Big Zip

From what I understand the ZipCard is quite expensive for the business user. I understand what you mean when you say that you don't want to spend cash when you have money on your card, but businesses have to way project the amount of business they potentially will gain versus what they lose in not having it. It sound like you still go to Arby's and Swensons so I'm guessing they haven't lost you as a customer and thus may have made a smart decision. The larger the expense the smaller their margins.

I have to agree on Russo's and I've always enjoyed a nice drink and meal at Crave. If steak is of your liking I would recommend Ken Stewart's Lodge in Bath...although some may suggest the Diamond Grille or even Ken Stewart's in West Akron. Another excellent choice in Cuyahoga Falls is Moe's. I live as far north in Summit County as you can go because my wife and I prefer to live in NE Ohio so we can take in both the Cleveland and Akron sites. I would recommend heading up to Cleveland this weekend and would start at the West Side Market (one of the oldest markets of its kind in the US) and you can also check out the Great Lakes Brewery (on Whiskey Island they are actually hosting the Burning River Festival this weekend). You've also got a lot of great restaurants up there too. I'd recommend checking out Momocho in Ohio City, Lolita in Tremont or the Taphouse in Tremont. I could go on, but you get the picture. Like I said you are better off thinking about it as NE Ohio so you have a larger job market to tap into and a larger fun factor.

Hardly anything is open past 8 p.m.? The Country Manhole was a terrible restaurant and down right gross. I would much rather eat at McDonald's than that shit hole.

Skip-Zip I think there may be on other factor in play this year. The World Cup exposure for soccer certainly can't hurt the sport and I've appreciated reading Nanchoff's pieces in the Plain Dealer (complete with a profile pick of Nanchoff in his Akron gear). I also believe the people that did attend last year may have found that they really appreciated watching the sport played well locally. I know the final two games of the tournament were pretty exciting to watch for me and I'll attend more games this year. When I hear people talking about the World Cup I tend to find a way to chime in about top collegiate soccer being played near by. I would love to see the soccer program advertise locally on the next US game. Something that could potentially pull in more local fans that still aren't aware. There is also no reason to not start marketing the program to those local pubs/eateries that show ESL on weekend mornings for die hards. I don't suspect marketing will actually do anything because they never seem to do, but I do believe there are things that have lined up that should help attendance significantly. I feel like things have been good in the past, but there seems to be momentum now....momentum can go a long way.

I appreciate the responses. I'm going to send my check in, but I'm starting to wonder when a person just gives up? I've given up on the Indians....I even lowered my cable package so I wasn't paying for STO because I don't want to support the Dolans. This teams has been so bad and I want them at the very least to give me a reason to not stop rooting for them. I'm not saying I am prepared to become an apathetic fan like the majority of Akron alums, but am I really the stupid one for paying to see the crap they put on the field every year? GP1 I am still enjoying my day when I go to the games, but the funny thing is it has little to do with the product on the field and more to do with the tailgate. I can drink beer, grill and play corn hole at my house though....

So I have yet to send in my check for my tickets. As we continue to get small bits of information about the football program (texting incident, now the football outing going away) it appears the program has a general lack of interest in the fans. I've also heard from some others closer to the source than I that the new regime isn't the most enjoyable group to work with. It all makes it harder to write the check....though I most likely will. Has everyone on here sent there checks in already? Am I the last hold out looking at the 6/19 deadline as i approaches? Should I be concerned that we've went from a guy I wasn't sure could do the job, to a group I can't even form an opinion about.

If you look at the Disgtinguided Alumni Awards List or the Simonetti Business Awards you can find a lot of these individuals. John Costello is one of the more interesting people I've met to graduate from Akron. He was the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Sears, the CEO of MVP.com (Michael Jordan, John Elway, and Wayne Gretzky's failed online sports product site that was sold to Dick's), CEO of AutoNation, CMO for Home Depot, CMO for Pay By Touch, and is now the CMO for Dunkin Donuts. Sandy Pianalto is the Presidnet of the Federal Reserve Cleveland and her sister Antonella Pianalto is the VP of Gov't Affairs for American Express (or was)....Andy Platt is the Chief Technology Officer at Smuckers and was one of the CTO's of the year as named by Oracle last year. Michael Berthelot is former CEO of Trans Technology and appears now to just sit on Boards for companies. Curt King is the SVP Publicity, Marketing & Corporate Communication at NBC Universal and if I remember right his wife is a form Rose Bowl Parade Queen. If you look into it you might be surprised how many people are out there with Akron ties.

The real question is .... will the Info have the crumbling cement in the game too?

Putting the game in the middle of the state is not a bad idea, but housing it in the same location for 20 years is certainly not the right answer. I think it should actually rotate between the north and south for three year periods. I don't think OSU is the right though. I've been to the state championship game and seen the empty seats. Can you imagine how many empty seats there would be at 100,000 seat stadium?

Funny that isn't the conversation was having with me last week....the neighbor whose son has recently made the decision to go to Akron after touring Can't State, Ohio Northern, Ohio State and Toledo along with Akron. Each campus was amazingly disappointing and felt old and broken down. His depiction of the parents tour of Ohio State dorms was the best...he told me they showed them a dorm with shower curtains for closet doors, no security for your stuff, and the best was when they told him the dorms didn't have air conditioning was because they didn't need it. He pointed out he lived 2 hours north and he needs air conditioning before the end of the school year and the tour guide actually told him the students don't complain.

According to Elton we are expecting another guard...one of the 6-6 variety Quincy Diggs from The University of New Orleans....apparently their Div 1 basketball program is going away.

Word is the MAC has landed its second top 50 recruit as CMU's Coach Ziegler has landed his son...the no. 26 ranked player in the country. Well Zeke's standing as the highest ranked MAC recruite was short lived. This certainly makes CMU a perenial contender for the next four years....6'5 195 was recruited by UCLA, Arizona and others

Can't predict anything at this point....I certainly haven't been impressed with any of the information leaking out or being reported about him and his staff at this point. Funny thing is the past coaching staffs have been better at print and things were worse on the field so maybe this is a good sign. I'll be at the Spring Game next week to see what the team has learned.

Huggins watched a University build a high school gym for his up and coming basketball team -- he saw what Guzetta thought of college athletics (in particular men's basketball) and he say f-off. I don't blame him...the school then committed more to their football team by going out and hiring Faust and ditching a guy like Dennison and what was his choice. The school showed him that it didn't value basketball and would ditch anyone at the drop of a hat..

KD refuses to have any expectations of his team in general accept to compete. He is already planting the excuses for next year with the we need to Zeke to come along we'll go as far as him. He's always talking about the MAC is only getting one bid it doesn't matter what we do as long as we win the tournament. He needs to demand more from his players. He does it from a character perspective but it doesn't seem to go much further...when i listen to the radio program and the post game interviews that is simply what I hear time and again.

I'm going to go on the record and say this team doesn't win 20 games next year. I just can't see it happening with C McKnight and J Conyers gone this team is going to take a serious hit. B McKnight who at one time early on looked like he would be a great player here has not developed at all and IMHO has regressed. Nik plays to sporadic for me and with little to no control....he was terrible in the tournament when we really could have used him. The guard play will stay the same, but we are certainly going to be needing Steward to take a step forward next year. Zeke will hopefully be a year better, but watching players not get better year in and year out doesn't provide much promise to me. I had a coach with me at the MAC Championship game and he commented a few times about the offense Akron ran and how he didn't like it at all. I'm not a coach, but to me it hardly looks like they run an offense at all. I sure hope this team works hard to leverage Zeke next year and the inside out game.

Z.I.P. you beat me to it. Listen those of you who have these lofty expectations of the MAC and what it is need to come down a peg. The Horizon has passed us up in basketball and has a perennial power in Butler....we might want to quit looking at Gonzaga to emulate and look at Butler. This UWGB team that nobody has interest in just finished the year for our Zips and beat the top two teams in the conference this year so I'm guessing if there third best team beats the top two we're probably much worse than the Horizon than even I thought. I hope the commissioner takes notice of what is going on and pulls the athletic directors together and gets them to pull their collective heads out of their asses.

Obviously the team didn't care either...what an embarrassment...next time just decline if this what we're going to get.

Interesting when you look at this bracket it is a true mid major tourney and a list of teams we should be scheduling for our regular season schedule instead of Mount Union and Malone. Throw in a few big name games and you'd have a nice looking schedule. It is interesting how KD doesn't see playing the big boys as a selling point. He didn't shy away from playing the best HS teams in the country when he was at St. V yet he's afraid to schedule teams at Akron because they won't come to our dump of a HS gym.

XU I think your point is valid. I think there are times his rhetoric around it doesn't matter who we play this conference is getting one bid or we need to win the tournament to make the NCAA tournament is self defeating and has the potential to impact the players minds. Coach says it doesn't matter if we lose we weren't going anywhere if we didn't win the MAC Championship tournament. Elton had an interesting take in today's paper about the MAC cutting down on conference games to free teams up to schedule more games with quality opponents. He argues for 11 games and then scheduling OCC. I would love to see that happen. Finally, KD continues to be upset with attendance at the JAR. Well people ain't going to get excited about coming to watch crap teams at the jar. Guess what I'd rather see us playing good teams on the road then have an opportunity to see these weak schools at the MAC. Here's to a better OCC next year.

Our defense continues to be exploited and it will cost us the MAC Championship if changes aren't made today. The constant switching is allowing the opposition to find a match up they can exploit and then do it. Yesterday we had what should have been a classic match-up POY versus Defensive POY...why switch off throughout the game. Jimmy's job 1 yesterday should have been to shut down Kool. The day before it should have been to shut down Medlock. Today it should be to shut down Basset....I love Jimmy's all around game, but someone needs to check a guy who can almost single handedly beat us. Yesterday's game was driving me nuts. The funny thing about this is B McKnight played down the stretch and I can only imagine because he can hit a foul show if fouled and play defense otherwise it would have been Zeke....B McKnight couldn't hit a shot to save his life. So obviously this decisions are being made, but why aren't they being to stop the number 1 player?I've got 12 going tonight and can't wait for the game. I think this match up puts luckiest team in the tournament versus the hottest team in the tournament.....the problem with that is someone is either going to run out of luck or cool off. I think it is easier to run out of luck than to cool off when your hottness is based off of talent. I think the answer is stifling defense.Go Zips!

OSU is probably going to be a 1 seed at worst a 2 seed this guy is nuts. If you think we were out athleted by Can't and Medlock scored 42 on us....what do you think Ohio State would do and how much do you think Evan Turner would score on us? I think this would not be good for us at all.

I know Mentor hasn't turned out to be a good place for us too recruit in football, but the head basketball coach's son is Cole Krizanic reminds me of Dru Joyce. Everything I've heard about him sounds like Dru sounded in HS. Earlier this year he put up 42 and in their last playoff game he had 22 points and 13 assits in a 115 - 50 blow out. I've read some stuff on the Mentor team and he sounds like a real gym rat. He's only 5'11" and 160 according to what I've found, but I think Dru was roughly that same height and weighed less when we recruited him. He's a coaches son and serves as the coach on the floor for the Mentor team of undersized over achievers. I'm hoping to get a chance to see them play next week if they are still alive. I don't know if he deserves a scholarship in 2011, but Dru didn't show up here on scholarship either....perhaps we can convince him to walk on if he isn't scholarship material.

Dorazio hurt his shoulder (separation I believe) he throws with and will go or has gone under the knife soon. Hope he recovers fast and it isn't anything too bad. I'm guessing this puts him at a red shirt this year if he wasn't there already.

I'm hopeful that the loss to Can't doesn't hurt this team more than just the loss. I'm actually afraid this team is defeated in the way they played and basically weren't even in the game against Can't and it will lead to a one and done tournament. I just don't feel good about the tournament at all.