Zipsrifle

Fieldhouse Man, that place looks really impressive. The weight room is HUGE! Better than Cliff Skeen was. Hell, my hillbilly country high school had a better weight room than Cliff Skeen (Seriously!) Not only will this pull in better talent, but all the athletic teams should move up a notch or two with these facilities. It's cool too that they took the old front of Spicer and used it as an arch in the front of the building, a nice link to the past. They did something similar with the old West Hall columns behind the new Arts and Sciences building. I got to tell you, I'm really impressed with what the curernt administration is doing. Simply Amazing.

Lets hope a new stadium is on the way. But would this be a good area for the stadium? Sure, it is close to the freeway, but is it TOO close? I used to live behind Subway and my guess is that would be a pretty tight fit. I only make it back to Akron during the fall but if they put the stadium there it would wipe out quite a few of the student hangouts on the Zip Strip. The new parking deck next to 8 could swallow a bunch of cars and the East side of Rt.8 on exchange street (I used to live over there also) is pretty much a dump. They could level some old houses over there to make room for parking. For some reason, I was under the impression that the new stadium might be between Sumner and Kling Street. They could take out the Zipmart and there is a lot of rental houses back there and a residence hall. Whatever happens, an on campus stadium would drastically increase student participation. At the CMU game last year, there were a TON of students.....the stadium is about a 5 minute walk from campus.

Yea, that was a nice, brisk Michigan afternoon. First snow of the season. After last season they picked up GVSU's coach Brian Kelly. From what little I've read and heard, the guy had a very successful program at GVSU winning the D-II National Championship in 2002 and 2003. Much better grab than EMU, who I think grabbed a local guy who was an assistant coach at Northwestern. You would think that the coach that took over near the end of last season, who cranked out a few wins, would have gotten the job. Big turnover in the MAC this year for Head Coaches. I think I read somewhere that it tied for the most new coaches in the MAC ever. Hopefully JD will be the head of the class.

Yea, I saw this last night. In general, they know very little about us. I think someone pointed out that they thought our coach was from OSU and that we will have no running game since Hendry was gone. Bet they would be more fired up once they figure out he's from Pitt. From what little I saw of Ringer, he could make things happen. Anyway, they still see it as a gimme game. I don't think it will be as much of a gimme as the last time we played them but we will have to bring our A game to win. I don't have high hopes for pulling off the upset. With it being the first game under the new system, it could get ugly if we start making a lot of errors. In general we will be expected to be a push over. To our advantage we will be underestimated (hopefully overlooked even for the BC game) and there will be no game film to look at. Still, I think we will make it interesting at some point. I figure all the bugs will be worked out and we'll be firing on all cylinders when we get our revenge against Smokey McSmokavitch at Dix.

I thought that I read somewhere that the coach said if it was a felony, he was off the team. Now, since it's a 5th degree felony, it's OK? Somehow we all knew in the back of our minds he would be playing again this year. If Frye got busted with Pot, I'm sorry to say, but show him the door. I have no tolerance for this stuff.

Yea, things are really dead right now. At least they have an update on gozips.com about the practice field at Lee Jackson Field. That is amazing. I don't even recognize the place any more. Hopefully students can use it too. Sounds like it will be restricted to NCAA athletes, that will really cut down on the open space that the rest of the student body can use in an already cramped urban campus. I know I've seen some plans to buy the land on the opposite side of Exchange street and turn that into "green space" Till then,finding a place where you can toss the ball with your buddies will be nearly nonexistant. Though I do have to say, the athletic fieldhouse will more than make up for the loss of that area for the general student body. Would have been nice to have both though.

OK, well, nosing around some more and along with some other facts, found out that the Rubber Bowl originally had a 1/5 mile dirt track inside of it. It was used for Midget racing. The funny part of this, my wife couldn't figure out why people would want to come to the Rubber Bowl to see Midgets (as in little people) race. Oh well, I should have expected this. When we first started going out she couldn't figure out why engineers had to study so much to drive a train! Got to love her!

While nosing around tonight, I stumbled across the Akron Professionals and the Akron Indians. I had heard that Akron used to have a pro football team, but didn't know much more till tonight. Football.com shows the Akron Pros as one of the first 10 teams in 1920 that evolved into what is now the NFL. They went 6-0-3 during their first season and finished first in the League. They outlasted teams from Cleveland, Detroit, New York, Cincinnati, Washington, Columbus, St. Louis and a bunch of others before they hung it up in 1926. Anyway, something to pass the time.... football.com

While everyone is looking forward to next year, what was the best part of last year? I'm sure getting rid of LO will get a lot of votes. For me, it was beating UCF and watching them implode and mingle with the Crap of the MAC. I loved watching those guys fall hard. So much for Dominating the MAC.

Yea, I noticed that. What is a virtual Suite anyway. My guess is that you don't have to go up steps to get your food.

Nope....I've given up on golf...I REALLY SUCK! Plus the 9 hour round trip drive is hard to swallow with these gas prices.

As found on the MTSU board: Here is how the MAC and Akron's Opponents faired in the 2004 Preseason SOS. UV - 22 PSU - 36 MTSU - 113 Marshall - 63 BG - 70 UCF - 71 BSU - 76 WMU - 79 Miami - 82 OU - 85 Akron - 86 UT - 94 NIU - 95 EMU - 97 Can't State - 99 UB - 106 CMU - 108 Unfortunatly, this shows that UT has things pretty easy, so it'l likely they'll be in the top 25 for a while and Gradkowski will probably put up some big numbers. I hope that UCF has another terrible season. I kinda feel bad for Buffalo, so hopefully they can win a couple. Last year our Preseason SOS was 115 out of 116, we should have won more games. SOS - Click Me

Say Frye does turn out big numbers during the first year of JD's new offense. Doesn't that raise his stock even more to the NFL? If he doesn't, well, he may go down in the draft. I think that the numbers he has put up so far can't be ignored though. If JD can lead the Zips to a MAC Championship, all of these reporters will be saying "Look, we told you that they should have gotten rid of Owens earlier." I'm sure Frye will give it his all. I can't wait to see what happens! Hopefully the media will help out UA with some press. I wouldn't be suprised if that didn't happen though.

While nosing around, I thought, how have the Zips fared against this season's opponents in the past? Here are the results since 1950: PSU - 0-1 MTSU - 1-6 UV - 0-1 Can't State - 14-14-1 NIU - 3-4 UB - 5-0 UCF - 4-2 BSU - 9-6-1 MU - 3-8 OU - 6-8 MO - 3-8 So, if things were to go accordiing to history, we would end up 3-7-1 (Can't State tie). MTSU has owned us along with Miami. I was suprised to find that we've faired pretty well against UCF. Another interesting fact, both of the ties were in 1972. We've pretty much owned Can't State in recent history but they owned us early on. I kinda feel bad for Buffalo. Anyway, hopefully history isn't an indication of what will happen this year.

Bandman...Your Welcome. UA didn't do squat when I was there, probably saved all the money I gave them in addition to the money they got from the State and are spending it all now. Good thing too. I don't know how many times in the last 15 years I went to OSU and they were building, building, building. Proenza is the MAN! I head that when he went to the Board of Regents, he told them that Akron has sat on the sidelines too long and that he needed $200 million to get Akron to where it needed to be. He also told them that he wasn't inflating the figure and that the State either gives Akron $200 million or nothing at all. We all know what happened. I'll tell you what, that guy has done so much during his tenure, it's amazing. I remember when Peggy was president, she didn't do JACK. The steps in front of the Student center were crumbling for 2 years and all she did was put barricades around them. He's taken the helm of the ship, gave it right full rudder, and called up about 20 tug boats to turn that place around.

Well, I think the bottom of it is that it's easy to like a team that consistently wins. Nobody wants their team to lose a lot and have to defend them. If your team wins all the time, you can dish out the crap to others. So, OSU fans = Wusses. I would say that I got hooked on the Zips because of the LACK of fans. Man, I love going to the games, sitting so close to the field and hearing every hit and heckling the opposing players. It's great, except now, I want to see the bowl full every game.

Yea, nothing to write about. Seems about the same on the other boards too. Maybe we should put up an area where you can Bitch about work. I bet that would boost the postings.

Looks like the Zips Formula SAE team has restablished itself as one of the top teams in the nation with a #7 finish at the FSAE Competition in Pontiac. The Zips had some fairly dominating performances in the late 90's culminating with a #1 finish in 1999. They've fallen upon some hard times in the past 3 years. I think they've been in the running the past few years but car troubles near the end really hurt the finish. Glad to see they've bounced back. This is a pretty big deal for those non-engineers out there. I would equate the FSAE competiton to College Football of the Engineering world. If this were college football, we would have been in a BCS game. The competition is open to University's world wide and has spawned 2 or 3 similar competition on other continents. This year there were 134 other schools that competed in Pontiac. I'll be looking for some payback in the fall, they fell 9 points shy of the 6th place team, Penn State. Nice job Guys! FSAE Results Link

I've been nosing around on the provided message boards and, as usual, it seems that PSU considers Akron a gimme. People are more worried about FUC than Akron. Since PSU is a program looking for a turnaround season, how do they come out? Do they come out looking to crush us, set the tone for the season and use all the plays in the playbook or do they keep a few key plays in reserve for the Revenge game against BC? My guess is that PSU comes out, keeping a few cards to the chest and assumes they will walk all over us. They'll only show their cards if they're down after halftime or it's a close game late. I have a feeling that if PSU doesn't make a big improvement this year, Joe Pa is out. He'll need a win over BC to improve morale and to silence the critics. Was there a shakeup in the PSU coaching staff or not? It will be interesting to see what JD comes out with. It will be nice to see something different. Was it me, or could you pretty much count on a first down Bomb at the beginning of one of the quarters with LO? He did it at least once a game. I gotta tell you that I like being the overlooked team.

And would you consider the Rubberbowl our Top Recruiting tool? I think a new stadium would do wonders.

Are we in any way linked to gozips.com? I'm guessing that we're the biggest online forum. It isn't as easy to find this site as the dreamwater board was. Will UA let us link to gozips.com?

This pretty much sums up nearly all of the Buckeye fans I know. Real Annoying Fans

Does my out of state vote count?

I don't think the first one is a big deal, but you've GOT to avoid the second time. If the bad press the first time wasn't enough to deter him, there's no hope. Maybe Tressel hasn't made things Black and White enough for these guys? I hope this gets plastered all over everything. Idiot.

Well, that all depends on the cubicle.