a-zip

So much room for activities ….. http://youtu.be/29jij4ldkNs

That is REALLY NICE and all we need. Make the SEATS steep and 6000 people could be a deafening home court advantage. Seriously….arguably the top basketball program in the country (Duke) has only 9000 seats and NOBODY wants to play there.

I have NEVER liked that after 120 minutes of exhausting soccer, a match is decided by guessing which direction a penalty kick is going….because THAT IS what a goalie has to do. ESPN did a piece on what the hardest thing to do in sports is and a goalie stopping a PK was the hardest. Most people thought hitting a major league pitch but; A PK from a soccer kick travels faster (125 MPH) than a MLB fastball A soccer goalie has to cover a space that is 8 feet tall and 8 yards wide (192 square feet to cover) A baseball strike zone is essentially just underneath the players shoulders and the kneecap and 17 inches wide (3.73 square feet) The baseball hitter knows in order to make a good swing the ball will be in this small zone A soccer goalie has no idea if the ball is going to go high or low…….right or left A soccer PK is taken from 12 yards away Distance from pitchers mound to home plate is 60 feet 6 inches The soccer goalie is not allowed to come off the goal line I am not saying this as sour grapes (OSU won fair and square, UVA beat us for the National Championship in 2009 and thousands of other games have been decided this way…..WE have won this way) BUT when you look at how difficult it is to stop a PK it is essentially a guessing game and I do not think a match should be decided by guessing. My suggestion would be to have a shootout similar to hockey. Give the offensive player the ball just inside mid field and have them attack the goal (allowing the goalie to come off the line and defend just like a break away in regular play). I think this would be MORE exciting and involve more skill than guessing. This uses the pythagorean theorem to calculate BUT with the ball only traveling at 60 MPH http://www.khanacade...v/soccer-thiago http://www.scienceof...by-numbers.html

Moved comment to separate topic

Hopefully the young USC team gets better throughout the year and helps us when selection times begin (although based on the our soccer team's RPI the NCAA will do whatever they want ;-)

Before forming opinions about how strict we are vs other schools……why a player who was cleared from a concussion didn't play, etc, etc………….lets wait to hear the facts. I seriously doubt Coach Dambrot wants to lose his franchise player either. I would have to think there is a very good reason for this.

As we go in to the homestretch of our season, some important numbers to keep in mind; W - L 2009 3 - 9 2010 1 - 11 2011 1 - 11 2012 1 - 11 2013 5 - 7 2014 4 - 5 (currently) W-L record of remaining 3 opponents 6-21. We SHOULD win the rest of our games. If that happens, our record will be 7-5, which means; It will be only the 5th time we have won 7 games in a season since going to Division I (27 years ago)It will be only the 6th winning season we have had in 27 years since going to Division I (27 years ago)Will have our first winning record in 8 yearsIt will be the 20th time we have had 7 wins since 1891We will have 12 wins in the last 2 years after 11 wins combined in the previous 4 seasonsA bowl game would give us a chance for 8 wins - which has only happened 4 times since 1891We will be bowl eligibleWe will have beaten Can't State 2 years in a rowThat should be huge motivation for this team and if that is where we wind up, I will be happy and I cannot imagine anyone arguing that there has been MAJOR improvement. GO ZIPS!! In the immortal words of Matthew McConaughey (while driving his Lincoln)....... "Sometimes you gotta go back to actually move forward. And I don't mean go back to reminisce or chase ghosts — I mean go back to see where you came from, where you been, how you got here. See where you're goin'. I know there are those who say you can't go back. Yes, you can. You just have to look in the right place."

I tried to like some of the more recent responses about the important game coming up. I got a message saying "you have reached you maximum for positive responses today"

Balsy is right on the money with this. Big Zip you stated above that we are talking about facts and then right after it you state an opinion. The conspiracy theories are also opinions. The fact is there are no facts in this situation other than TW played, KP did not and KP dressed. A simple comment was made by TB and people have gone crazy with it. He does not have to tell the media or anyone anything. In my OPINION TB is looking out for the best interests of KP and that hopefully will come out in the long run. In the meantime - we have the best head coach and staff in the MAC (and many other conferences). BEAT BG and take the lead in the MAC!!

Thank you Balsy......ZN.O has gone crazy.

They don't play "Bowden Ball"??????

LOL….no kidding. People have gone crazy here. In typical Akron fashion…..the glass is half empty. We are 7-4 in our last 11 games. The Pitt victory is forgotten, close games at Michigan and Penn State forgotten….unfortunate losses to Ohio and BSU but not the blowouts they have been. The fact that we are in 2nd place playing for a chance to take the lead over BG has been clouded by someones conspiracy theory that TB does not play Pohl because can't play "Bowden Ball". No facts around that…. just speculation that has gone viral on here. Speaking of crickets Balsy….we will likely hear them at Infocision for the rest of the year. Good luck getting good recruits with that. Using the buying and selling of stock to compare firing a coach????? LOL……If such a thing could be done, I would buy every share of TB you own GP1 and in a year or two enjoy my profits between a couple of palm trees on a tropical island.

BINGO!! And that is how all Coaches shows are and how they should be. It is promotional and is meant to be positive not negative or controversial. The place to ask the types of questions around strategy, personnel, etc is the press conference after the game.

I was also puzzled Pohl did not go in but I trust TB and know there has to be a good reason which he may not want to share leaving us all to speculate. If not Pohl, why not Hirschman though (is he done?) 4 INTs are unacceptable BUT TW looked amazing in the first half. While the focus is on the INTs in the second half…lets not forget they blocked one of our punts and we muffed a punt (both of those are huge in the game!!). For the remainder of the game, BSU was sitting back looking for an INT. One thing I noticed is that all of TW's INTs looked eerily similar (a deep post across the middle)……throw is short and you can barely see a Zip near the ball. If we are going to speculate on the QB controversy, here is my theory……..If you have two guys you view to be equal (or close to it), you play the younger player. I would think that either Pohl or Woodson would transfer if they did not play this year. If you lose Pohl, he has 1 year left….if you lose Woodson, you have 3 years left. We have Chandler Kincaide who looks like he could be good and we also got a top commit with Jacob Harrison. With these two in the stable along with Woodson, I think we are in good shape. To be clear, I am not saying you scrap this season to develop a player for the future but I trust TB's instincts more than any of our and he knows a lot more about the situation than any of us do.

+1 !!!!!!!!

I thought that bounce had good mojo written all over it. I honestly never thought we were going to lose until the final interception. Great stand by the defense at the end to respond to the fumble and long return after it. As with everyone, I am puzzled we didn't attempt to run the ball more….after seeing Hundley go for a buckfortysomething at Pitt and then Chisholm go over a hundred against Miami…….

Ohio's 2nd string QB was better than our 2nd string QB.

I would take any of those attendance AVERAGES. We have not even approached a single game attendance of their worst average of 14,889.

From the NIU article…... "Earlier this month, Northern Illinois coach Dave Doeren left DeKalb for North Carolina State and said that his biggest regret was that the team with the nation’s longest home winning streak didn’t sell out one home game while he was on the sideline. “We play a very good brand of football that doesn’t get watched in person enough,” Doeren told the Chicago Sun-Times a few days before taking the N.C. State job. “That’s not just here. That’s across the landscape of mid-major conferences. But to have all the streaks we have and not sell it out is probably the biggest disappointment I have.” Above…..​is my fear with TB……and this has been my point!! I said years and years ago, the key to success is getting and keeping a great coach. We have a great coach and I want to keep him. If I didn't care, I wouldn't comment on anything. AND NO LANCE I am not hoping they fail (that has to be one of the most bizarre comments I have seen on here).

HuH? Pretty bizarre deduction lance

My point is that it is the community that needs to respond and show support in order for things to get better. All anyone does is make excuses and they are excuses I simply do not understand. There is no reason for the population that surrounds Akron to not be able to put at least 20K in this beautiful stadium. Somebody recently mentioned that Akron needs to do something on a national level to gain support……..well, we did! We won the National Championship in soccer. I feel the school is doing its part. There comes a point when someone is going to say……why did we build this stadium? why did we build this indoor facility? why should we build a new basketball arena? why should we spend money bringing in big name coaches? If nobody supports the programs it will be easy to lure TB or even KD away. We are sooooo lucky to have the coaches we have but mark my words if there is no support…….I promise you they will be gone. And then everyone can go back to bitching about having an iCoach, Crawford or some young hotshot that will only stay 2-3 years. That is what is going to happen and you know what……..maybe that is all NE Ohio deserves.

I forgot to add cupcake schedule to the list of excuses…..thanks. EMU, Miami, BG and UMass are conference opponents……what would you suggest the school do? Move to a new conference? A new conference will not accept us unless we have a fan base they are interested in. The Marshall game bump in attendance had nothing to do with Akron fans being more interested…….it was the Marshall fans that gave us that whopping 4K boost

Location: Akron, Ohio Stadium: InfoCision Stadium Attendance: 9104 Weather: Sunny Temperature: 69 Wind: N 8 MPH Location: Akron, Ohio Stadium: InfoCision Stadium Attendance: 13357 Weather: Partly Cloudy Temperature: 73 Wind: SSW13 Location: Akron, Ohio Stadium: InfoCision Stadium Attendance: 8416 Weather: Mostly Cloudy Temperature: 45 Wind: W 17 mph Location: Akron, Ohio Stadium: InfoCision Stadium Attendance: 8223 Weather: Mostly Sunny Temperature: 55 Wind: N 10 Attendance is actually going DOWN!!! I don't get it. The bump in the Marshall game was due to their fans. A comment was made about the coach making people care about the team. What would you suggest? He is out all the time promoting the team (and so is his father)!! Military appreciation day during Miami game apparently didn't help either….

Let me ask the question a different way…..Why would he stay if nobody cared or showed an interest in a winning program (except for 9100 people) - put the money aside for a second. No, he doesn't have to "chase a paycheck" but I am quite sure he wants to accomplish things that will be recognized and appreciated. There has been every excuse in the world given on this board for the poor attendance and support - OSU conflicts, Thursday games, bad weather, splintering seats at the RB, Cleveland loser mentality, HS fball conflicts, multiple terrible seasons, iCoach, etc etc. We are 8-3 in our last 11 games, we have a beautiful stadium, we almost beat Michigan at the big house, good showing against Penn State, beat Pitt and the weather has been great. THERE HAS NOT BEEN A SINGLE BOOST IN ATTENDANCE!!!! I genuinely think everyone on this board actually cares BUT it blows my mind that with the population that surrounds Akron…..we cannot get at least 20K to a game at this point. 20K IS NOT A LOT!!!! Use LBJ as an example. Do you think he needs money? Why do you think he left? I am sure he won't publicly admit it but I guarantee you he wanted to get away from the pathetic woe is me attitude. He has his rings now, HE does not need money and Akron is his home so he is back. Makes sense I guess. I don't see TB having the same deep rooted loyalty.

I would say money is secondary but it is important…sorry but you most people don't live their lives to inherit family money….certainly not someone like TB. Ego is involved here and how about coaching in a community that actually gives a crap about what you are doing…..