MDZip

Last night on David Letterman they had a dog pool jumping contest. The first contestant was from Painesville, and Letterman asked where that was. She said by Cleveland. He then responded by saying wasn't every city in Ohio by Cleveland - or Columbus - or Cincinnati. Then he added "Or occasionally Akron". So Letterman thinks we are our own city.

That may be the best thing about Caleb and his program. So we lose our leading goal scorer in each of the last two years (and arguably two of the best players in the country) and both as sophomores and yet we are still ranked #1 going into this year. That's amazing. Even for those of you who are not big soccer fans, this is the closest we have to a program that is garnering at least some national attention. The cheapest season tickets are only $60 so even if you don't go, grab up a season ticket and help the team sell out. Then you can donate them to a youth league and look even better. Show Caleb how much we appreciate him.

I think it's great. A little notoriety is nice, but I really only hope we have the same ranking at the end of the season. Don't care if we go wire to wire as long as that #1 is back at the very end of the season. If the timing works out I will head to Santa Barbara. And I am equidistant form Akron and the UNC-Wake "area". I seriously considered going to the two soccer matches against two highly rated, excellent opponents over heading up for the football game. Events sadly, however, have ruled out either, but I would have been one of the few to make the soccer choice. If I lived in Akron, though, I probably would have headed to the football game.

The out-of-towners thank you. I think its looking very good and since the grandstands are apparently a year earlier than they were supposed to be and it looks like they are easily expandable, this is a nice reward for the best athletic program at the University.

If you really regret saying something about someone on this forum, you can always go back and edit your original post. After all, it's just a sports forum. None of this really matters much in the overall history of the planet, which is less than a grain of sand in the perspective of the universe. Plus we're a grain of sand in the D1-A football universe right now. I'm hoping to at least build up to a bucket this year. I use the edit feature to make my predictions more accurate as time goes by. The feature is in the bottom right corner of the posts that you make.

Final rankings for soccer recruiting classes generally aren't posted until August right before school starts to get the final tallies and rosters for everyone. College Soccer News does a pretty good job with this. And Andy, welcome, we are a pretty supportive soccer school, but just be aware that folks are not likely to talk to you too much on here because the NCAA has regulations about contact between potential recruits and "boosters" which people on this board can be considered to be. So it's not because we're unfriendly but because we don't want you (or us) to run afoul of anything which could jeopardize your future.

I can tell you now -awful.

Technically, we beat zero (neither Can't nor EMU should count as D1 )

Now that was clever.

Bassett Definitely Gone. This came from MAC sports, that he signed with New Orleans. Whether he makes it or not, we won't be seeing him any more. I wish him luck, and I'm not sorry he's gone, although Ohio still is bringing back a lot of talent.

Pretty good article here too, which also contains this paragraph: They scrapped the tour, the documentary and set sights on hijacking the network for an unprecedented special they believe will elevate James’ brand. Only, James has never looked smaller, never more insecure and unsure of who he is and what he wants to be. He won’t look so much like Kobe Bryant and David Beckham, but rather a three-star linebacker from Shaker Heights picking Bowling Green over Can't and Ohio U. on local access television. Whew, at least they didn't use us.

I think this was discussed in another thread but for all of the folks who maintain that private/parochial schools don't recruit for athletics: It was on to St. Michaels' grade school where Peters played football, basketball and baseball. "I remember going to the C.Y.C. in downtown Canton and meeting a coach named Rey Dempsey," Peters said. "He ran a basketball program and kept track of all the good athletes in the area and tried to recruit them for Central Catholic. He sold me on going to Central and I really enjoyed my four years at the school." I don't have a problem with it, I was wish more people would acknowlegde it instead of pretending they are recruiting only for "academics". Same thing exists for college. Plenty of schools some atheletes would not qualify for other than a 4.4 40.

My daughter just got back from Ireland where she went to a big festival called Oxegen outside of Dublin. The Black Keys were there and had their name displayed inside of a big tire.

This one is pretty sobering. Over the entire country, the Zips did not appear in the most popular group even once (Can't appeared twice). The only other MAC teams not to appear were Buffalo, WMU and EMU. We have a loooooot of work to do.

OK, admittedly, that does look better, but thats not the point. The point was a quick and clever response to the situation that helped promote Zips Basketball. Well done, Dr. Z.

This is one of the better parodies I've seen on the LeBron James Facebook Page

Hmm, this could be the Bain of our existence (or at least the new coaches )

I do enjoy the game a great deal but I am also frustrated with the PK's. I have advocated a system whereby each additional overtime removes a player or two from the field (we actually used it in a youth league in the playoffs and it worked pretty well. Made for some very exciting and tense moments too). I don't think you couldn't go with less than 5 players remaining, but the last one to come off would be the goalie (say after the third five minute overtime). If the game hadn't been won by that point, I think that would pretty well insure an ending at that point.

This has been discussed on this board before, and the MAC can turn on a good performance by a quarterback. If Nicely is indeed named as All-MAC QB (which amazes me since there are a number of good MAC QB's), no way do the Zips finish in 6th place in the East. If he is all-MAC (which means his receivers will likely be making a lot of catches), I can't see any lower than third which would represent a significant improvement.

And golf must be the worlds worst sport since you try to score as little as possible.

I wasn't watching that close, but I think you're right. Maybe Penno's team was the one they beat in a close game the next year. That makes me feel a little better.

I wanted to see this movie a lot earlier, but I finally saw it. I thought it was pretty interesting, contained a lot of stuff I didn't know and even more stuff I forgot. I had forgotten, for example, that St. V. lost the state championship in the guys junior year to Kettering Alter. As an example of something I didn't know, one of the key members of that team that broke Dru and Romeo's hearts was Doug Penno.

What a classy kid. I hope he does really well there.

Would an upstart FCS team help them to lose the status? The question for me is: Would anyone go to their games? Plenty of vacant property on the East side to build a stadium, but who would want to venture into that part of town? But what do you do? Build another football stadium right in Browns Town? Try competing for fan interest in the Browns back yard. And talk about a "commuter school". I'm trying to find reasons why this would work. And I can't find any. I'm not saying they wouldn't have many hurdles, but getting a place to play probably isn't the largest of them. Ask Pitt. Or USF. Or Temple, whom I voted for because I do think its upsets the scheduling too much to have 13 teams, they should be in for all sports. They have a decent soccer team so that would help too. I understand why its helpful to have them around to help raise the MAC football profile a little, but that is only a recent occurrence, and as soon as they get good enough consistently enough, the MAC will have just been a stepping stone for them. I was going to vote for CMU, but then realized it wasn't to bring Carnegie Mellon into the league. I think we could beat them. It might be sweet to lay a heavy whipping on those Tartans That may be the dirtiest completely innocent comment I have ever seen on here.

You know you're a major player when you get recruits from all over the country year after year. Kudos to Caleb. Of all of things that Mack Rhoads did that people didn't like, we still have to thank him for this one.