit for what he's done with the Zips defense. I hope he plans to continue coaching until he's at least 75.

Actually, Ianello's career at KU ended several months before Weis was canned. The following was published on July 26 in The Wichita Eagle: A few weeks ago jayhawkblog.com published a piece explaining how KU's receivers had suffered under Ianello's coaching with a link (included below) to a more detailed evaluation of what KU's receivers were not being taught: As if Zips fans needed further proof of Ianello's lack of coaching ability, the evidence just keeps pouring in. In the end Ianello couldn't even keep a job with Weis, who holds the #1 position in DJ Gallo's list of the BCS era's 10 Worst Head Coach Hires In College Football (Ianello comes in at #8).

I absolutely agree with all those who've pointed out that it doesn't really matter which QB fans trust more to lead the team to more wins. If we trust Coach Bowden to run the team he'll make the best choice for all of us.

Right, bold predictions open one up to high praise or raspberries, depending on the unpredictable nature of whether everything goes right or everything goes wrong. Anyone who can accept both is OK in my book.

Do you think that Wal-Mart is among the very best?

Yeah, at some point after my teenage years I found that balls can be pretty unreliable in guiding predictions. But I really didn't mean to question your balls or your knowledge of football. I believe you are more astute about the technical aspects of football than the average bear, and I do pay attention to your analyses. I think if you'd ignored your balls and looked at this a little more analytically you'd have concluded that the Zips had a realistic chance of outperforming Pitt if everything went right.

Only the very best schools attract fans who didn't attend them. UA is making progress on this front. This is good.

I just don't know what to believe anymore now that GP1's Zips football predictions have proven so unreliable.

To be fair to Zipgrad01, we really know little about Peter. We've watched a couple of short videos and read a couple of brief reports. He doesn't appear to be on the radar of any big name teams. For those with generally pessimistic views of Zips basketball it's easy to jump to the conclusion that there's not much there. Those who think more optimistically might be considering that the Zips coaches have scouted Peter pretty thoroughly and think they've found a hidden gem flying under the radar. In the past the coaching staff has had some hits and some misses with players like this from both inside and outside Ohio. I've been overly optimistic about some players who didn't pan out, so I'll take the cautiously optimistic approach with Peter. He seems to have some really good traits that could blossom into something special. But players like this sometimes flatten out and never develop. No one really knows for sure.

So how will undersized 6-6 PF Peter Agba's rebounding stand up against bigger D1 college players? Here's a brief review of how he performed in the Big Shots Myrtle Beach Tournament in July against Team Loaded, whose future D1 college bigs drew scouts from Indiana, NC State, Kansas, Virginia Tech and Cincinnati:

Obviously Quickzips saw something in the video that Zipgrad01 didn't. Peter is currently ranked #22 among all 2015 class HS players in North Carolina and had several offers from Southern Conference and Big South teams, so apparently he's fooling a lot of people that he's a promising D1 college player. He's actually playing out of position in HS, filling in at center as he's the strongest player on the team. He regularly outrebounds taller players and thrives on playing through contact. He's still raw and it's a little bit of a gamble on how far he will develop in college. But Coach Dambrot must have seen a lot of potential in Peter as UA was the first college team to give him an offer more than a year ago.

Just the opposite of a long read. Lots and lots of graph pairs with similar curves for totally unrelated subjects. Great light entertainment.

Fun read and a good point. There are millions and millions of graphs measuring millions and millions of different things. Random chance will cause many unrelated different things to produce similar graphs. Showing correlation is as easy as matching graphs, for which there's probably an app. Proving causation can require a lot of work.

Good speech. I agree with a lot of what he says and hope he can deliver. I especially like this part that immediately follows the quote above: