Zipsrifle

I think that a lot of people know about the soccer teams success. Unfortunately, and I am one of these people, I just don't get as excited about Soccer as I do for Football. I think that'll be chaging in the next 5-10 years though 'cause it seems like all the kids are playing soccer nowadays.

Boy, all the naysayers are coming out of the woodwork now aren't they. I love it. Get rid of the football team and focus on Basketball? What crack are you smoking and can I have some! What makes the basketball team such a "Slam Dunk" right now that we didn't expect from the football team a month ago? Fire JD? OK, then who do we bring in to replace him? Certainly not LO. Lets say we bring in Jim Tressel. I guarantee that there would be calls to can his A$$ before the season is out too. Go ahead, try to change systems mid season with an athletically bare team and see what happens. This talk is rediculous. You think we're a laughing stock now, how do you think things would look if we fired our new MAC coach after 3 games, two of which were against BCS opponents? My next question is, if we were going to hire a former head coach, who would it be? We weren't going to snag any good ones that's or sure. JD was a mover and shaker and he was beating our door down from a successful Big East school. I still beleive he was the best pick. Thank God that you guys weren't some of this courntry's founding fathers. We'd all be paying Pounds to see our favorite Cricket match right now if that was the case. JD's job is secure for at least 2 more years IMO, so you can say whatever you want, but it ain't going to change anything. LO was 2-9 in his first AND 3rd year at Akron. Thomas will give JD time to prove his system and so would any other MAC Athletic director in the same spot. So, whine all you want, but unless we lose 9 games this year, nothing is going to change. Are we pathetic right now..yes. I actually think we are probably at our lowest ranking since joining DI-A (I remember being 108 out of 108 back in what, '94?) There are 117 teams now and according to the CCR, we're at 111. I'm sitting tight and going to be at all the remaining home games this season to see what I hope is the struggling beginning of a future powerhouse. I just hope that JD remembers how patient we were IF things become good. I hope he becomes a Bob Pruit, puts down some roots here and carries the Zips to bigger and better things. Alright guys, lets go beat up on the Golden flushes who are so boisterous and confident with their 1-2 record and win over DI-AA Liberty.

No hard feelings. I'm not feeling too good about the way things are going right now either. MTSU was our game and we blew it, no question about that. There is also no excuse for losing 51-0 when the team your playing lets up after the first half. The team has had pleanty of practice time and should have the system down by now. If JD needs on the job training, he's gotten quite a bit of it in the past 3 weeks. I think that everyone expected to be 1-2 at this point....we're 0-3. Put me in the "Sunshine" column, but I'm not going to dwell on the past. There is also nothing, realistically, that is going to happen to change the current Coaching/Player situation. This is our hand and we've got to play it. We've got our cross town rival this week and our first Confrence game. The fact remains that the MAC East is weak outside of Miami and Marshall. IMO, we have a good chance to be undefeated in the East by Marshall time and that is 5 games away. Anyway you slice it right now, we've got a shot at the MAC East Championship. I hope that the team looks at it that way too, cause if they don't then JD should be fired right now. Bottom line, our opinions aren't going to change anything tha has to do with the team. The only thing that I can change is how many people come to the games. As you are well aware, we are on the hook for 15,000 avg attendence. It would be a devistating blow if we are shut out of a bowl and then lose our D1-A status. If I can get more people to go to the games because of my comments here in additon to the number of friends I drag to the home games, I've done my part. Finally, if everyone agreed on this board, then we wouldn't keep coming back to see what has been posted now would we?

Yea Pouch, They pulled up and jogged about 1/2 of the way today. I think they'll be pretty good.

Since this will be a short week, I don't think it's too early to move onto this topic. I really hope that despite opening 0-3, the team can get pumped up for the Can't game. I was so pissed after the loss last year that I'm really looking for some revenge. I don't think that Can't is any better than we are with their only win coming against Liberty. They are losing to Rutgers right now and I don't think they are any better than MTSU. I expect another dogfight. I know the game is at DIX and I hope that all the people who witnessed the game at the bowl last year come to the game this year. IMO, this rivalry has been beat down by all the years both teams sucked and played the game at the end of the season. I think last year did a lot for the rivalry. This is probably the most important game for the Zips w/r to keeping their DI-A status. Why? 1) Fans. We are fighting for the same fans and we need to keep the upper hand in this series to pull in those extra fans. They are the key to the 15,000 attendence rule. 2) Players. We are both fighting for pretty much exactly the same players. With both schools having new coaches, we'll need the advantage of a win by JD to sway as many guys to our side as possible. 3) Morale. If we lose this game, the team morale will be in the dumper. We need the win against our rivals to get something going. 4) MAC East Championship. We need to take Can't this first game to start our MAC East run. We've got the two big boys late in the season so we've got to take these other 3 teams that are on our level to get some excitement going. We've got a short week but hopefully we can pull this thing out. Should be a Dogfight. I'm looking forward to this one. I want revenge for last year!

DAMN! That's the second time my Zips wallpaper background has screwed me on that date.

Yea, I don't know what was going on but those were uncalled for. I sure hope that the officials weren't letting that stuff slide 'cause we were getting beat so bad. Nobody should get hurt cause of cheap shots. I have to say that Groh was pretty gracious to us in the 2nd half. I sure hope the UA staff doesn't let this stuff slide. If they do, I won't fault any team for running up the score on us.

Hey, this is a pretty good thing that has started here! Is there any way we can tack up a list of JD's recruits this year and the position similar to what is above? Maybe we can add the other schools that looked at them too so we can get an idea of how good of a catch they are.

Well, outside of the Troy game, you guys are putting on a pretty good show. IMHO, going to runover everyone in the MAC this year except for the stumble on Nov. 3rd.

Oh man, that was ugly. I guess I'll with the good things that happened today. 1) I was able to get some cool new clothes at the store. 2) I washed and waxed my car while listening to the game. 3) It was sunny and 75F in Michigan. 4) Al Groh was generous enough to tell his guys the let up after the first half and to start putting in his backups early. Now, on to my other thoughts. 1) Frye was way off today 10-23. I don't know if it was from the D pressure (4 Sacks), receivers dropping the ball or just sloppy play on his part, but from what was pointed out prior to the game, he probably should have had much better numbers. I hope he isn't giving up already. With that said, thank God he is still here 'cause Jabari didn't impress. 2) I am so frustrated with the O-line. Frye was either running for his life or Biggs/Ringer were getting it in the backfield. I believe we had -tive run yardage into the 4th Quarter and ended up with 6 total rushing yards for the game. Seemed that when we did run it, we got 0 or -ve on the play. I've got to give Hendry more credit for the past few years 'cause he got all those yards with these guys in front of him. From the sounds of it Biggs was doing a pretty good job of breaking tackles and gave some good second efforts but there were too many defenders to shake and he eventually was overwhelmed. 3) WAY to many mistakes. I think at one point, we got the ball around our own 30 and ended up punting from the endzone because of penalites and -ve yardage plays. What was the deal with clobbering Pearman twice on the punts when he called a fair catch? I wanted better punt coverage, but that was taken a little too far. We really needed to have our heads screwed on straight to compete in this one but that was definately not the case. 4) I don't know who said that Virginia was a 3 yards and a cloud of dust, but they were running all over us today. I think Lundy had the two longest runs of his career today. At times it sounded like we could hold them, but once every 4 downs things would break down and would get what they needed. In addition, when we had them at their own 4, they just busted out for a 13 yard gain....WTF! I think it only took them 3 plays to get across midfield. Sounded like the secondary made a lot of tackles on the running plays too but I guess I wasn't too suprised by this. For having the "Core" of the defense back, this was not impressive. 5) We were way out of our league today. I'm pretty sure the UVA's 2nd team would have easily beaten our first team today. I'm having a hard time believing that our guys are that bad. I know that we lost our offensive threats and took a hit in the D secondary, but how could we hang with Wisconsin last year and get blown away so bad this year? Seems like we've taken a step backwards with the O-line and D-line and linebackers from last year. 6) To finish on a positive note, sounded like Agyeman had a pretty good game today. I heard his name called a lot. Biggs got a lot of good comments from the anouncers too about how he was shaking a lot of tackles but there were too many Cavaliers around. Sullivan got a lot of practice today and Virginia didn't get to return many. I think that after the half, this was voluntary on UVA's part. I'm glad that the OOC games are over with and we can get on to MAC play.

BombardierHOO, Thanks for the link! I was able to listen to the entire butt whipping. I think that will be my first choice from now on. One more thing on this topic, why do all the announcers from other schools call us A-Kron (Similar to the movie Tron) insteard of Akron (similar to grin )? Just something I've noticed. I guess nobody cares about the proper pronunciation when you're just a whipping boy.

I don't know how summer practices work, but I was under the impression that Frye was working with these guys a lot. If that was the case, how much of the rest of the team was out there in addition? If it was only receivers, then that might explain why they've got it figured out so well while everyone else is still trying to catch up. If this isn't the case, then I'm thankful we've got talented receivers. I for one was really worried about the receivers. In fact, I pretty much had everything backwards.

Yea, we can turn this thing around. We've got MAC play starting next week. We'll see how things go, but we need to stay in this one (beat the spread) and knock off Can't convincingly to have any confidence against NIU. Maybe the only thing that is in our favor right now is that we play Marshall and Miami at the end of the season. We wouldn't have a shot at either of those two the way things are going right now. At least by then, we should have all the "new system" glitches worked out. If we don't beat Can't, then it's pretty much a done deal. If that is the case, we'll probably start out 0-5 I might have to witness another Toilet Bowl in the Bowl when Buffalo comes to town. The hype hasn't proven to be true so far, lets hope we see the ship turning this week. I'll have to dig around tonight to see if I can find a web radio station that carries the game. Like I've said, I had pretty good luck so far with getting the radio broadcasts free.

If Getsy is a true Big East QB, he'll have pleanty of +ve press next season. I give the guy some huge props for telling Pitt to shove it. I love the guy already! Is is me, or are the new facilities and JD already bringing in some better talent?

Thank GOD the receivers were better than expected. Just think about where we would be if that wasn't the case. Frye should take the MAC Passing Record at this pace. He should have another good week this week.

There you go, our school sucks 'cause our football team sucks. Well, at least we're better Yale or MIT. I'm willing to bet that if Virginia lost the rest of their games this year and got the snot kicked out of them for the next 10 years, Dave would be rooting for VT and their board would be dead too. I'm also willing to bet Dave didn't even go to Virginia. Dave probably graduated from North Central Virginia Institute of Fine Arts. Their football team sucked, so he decided that he was a Virginia fan cause they're good. See, like I've said before, It's easy to root for a winner. You ususally win, you get the good players and you load up your early schedule with struggling teams. Then, you can go on other people's boards and talk smack and not have to get much shit back....It props up your little ego. He's "over here to talk football", looks to me that he's just over here to gloat about how good his team is. Why aren't you discussing thing with the other fans on your board....oh, because they probably know that you're opinion means about as much there as it does here...ZIP. I will be sure to catch the FSU game when you guys get waxed. I'm no expert on the Zips but everything that's been posted about Virginia so far came right out of a magazine that anyone in the country can pick up. Glad to see that the fans are educated too 'cause from what I've seen on the UVA page, the best you can do is copy and paste he gozips.com notes. The folks over here are not fair weather fans. We're here 'cause we put our money where our mouth is and support the school we went to, even if they suck. We're not going to bail out when times get bad....cause they are. If we were quitters we would be on the OSU board right now talking smack about a team that generally wins. Now, thanks to you guys, every Zip here has the impression that the Virginia fans are Assholes. Not many people have done that over the past few years. So, even though we can barely read with our UA Diplomas, since our football team sucks, we're smart enough to see through you guys. I'm done with these punks. So, before this turned into yet another thread with Virgina fans spouting off their worthless mouths, I think this was a prediction thread. I've got to back the team so here goes (oh yea, put me in the sunshine column) : No Hurricane. Defense makes another step up and we somehow keep their running attack to an average game. UVA QB has an off day and we come up with a few picks and are on the good side of some fumbles. We finally turn the corner in the red zone and turn a few of those turnovers into some scores. Biggs keeps their D honest and Frye, who is used to scrambling by the way, lights it up for 400 yards. We also run a kickoff back for a TD. Somehow the guys actually learned something from JD and hold onto the ball the whole game. We kick a fieldgoal with time expiring to win 45-42. Does anybody know if we can get the game on web radio? I won't sign up for college sports pass cause I got all the games last year for free and will see at least 7 games this year. Go Zips!!

EMU over Toledo? OU giving Miami a run? UCF closer than we were against PSU? If this guys is right, we're in trouble.

Unfortunately, I was in the middle of nowhere in Alaska during that game. Lets just hope I don't have to miss any late season games this year for the same reason.

Tried to post this last night but something was wrong...here goes again. It's going to be a LOOOONG season, here are my thoughts. 1) Kudos UAM. Well done. We looked like a DI-A program prior to the game. 2) Everyone has basically summed up the general problems. D sucked, couldn't run, turnovers, etc. I am no expert but here is some additional stuff I saw. Why is it that they can run a screen 5,000,000 times and we can't figure it out? Hell, if I got 5 yards every time I ran it, I'd just keep running it till the other team figured it out...which we didn't. After the first 5000 times they ran it, you'd think that you'd know what was coming. We seriously need to learn how to tackle. I can't believe that we've got guys diving at feet instead of hitting the guy and wrapping him up. In addition, they were getting 2-3 extra yards because our guys were waiting for them to run UP THE FIELD to them instead of attacking the ball carrier. Biggs is the man. I hope that Biggs being the starter will put a fire under Ringer, but I doubt it. Just imagine what he could do if the line could open up some holes. How much longer do I get to see Biggs play? IMO, Jabari is locked into the WR position for the next 3 years. He's producing and sorry dude, Getsy gets the nod next year. Frye put up some good numbers but can we throw it over the middle every once in a while and for more than 5 yards? I know, it would take too long for that to develop and #5 would get creamed. While we're on that subject, Superman is scared to death back there. He is doing his first reads and then getting the hell out of the pocket. At the end of the game he was just bailing out and running one, two seconds before he needed to. Now, how much better would his numbers be if he could actually just concentrate on throwing to his receivers instead looking for receivers, running, and trying to avoid tacklers? Special teams was scary. I was so glad when they would just take a knee when we would punt. We're going to give up some serious field position and points this year. Just kick it as high as you can so everyone huddle around the ball at the 30 when it comes down. 3) Now, I'm not hanging it up this early. The rest of the MAC is in the crapper and that is the best news we've got right now. I hope that Frye stays alive this week. I take back all that stuff I said about us being the at our most dangerous this week....I don't know when we're going to be dangerous this year. If anything, we need to work on the fundamentals this week and kick the crap out of Can't at Dix and start the MAC run. I believe that some of our troubles are due to the learning curve, but I don't care what anybody says, LO left the cupboard bare. With that said, the guys have got to keep after it and make a show of it this week. As long as those guys are giving 100%, I can't ask for more. This is the hand we're dealt and we've got to make the most of it. MTSU is over, done with. Lets look ahead and give Virginia all we've got. We've got to get the mindset ready for our MAC run and there's no better way than having a breakout game against Virginia. 4) PLEASE, at some point before I die, I would like to see the Zips on the good end of a last second score to tie, or win the game. This is the one thing I was hoping that JD would change, but it seems like the same old same old. I still believe in the guy, and am in it for the long run, but I'm going to be pissed if we don't upset someone or pull one out when it counts this year. He's going to need one of these to show potential recurits that he is indeed a step above LO and that if they come to Akron, we're going to win AND have good facilities. I hope that something good happens in the next two weeks or it isn't going to matter if UA sold tickets for $0.01, we're not going to average 15,000 this year. Oh yea, that was the first time I've every seen the WAVE at the Rubber Bowl. AWESOME!!!! Would you Season ticket holders get off your A$$#$ and have some fun! It's the stupid little things like that, that are going to bring people to the bowl.

WOAH, hold on folks, I'm not ready to spell out gloom and doom this year for the Zips. Granted our D sucked last week. I have to expect that they will be better this week, but I do have to agree with Racer that they didn't improve as much as I had hoped during the offseason. This week is the indicator of how the Zips will fare this season. I say that we'll win, but by the narrowest of margins. I say we win 38-35. This is my last post so I'll see everyone at the game. The car is loaded and we'll be on the road tomorrow after work. GO ZIPS!!!

Take a look on the recruiting page. I've got to say, I give him lots of credit for transferring and paying his own tuition. He must be pretty confident in his abilities, especially with Jabari who, I think, may end up pulling a sparks and turning into a receiver.

No question, I'll be there for all home games, Can't State, and one other either NI or Ohio.

Well, we should get ready for a thumping. The MTSU fans are pretty confident in a win. According to them Akron has "...the worst defense I've seen" and they are sure that "...we should score every time we have the ball". Some even predict we lose by 20+ points. I've got to say, we didn't put the fear of God into them last week that's for sure. MTSU Predictions Who doesn't expect their home team to win, it just gets to me when bold, blow out predictions are made. I like to turn them into motivation. Only time will tell. Can't wait for Saturday!!!

If Jabari keeps catching the way he did against PSU, he may have a new position.

I'm glad that Pluto has confidence is UA....."But you can still beat Middle Tenessee on Saturday". I didn't know we were that far behind in the game already. Are we spotting them points? Stinkin' Urinal