zipboy

From what I remember hearing in an interview with maybe Joe Dunn and Rick McFadde?16 home games next year which should mean 8 non conference gamesHome games vs Niagara, Valpo, UIC, Rhode Island, bracketbuster probably. That leaves a couple games to buyAway games - I thought he mentioned Wyoming, I think Canisius is a return game as well

Impressive which reminds me of one thing. In the MAC tourney, the AK Rowdies were given seats behind the Akron bench which was fantastic. Every other team this year and in years past including Akron put their students either in the upper deck or behind the basket for the tourney. They definitely made the atmosphere better and louder behind the bench and deserved it for being at all the game this year. Sometimes I scratch my head at our administration, but that was a good move.

Bring back 2 wins everybody!

Unlike basketball, the easier the schedule in football the better. Win 7-8 games and get a bowl game. I used to be anti Div 1-AA but everyone else is doing it now and by having Morehead St be the home opener followed up with Indiana and Can't at some point, we should be guaranteed 3 crowds of at least 25K.

If I was the new MAC Commissioner1. Pay for performance. If you make a bowl game, no need to share with the rest of the league. A league with 12 mediocre teams is worse than a league with 3 studs and 9 horrible teams. Basketball, whoever goes to the Big Dance, keeps the whole pie. 2. If you don't play at least so many home games in basketball, you get fined. If your RPI is worse than 300, you owe 10% of gate receipts to the teams who end the year with the highest RPI.3. Is it feasible to be solid in both football and basketball? I hope so but I don't know the answer to that. If not, decide which sport to invest as little as possible in.4. Each year redesign the league based off competitiveness. In basketball take the top 6 and have them play each other 3 times, with 1 game against 3 of the other 6 teams for an 18 game conference schedule. This keeps the RPI high for the better teams. In football, limit how many good teams play each other so that you have the best chance to have as many teams bowl eligible as possible.5. Put all games on the internet for free like the Horizon. The more people who see you and care, the better.

Good luck to the guy but my 2 issues are 1. 3 years, how can you say you actually accomplished something. I am tired of seeing people like Mack have on their resume, they built the stadium, they generated donations, they generated ticket sales. I am the shmuck doling out the money because I love Akron not because I love Mack Rhodes.2. No probelm with a guy leaving but don't say "I love it here. I will be here as long as they will have me." When the Zips were robbed 2 years ago and KD said maybe I won't be here forever. I just can't take the slights. If he had left then, I would not have blamed him. He at least said don't count on me. In year 2 of JD's regime, Elton asked him toward the end of the year about him taking a bigger job. His response was to the effect, Great things are going on here, I am focused on the season, no other comments. And if JD goes 11-3 this year and takes off, he never once said he plans to be here forever. I can live with that. And what will drive me crazy if Mack does not get it is post interview comments in the paper. "I love it here. They sought me out. I have no desire to leave. My family and I love the Akron area and the Akron community. It would take a special job, a once in a lifetime job for me to leave. I am anxiously looking forward to opening up InfoCision Stadium." Blah, blah, blah.Again, I don't expect people to stay here forever, but at least don't be blowing smoke up my rear.

Interesting comment from Elton today in the PD - in an informal poll of MAC coaches, Miami and Akron are the slight favorites with Can't and either Ohio or BG (I forget) behind. Little respect for Buffalo.

Thanks as always CK! I owe you at the MAC tourney. Hopefully at Paninis, an hour before the Zips finally win the MAC title game.

KD - 1. You have mentioned in the past how you would prefer to play full court, ball pressure defense. While the Zips defense may be the best since you have been here, we are still more of a half court team. Do you expect to apply any more pressing, traps, etc at some point in the future?KD - 2. Can you give any updates on ex Zips and how they are doing, Romeo, Dru, Woody, Rob Preston, etc?JD - How is Dale Martin's health?JD - Will you get more involved with play calling next year with Joe Moorehead leaving?JK - How is Amanda Sedlock recovering?

What I remember about the Nebraska game as I listened to Frenchie was the standing ovation the Zips got for showing up and George Cameron losing his lunch in the 4th quarter.

KD made an interesting comment on Zips Live Thursday. Asked about Toledo's facilities and if that gives a nod over the other schools, he said yes if they start winning. That combination would be tough to beat. He felt though that winning programs mean more than the facilities. It may be somewhat different in football, but it is the first time I head any coach downplay facilities and talk about winning instead. Of course, he is winning 20 a year in a mediocre facility but I agree with him. Our problem in football has always been mediocre performance in very poor facilities until the last couple of years.

I wish him well. I hope that we don't lose any recruits given his departure. Losing Biel and now Moorehead, 2 of our more tenured guys on the offensive side of the ball. Does JD go back to calling plays next year?I read an article where the osu top coordinator (probably tops for most coordinators in the country) makes 275K a year, about the same as JD and much less than the top 4 or 5 coaches in the MAC who are pulling in north of 350K. The other assistants ranged from 160K to 250K. I am sure they get other perks but not nearly as much of a difference as the head coach. Akron's top assistants are around the 90-100K mark from what I rememeber.

I think in the 10 years of participating on the various interations of our board, this is the first time I've ever disagreed with you? I must finally be wrong about something? Conyers, IMO, has regressed a little since his ok start to the season. His 1-2-2 stat line vs Buffalo was indicative of his overall play. Even his saving grace...the lock down D...was missing last Wednesday. He's the guy that got beat on the back door allowing Buffalo to go ahead at game's end. Unless Conyers was sick last night, I'll guess the coaching staff saw the same thing. Hence his minutes dropped to 5 vs. BG and he was absent from the starting line up. KD also made mention that "some" players may have started taking their minutes for granted, and he mixed up the line up to let everyone know "there's no free lunch"...keep working, or someone else will be happy to take the PT.If we have a lead at game's end, I'll take my chance with Conyers, I guess. If I'm behind, Conyers can't be in the game. Roberts, Linhart, C McKnight, Humpty and B McKnight would be my preferred 5. Mc Nees would be my 6th. Cventinovic my 7th. Then I'd ask Romeo Crennel to flip a coin to see if Bardo or Conyers was next.After watching last night's game, I may want to take back what I said! Cventinovic showed some nice post moves. The team played about as crisp as I have seen with Jimmy getting all of 5 minutes. It may be hard for him to get those minutes back.

End of the game right now the only 2 guys I feel comfortable with on the floor are Linhart and Conyers. They may not win it, but they won't hurt you.

I watched the 2nd half. Unlike years past, when Can't needed a play they just could not make it. I have not seen a Can't guy get beat for a back door layup in the last 2 minutes for a long time. Fisher looked very frustrated. Too early to forget about them, but finally I have some hope they are not going to win the league this year.

Thanks for posting. 9 road games to start the year out of the first 14, yikes! Who set that schedule up

I wonder if we will try to grayshirt several kids. With all of the coaching changes, it seems like we may get even a couple more kids to land our way. With 17 slots, we are almost full now and we usually get 2-3 kids at the end who have high profile backgrounds. It is unfortunate that we did not have the normal 22-25 to give this year. But I agree, that front line would be something.

Per Penn State's website, we are playing at Penn State Sept 5th. We are at Syracuse which looks like it will be after Sept 19th. Hopefully our 4th game is at least a 1-AA team. We need 6 home games. Open up the 5th, get a bye week then get Indiana at the Info? Or do we schedule a 1-AA team the 12th and that becomes the opener?

Best thing to ever happen was the invention of the Internet. Instead of guessing what people want to read, you can track exactly who reads what on line. I doubt when Rasor started his blog anyone at the Beacon assumed it would be the #2 read blog on their website. People talk about buying the paper if there is a Zips article, that doesn't help. Click on every Zips article on line they write helps. Gaffney is a good writer with opinions. His recent pieces on the football wrap up and mid season basketball report were great. These kind of stories about Humpty where you are not going to get that at gozips or zipsnation are great. Obviously seeing more of this means more people than just those at ZipsNation are finding the stories interesting. Let's get 2 this week!

Merry Christmas to everyone here as well and thanks to the moderators for all of their work. Without this site, I don't know what I would do. And it great to put a face to the names at a Zips game.

Cincy had a very good defense this year, their DC is Joe Tresey, the same guy that LO brought in for his last year or 2. What I remember is that Tresey was an upgrade from past D's but we went from downright horrible to just bad. And Tresey did not get much love on the board. I have a feeling that even if we had Bill Belichick running our defense we would still be bad. I know the scheme stinks, but why can't we seem to get playmakers on D? Over the last 20 years, how many of them have we even had a fair defense, maybe 4 or 5 years out of 20?

MAC football coaches salaries are starting to escalate. I remember when Solich was hired at 250K a few years back, that drew a lot of oohs and aahs. Now the BSU guy and English get 350K. NIU signed their guy last year north of 300K. Over the next 3-4 years the rest of the league will probably follow suit.

With the non conference schedule about 2/3 done, the MAC is 15th out of 33 conferences. Usually the MAC is 10-13 range, so definitely a down year as we have seen. Zips are currently 86th, 2nd in the league after Miami (30). VCU, our next opponent is 68th. I don't expect that we will move much the rest of the way from 75-100, similar to where we have been in years past. A pleasant surprise is that in our rebuilding year, we still have a good chance to finish RPI top 100 which will help with scheduling, and we have a decent shot to finish the regular season top 4 in the league. Elton had an interesting blog in the summer which I can't find now. He took all 08-09 MAC schedules for OOC games and listed what the RPI strength of schedule would have been last year playing those teams. Akron came in 67th. Given that there are 300+ Div 1 teams, our OOC strength of schedule would put us in the top 25% of the country. Given the MAC schedule, we probably would have ended up near the top 100. Play a tougher schedule and lose those 2 tough games, or play easier schedules like those in the past and be 8-1 right now, you end up in the same spot. Personally, I like this schedule a little better, but it will make getting into the NIT a little tougher, 20 wins vs 18 wins and the same RPI, the 20 win team will be taken.

He hired a men's golf coach twice and women's coach. He also hired softball coach (maybe twice). He hired the swimming coach and tennis coach in additon to volleyball, and women's soccer that you named. I don't know how this would translate to other sports but most of the hires have improved the programs they took over.

It is like Dan Gilbert said, now is not the time to be cheap. If firing JD and bringing someone else in will give us 9 or 10 wins, you more than make up for it with the success that you will have. I give JD 1 more year for 2 reasons. First, JD admitted his recruiting blunders 2 years ago. With that attrition, it was a 2 year back step. We had that in 2007 and 2008. By cleaning house at the end of 06, chances of being successful the last 2 years were a lot tougher. If a plug should have been pulled it should have been then. Secondly, I do believe we will have the most talented and deep team maybe ever at Akron next year. Maybe it was luck or whatever, but we did win 1 title with JD as coach which tells me that it could be done again. Does he give us the best chance to be successful next year? I just don't hold out much hope that we strike gold and get some unbelievable coach who turns out be an Urban Myer. Usually I am wrong, but I see a good chance to go 8-4 next year by keeping JD. And if we don't, even the biggest JD fan should not complain.