Dave in Green

I give UA credit for developing an ongoing alternating home-away series with perennial mid-major power MTSU. I'm pretty sure that UA is trying to put other deals like this one together to replace some of the cream puff home games. It's not easy finding quality mid-majors willing to do this. Both sides have to want it. I also give UA credit for regularly scheduling early season tournaments with a number of major teams. Playing on neutral courts offer better opportunities to win than playing on the home floors of major teams. Like most everyone else, I'd like to see UA trade one or two cream puff home games for road games against winning power conference programs. The Zips have been slowly building up their non-conference schedule over the years and this would represent another step up. Adding it all up, I think most of us would be happy with trading a few cream puff home games for a few more quality mid-major home-away series and road games against winning power conference teams. I'd be satisfied to know that UA is diligently working to make something like that happen.

What do you find "disappointing?"

Egner had so much basketball promise, and he just slid off into nothingness on the court to the point that he couldn't cut it in D-II. But apparently he's having lots of fun in other areas of life, so it seems that basketball wasn't a high priority for him despite his obvious abilities. I wish him the best and am left to wonder what could have been.

Insanity is thinking that things you've never had any experience trying to make happen are "easy."

I guess I would question whether the same player makes the coin toss call every game or if the honor is passed around to various players as a reward for exceptional performance in a previous game, for example. If the same player (like the team captain) makes the call every game, he'd be much less likely to suddenly forget and say the wrong thing than someone with no previous experience. Players blow assignments all the time.

I've never really watched that closely prior to the start of a game. Is it actually the head coach or one of the assistants who speaks directly to the player calling the coin toss and instructs him to either elect to receive the game's initial kickoff or defer the choice to the second half? Whoever it is should not tell the captain that he wants to kick off to begin the first half. The only word that should be used is defer. Say it three times for emphasis -- if we win the coin toss, defer, defer, defer. That's the official term understood by officials to mean that you're using the coin toss win to defer your choice of receiving the ball to the beginning of the second half. Defer is not a word most of us regularly use and one that needs to be drilled into the head of the team captain or whichever player may call the coin toss.

Thanks for the update, GameChngr44. I do at least one search a day for Zeke news, and have been feeling down about the lack of anything new over the past few weeks. The most reasonable assessment of Zeke's future that I've heard was that he would need about two years of development after college to have a chance to catch on with an NBA team. Playing in Europe to start his second year of post-college development will be good for him. I've spent some time in Belgium, and it's a beautiful and friendly country. I think Zeke will enjoy his time there more than he did Poland and Taiwan.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, Dr Z can now take the next year off from posting any words on the forum. I remember once getting serious about photographing sporting events back in the days of cameras that used real film. It was fun for awhile, but I found the focus on photography taking away from my enjoyment of watching games and gave up. Hopefully Dr Z is better at multitasking than I was and can enjoy both the photography and the games as I really appreciate reliving Zips games by looking at these images.

Now I'm confused. He played for Washington State in the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 seasons, transferred to Tallahassee Community College for the 2012-2013 season where he didn't play football, and then transferred to Akron for the 2013-2014 season. So he sat out the season before last after transferring from Washington State to Tallahassee, and was immediately eligible to play for the Zips last season and this. My head hurts almost as much as getting hit by Mizell.

Looking at it from the positive side, the offense scored a lot of points even with the long period of ineffectiveness, and the defense was consistently effective throughout the game. If this season's team gets up for big games the way last season's team did against Michigan, there's good reason for hope to see a lot more intensity against PSU.

For perspective, Northern Illinois -- a MAC team with a winning pedigree that in recent years qualified to play in the BCS Orange Bowl -- drew all of 12,398 fans to see their team beat up on Presbyterian (55-3) on the same Thursday night as the Zips drew 9,104 and the Chicago Bears were playing the Cleveland Browns.

Right, the eternal question about whether the news chicken or the news egg came first. Is news defined by those who report it or those who consume it? One person's garbage is another's treasure, and everyone believes that what they are interested in should take priority over what others are interested in. I spent 40 years in that business and have a pretty fair understanding about how it works.

Reality check time. There's nothing GT, EA or any other reporter can do about what their editors assign them to write and elect to publish. As for the PD's coverage, MAC headquarters is in Cleveland. It's local business coverage for the PD. Even with all the PD's MAC coverage, I don't see more stories published specifically about the Zips from EA than from GT. Whatever gets printed in either newspaper or on either of their websites is purely a business decision. Each looks to see how many potential additional readers they can attract, and they invest in the stories with the biggest readership return. If a large chunk of the general public was hot for more Zips sports news, good business sense would dictate more coverage. The number of people who attend Zips games and the number of regular posters on ZN.o are two small snapshots of how deep local interest runs. If Zips teams can win more games and gain more rabid fans, more news coverage will surely follow.

gozips19, you don't know how lucky you are. Hilltopper is my brother-in-law and lives two blocks away. We talk almost every day. He shared more info with you about the golf outing than he shared with me. What exactly are you complaining about?

It's always worth noting when the court jester takes time out from his normal duties to exhibit the fundamental mathematical skills to add a series of numbers, divide by the appropriate number and cite an accurate average. It may be coincidental that it occurred within hours of Northern California's biggest earthquake in a quarter of a century.

If no one picked up even the slightest thing about Zips basketball worth sharing, then I guess the Zips football golf outing wins this year's award for most informative.

Xavier, Dayton, Cincinnati, tOSU -- all those southern Ohio teams get kind of blurred together in my mind after a little too much wine with dinner. Give me credit for correctly associating Brian with X in all of my previous posts on the subject.

Funny, Dayton was the school that told Brian they no longer needed him as a player, which is how he ended up transferring to UA.

Now that's something I'd pay extra to witness. Come to think of it, if instead of footballs the opposing QBs were throwing full beer bottles, I'd bet on you to intercept every one thrown your way and be a unanimous selection to the All America Team. But seriously I really appreciate your passion for Zips football and the great reports that you, JZ84 and others have been posting. Summer's winding down, it's almost fall and I'm ready for some real football. Go Zips!

The PSU game is part of the Charleston Classic Tournament that's advertised as a "non-bracketed game" because it's being played at PSU instead of in Charleston.

If LeBron wants his camp back in Akron, he can make it happen.

Let's cut through the fog of variables and get to a simple truth: All other things being equal, a newer, fan-friendlier facility by itself will draw more fans in the same way that a team winning more games with more exciting play will by itself draw more fans. It's all about the total fan experience. If you have a team that's playing a more exciting brand of ball and winning more games in a nice, new arena, you get a double-positive attendance hit.

Moving a few members of the media to less desirable seats in order to give a few fans better seats has way more potential downside than upside.

That's correct. State law requires that sales taxes can only be implemented in .25% increments. The pressing need was funding for the county jail and 911 and emergency radio system. But the .25% increase would generate more money than required for those specific issues. I guess there was a mistaken belief that using the extra money to fund a downtown arena would be considered by voters to be a worthy use for the extra funds, and public feedback showed that was not the case. Under the revised plan the balance will go into the county's general fund, 70% of which is spent on county public safety and criminal justice.

Good math on the Z-Fund, Skip. That's another dose of financial reality that's a real bucket of cold water in the face. It's much more fun to look at something in the abstract as opposed to realistically. When you get down to the hard nuts and bolts of analyzing all the realistic options of financing a $50 million+ arena, it's pretty intimidating. I spent a few years of my professional career at a big corporation interacting with a small company that solicited sponsorships, including naming rights. I'm by no means an expert on the subject, but I did get a pretty good introduction to the realities of trying to sell multimillion dollar sponsorships. It's a tough, tough business. That's where I learned firsthand that naming rights for arenas and stadiums represent only a fraction of the cost of actually building the facility. Even if Akron and/or UA landed a name sponsor in advance for a proposed arena, they'd still have to find a way to finance most of the cost of construction. It's going to take a lot of hard work and some good luck to get a new arena built in Akron, whether on or off campus.