Big Zip

Why not try something that is gaining more ane more popularity with businesses and governments around the world....a notion called the nudge. For those unfamiliar with the notion of the nudge the idea is to make people opt out instead of making people opt in. To make someone opt in requires much more than to make people opt out. I know some people will find this wrong and not agree, but what if you put a check box on your registration or tuition each semester or year that said if you do not want to be part of the Ak-Rowdies (with maybe a brief description) check this box...you will be charged $10 for membership if you do not check this box or something to that effect. Everyone who then signs up should receive some sort of welcome letter there Ak-Rowdies t-shirt, be on a mailing/e-mailing list and be targeted for athletic attendance. Act like this is just what we do at Akron you are this when you go to school here. The freshman won't know better and you will begin creating what you are seaking. Send them tickets in the mail -- not guaranteeing them seats, but a ticket to get in until things are full. Send them magnetic schedules or something. Keep in contact with them get sponsors to supplement the fee and use all the money to supply them with information and paraphenelia. There are many business examples of this type of strategy working....one of my favorites (agree or disagree) is the country of Austria who makes people opt out of organ donation. They have a 99% poplution of participation in organ donation. As a transplant recipient this obviously has a special place for me and it may seem extreme, but it is obvious it works when you look at countries like the US and Germnay that make you opt in where there participation rate is 12%.

Funny how Dambrodt was actually talking about his team not Can't's team when he was interviewed. This team is good when they want to play and when they don't they suck. What an absolute embarrassment...glad I didn't waste my time going to Can't for the game.

WOW -- the Zips don't even look like they want to be out on the floor. Playing lazy not looking for the extra pass and taking bad shots then missing. Don't look like a team at all -- group of individuals.

GP1 if your explanation is correct you'll need to explain Boise State and Utah to me.I'll even do you one better the worst thing to happen to tOSU recently was getting Terrel Pryor in the recruiting wars -- he of the No. 1 ranked high school football player status. While I don't disagree their are problems with the MAC your explanation for what is wrong is way off the mark. I think it is a shame what the BCS did this year in pitting TCU against Boise State instead of playing TCU against Florida and Boise State against Cincy. College Football is scared to death about those games. When Boise State beat Oklahoma it was embarrassing for the BCS and then when Utah beat Alabama it happened again they were going to be sure it didn't happen a third and fourth time this year.

And yet he really only had three interceptions because the only count the interceptions that are caught by the opposing team in bounds. Where are you all getting four? If you are going to count dropped INTs you better count dropped passes. I actually though Charlie looked as good as I'd seen him in the pros, but still not good enough. His receivers were terrible though and the he got very little help from them especially on the Brandon McDonald INT where the WR just stopped running his route.I agree with GP1 in that I think he has an opportunity to be a back-up in this league for a long time. I would find it really funny if Holmgren decided the same thing and he brought him back to Cleveland to be a back-up and help teach the West Coast Offense to the remaining QBs.

Please D'Orazio was a one man show Cuyahoga Heights if you could stop him you could stop them. He did play safety all season and was pretty darn good at that position when I saw him a few times this year. I'm still looking forward to watchin D'Orazio play defense for the Zips.

As mentioned here earlier....Urban Meyer came from a lesser position at Notre Dame and I think he's done well. I'm sure there are plenty of others who haven't had success, but I'll definitely reserve judgement on this hire. Everything I've read about him points to him being a solid hire. Just read through his twitter account too...nothing earth shattering, but it does some to point to him being solid (not that I would expect anything else). According to TW he didn't keep in contact with Rob after leaving Wisconsin so perhaps this isn't the buddy hire he is being painted as. On the other side this is TW putting his career in the hands of Rob with this hire and that must say something. Mike Thomas didn't need to hit a homerun with the football coash he hit it in other areas....those areas seem to be going fine now and this is TW's career move. Good luck Rob! ITZ I'm sorry to hear you are going to stop supporting your alma mater because you disagree with this hire. For that I hope Rob is extremely successfull to watch the haters like you eat crow. From the responses on this board it seems as if he is definitely going to be an underdog.Finally, where exactly do you expect someone to get their first head coaching experience? Face it our conference is one step up from the FCS conference...it might as well be an FCS conference the way some of these schools play. This isn't the SEC, Big Ten, Big East etc. As much as you'd like it to be -- it just isn't.

Looks like CMU's coach Butch Jones is headed to Marshall -- at least those are the rumors swirling so we're now competing with another MAC team for a coach.Hopefully TW jump start will help him.

The development office is working hard to secure funding for the stadium.These pictures have been up at O-Sports offices for a long time. These are nothing new. If you are ever DT Cleveland walk into the Penton Media building their offices are on the first floor and they have all the work design work they've done posted in the window. This stuff is posted there.

The lack of execution can be attributed to coaching, the speed is something we were sorely lacking. Temple was the fastest team I've seen us play against all year.Some of the things that I am amazed by are --- we played at beat Temple when they were in the Big East now they are recruiting with the MAC albatross hanging around their neck and they recruit better and completely cleaned our clock...how does that happen? Temple has possibly the worst campus location of any school in the MAC (have you been to Temple) yeah it is in Philly, but is in a part of Philly where you should be afraid to go out at night. All this brings us back to Al Golden...the guy must be a genius. When are we going to hire our Al Golden, Urban Meyer, Brian Kelly etc. There are no excuses for this school any longer they need to put the money into the coaching and up their standards.

Isn't the more interesting point about Brian Kelly and his rise that there are other MAC schools that seem to get this hiring thing right? Urban Meyer, Brian Kelly and I'm sure many many more -- sadly none of them (head coaches) have Akron on their resume. I certainly hope we can get this right the next time.

All I want to know is where is our BigTen Championship Banner....Penn State finished the season in first at 3-1 and we were 5-0 in the BigTen. If Penn State were forced to count there loss to us they'd be 3-2. I hope someone brings a home made banner to the tournament games.

Cap'n are you suggesting there will be 15,000 Akron fans there? I'm guessing the attendance for this one is going to be 25,000 and I'm guessing the flushes are going to bring a pretty large contingent. The only thing that is going to bring home a Zips win is a controlled running and passing game. A time eating offensive game plan to take the pressure off the defense. The defense played well last week through three quarters and if they can actually get some rest this week we could see a win.

i tried to pull it up on DirecTV but the game said Akron/Buffalo and had the best damn sports show on.

Statistically I think Igor has always been better than Bronko, but for some reason JD has decided to split the duties.

I was impressed by Nicely's poise. He made some nice throws, but had some plays where he seemed a little too amped up. Some of his throws were way off the mark. With that in mind, I really enjoyed watching him and am happy to have the chance to watch him finish out the year. I hope Rodgers can find a spot on this team -- maybe a slot receiver. He does run the ball well.

GP1 do you think it has nothing to do with a fascination that JD has about not burning Nicely's redshirt? You get the award for being the most condescending person on this board! There isn't a person here who would miss you if you would just leave and go away. I don't even think you're a Zips fan.

Really....y'all are some real dreamers if you think this team is going to beat the Chips. I'm thinking the real question is can LeFevour throw for 600 yards? Our 10 yard cushion pass defense will be picked apart all day long by LeFevour -- I'm not sure if they'll even run the ball. I'm putting the score at 48-10 with our seven coming in garbage time. I've got no faith in Rodgers and the defensive backfield couldn't cover anyone last week against an average at best QB.

I had an opportunity to talk with the mounted summit county sheriff's officers. I didn't realize it until I spoke with them that those were there own horses. I agree -- I like having them around for tailgating.

We were in the lot at the corner of Spicer and Carroll. Some agents came by and ticketed underage drinkers at the fraternity house, but I too talked with the mounted Summit County sherrifs with a beer in my hand and no problem at all. Second week there too with no problems.

One more thing...as it has been said here before this is the same Indiana team that beat Eastern Kentucky 19-13 at home and WMU 23-19 home. They came to our house and beat us like a drum....are you freaking kidding me. Are you telling me we are that much worse than both EKU and WMU?

So just to check if my sight line was terrible I looked up size of the o-lines and d-lines and guess what you were right GP1 they outweighed us on the o-line by 7 lbs. You must have amazing eyes to be able to see that small of a difference when it is spread across 5 players. The d-line was a little be more, but I don't believe the weight difference was significant enough. Indiana -- o-line6'5 318; 6'8 331; 6'5 311; 6'6 293; 6'2 285 -- 1,538 totalAkron -- o-line6'5 305; 6'5 305; 6'3 310; 6'4 310; 6'3 295 -- 1,525 totalIndiana - d-line6'3 284; 6'3 259; 6'3 282; 6'2 306 -- average 282.75Akron - d-line6'1 280; 6'3 275; 6'4 290 -- average 281This game was first lost in the trenches -- Akron was manhandled in the trenches. Everytime Indiana snapped the ball the o-line had our d-line back a yard or two -- thus equating to yards via running plays almost every down. What I think this gets at is something we've all been talking about on here for years (including GP1) this terrible 3-3-5 defense. I'll go one further from Saturday's game - the defensive play calling. Akron plays like they are on there heels the whole game. The defensive backs play 10 yards off the wide receiver every play -- there was no reason to go long when there was a ten-yard cushion on every play. When we did send some sort of blitz (more than 3 people) we were able to get pressure on the quarterback.I've been a supporter of Jacq on this board and if yesterday's game is any indication of what you get in Rogers I say burn Nicely's redshirt now. I hope a full week of practices as the no. 1 qb helps him. I did hear from a friend that Jacq did something really bad and not to expect him back. I have no idea what he did and my friend said he wasn't comfortable telling me, but apparently it was pretty bad. I say time to move on and try to salvage this season. I'm struggling to find a way for this team to go .500. I'm just not seeing it. I suspect next week against CMU to be worse than this week. I'm already wondering if 30,000 seats is too many for the pathetic Akron fan base. I for one was disappointed with the crowd yesterday and can't imagine this team sees more than the 18,000 from yesterday for the remaining games against teams not named Can't. Finally, I'm afraid JD is just proving year in and year out he just isn't the guy to take us to the next level.

This week it was exactly 2 hours and 15 minutes prior to kickoff.

I'm not exactly sure, but my daughter and there last week and I felt like it was about 2 to 2 1/2 hours prior to kick-off. I'll tailgate right by there so I'll actually look at my watch today if nobody comes up with an answer.

I have always support CJ when others on this board didn't, but this is absolutely unacceptable. I can't see him coming back to the team after this and I'm looking forward to Rogers being in there on a longer leash so he can relax and not press. C'mon Matt beat the Big11.