InTheZone

No need for illegal streams from channelsurfing, it's being streamed free on espn3.com.

I disagree that Zips fans, at least the hardcore ones, are silent and uncaring unless we win. Just look at this site this past week.... there's been more activity than any time since we won the MAC it seems like! I think this week was a huge wake up call to a lot of people that there's a lot wrong with this program and we don't have the competent people in place that are needed to fix it.

If you are, then . You are a dedicated fan.

I am on FB. I have the UofA football site as a "friend" or whatever they call it. The last football alumni party I went to was at the WLizard and Gary Bogue put it together. Since Gary moved to the Law School, I really haven't heard from anyone personally from the Z-Fund. Maybe I'll try to make the next one. Me and my geezer friends can get drunk and race each other in our wheelchairs. Search for "Akron Zips Football Alumni" and a group should come up that you can request to join. Once they add you, you'll get all the updates on the football alumni gatherings. I'm sure you'll see some guys you played with in that group too. It's well run.

Are you on facebook GP1? There's an invite only group for UA football alumni where they've done a great job organzing football alumni gatherings. I've been to a few of them and they've been pretty well done. A lot of old geezers there too that probably played with you. Now as for the alumni in general, the University does a PISS POOR job of doing anything with that. The reason the football alumni stuff is well done is likely because its not even handled by the University, it's put on by the football equipment staff. Maybe they should hire those guys in the marketing and alumni relations office.

I'm just going off the fact that they haven't had a winning season in god knows how many years, even in 3 years with Locker. Maybe this is the year they turn the corner, but losing to BYU to open the season doesn't say much.

Jake Locker is a beast 4 tds and 289 yards passing He's good, but UW only put 17 on BYU

So, by that logic, James Madison should be ranked ahead of Boise State. No that's not the logic being employed at all there buddy. Syracuse is not good on defense. And we couldn't score on them. Simple as that.

... by a bad Washington team. Washington has a QB, and that's about it. A sorry team put 41 on Syracuse. We couldn't even find the endzone against them. It's gonna be a long season (in case you weren't already aware...)

I think their man board is the rivals board. Some predictions from there as well: http://kentucky.rivals.com/showmsg.asp?fid...888&style=2 Their defense must be pretty bad. They all seem to think we're gonna score some points.

That wouldn't be an upset, that'd be a divine act of God.

Kentucky is middle of the road SEC. That means conference powerhouse anywhere else. Our D gave up 31 in regulation to Gardner-Webb. Kentucky will probably score 31 in the 1st quarter if they want to.

You give them way too much credit in thinking they actually care. I didn't see any evidence of that last week. Keep cashin those scholarship checks...

I am still guilty of being too optimistic at 35-0, aren't I? 55-0 Kentucky 7 X 8 = 56, not 55....unless you think they will score on the last play of the game and not try the PAT. Maybe they'll kick two field goals at some point to give their PK a little practice.

Kentucky 52 Akron 7

Our attendance for this year will look more like the top of D2 1. Tuskegee 14,553 2. Miles 13,750 3. Tex. A&M-Kngsvllle 11,155 4. Grand Valley St. 9,957 5. North Ala. 9,389 6. Abilene Christian 9,062 7. West Tex. A&M 8,844 8. Morehouse 8,819 9. Fort Valley St. 7,921 10. Pittsburg St. 7,821

FCS Teams that Outdrew the Zips in 2009 (Our first year in a new stadium!) http://ncaa.biz/wps/wcm/connect/94f3dd0041...87bd8734e8667f6 AVERAGE ATTENDANCE 1. Montana- 24,417 2. Appalachian St.- 24,004 3. Yale- 21,245 4. Delaware- 20,750 5. Old Dominion- 19,782 AKRON ZIPS- 17,382 6. N.C. A&T- 17,219 7. South Carolina St.- 17,027 8. Ga. Southern- 16,728 9. North Dakota St.- 16,515 10. Jackson St.- 16,334 To add insult to injury, Old Dominion just added their footbal program 3 years ago.

First, there are a lot of very good FCS schools with teams that qualify for the NCAA BB Tournament. Why would other conferences drop down? That's a good question and I hate to answer it with another question, but I will. What if the BCS schools start there own division or even more, leave the NCAA and have their own Super Conference? There is already an NAIA, why can't there be another organization. The MAC is in big trouble and they need to figure it out soon. That is why this discussion is on this board. It is an important question. Honestly I can't see the big schools banding together to kick the little guys out. Big time programs like having little guys to schedule early in the year that they can claim is a legit 1-A opponent, make lots of money off of, pad their records, and a get a guaranteed win. They don't want to be playing each other for 12 games. They make more money by having the little guys like us to exploit for a few games. That being said, MAC schools will not end up in a lower division because the big boys force us out. We will end up in a lower division because we don't have the finances to compete with the big boys, and being a perenial loser kills fan support and further depresses the bottom line to the point of unsustainability. If we drop to 1-AA, we lose the financial responsibility of at least having to look like we're trying to compete with the big boys, and we might actually GAIN fan support because we will win, and people like to cheer for winners. That's why there's a lot of FCS schools outdrawing MAC schools by tens of thousands every week. Heck there are D2 programs who will outdraw us this year.

Be careful about mentioning Gerry Faust and Ron Ianello in the same sentence. Faust, while never to be considered a great college coach measured in wins and loses, did great things for the University of Akron. This man still bleeds blue and gold in spite of all the crap idiots have slung at him over the years. I will take Gerry Faust any day. Gerry exudes honor and integrity. I am proud to know the man personally. Agreed. I've never had anything but positive interactions with Gerry Faust as a man. Now as a coach and the way he ran the program into the ground there at the end... I think we're still kind of feeling the effects of that. But as a person, you'll never meet a better guy.

Completely concur on the spread offense. It's the offense I played in, and we put 532 yards of total offense on Wisconsin with it. Were we more talented on offense than the Wisconsin defense? Umm... are you shittin me? Some of those guys had more talent in their left toe than I did in my whole body on my best day. We moved the ball on them because the Spread, when run well, is DAMN HARD to defend. It's easy to defend against a bad team running a pro-style offense. You can't out-scheme anyone in the pro-style. It's mono-e-mono, and the best players win. With a well run spread, you give less talented players a stategic advantage over the guys trying to defend them. That being said, the bs spread JD was running the last few years is not what I'm talking about. I could go into a discussion on all that was wrong with what he was trying to do and the difference between that and the way the spread should be run, but just know this.... what we're running now is only going to work against teams we're more talanted than. I think you can all draw your own conclusions for what that means.

It's funny how Captain can go from declaring that we have a future NFL gunslinger at QB to declaring this team is completely void of talent. Not a very consistent position if you ask me. If you have that kind of talent at QB, you should beat a HS tea...errr... Gardner Webb, whether we've got Vince Lombardi coaching or my wife.

To further drive home the point, let's look at our bowl record as a conference over the past 3 seasons. 2009- 1-4 2008- 0-5 2007- 0-3 The only win was a 3 point win last year by Central Michigan over a Sun Belt school. 1-12 in bowl games as a conference. You can't tell me that the top 1-AA conference couldn't do better than that. Our only hope to remain 1-A is to get someone in here who is going to dominate the MAC, which we absolutely should with our facilities, for the next 5 seasons before the MAC dissolves as our teams realign to a lower division, and then get us into CUSA. I know a lot of you knock CUSA, but if you look at the attendance and non-conference records of CUSA, it's night and day to the MAC. They play a lot closer to real big time college football than we do. Yes I know the travel expenses garbage, but if we actually start winning MAYBE we could get enough fan support to make such a move fiscally responsible. It's our only hope to stay 1-A. The MAC is going down to the toilet. If we aren't going to win, then let's drop.

Flood Proenza's office with letters, emails, and phonecalls. In fact, someone should organize a Zipsnation "Email the President" day to voice as a solid block of fans our dissatisfaction and refusal to accept the mediocrity of that entire operation over in the JAR.

How about....no? He'd be better than TW. However, "He'd be better than..." isn't a very high standard when comparing to anyone in our athletic department nowadays.

We didn't just lose to a 1-AA team... we lost to a mediocre 1-AA team. We lost to a 1-AA team that a lot of top D2 teams could beat on a good day.